Hi! Do you know me.. or you?

Pardon me... What??

In a recent conversation or rather in my recollection of one, like many others I might have forgotten, I was forced to face that deadliest of my foes - the shadowy figure that clouds my senses and numbs my reason to the point that I am sliding and tumbling down a verbal (sometimes non verbal) chute that opens, after a long winding descent, in to pure chaotic angst and demoralizing bursts of anger.

I am talking about that ghost that looms threateningly over the most fundamental of our interactions from our day to day pleasantries with the world, to the most meaningful of expressive gestures we sometimes call upon - its long, snaky fingers coiling around our thoughts strangling their essence and distorting their purpose... the sinister spirit of our underlying obsolete design... the guardian of the gates that lead to emotional heaven and hell... the all powerful and deceptive agent of calamity... miscommunication.

The moment I recognized it's presence of course, I had to take a step back and look at the whole interaction but in doing so, I inadvertently came to see what I feared - it was wilier in its infiltration of the verbal spectrum than I expected, and even more diabolical in its camouflage of tempestuous sentiment and hurtful pride.

How much do I know of what I represent to every intelligent being external to my senses? How much of what I feel, think and know to be true of them could be considered factual (at least for practical purposes)?

Do I know them at all? Do they know me?

While I've always reasoned that no one can ever truly 'know' someone because of the relative insignificance of what can be communicated versus what is even the momentary reality of a person, I might have, in tunnel vision of the matter due to other prejudices, chosen not to see how much of that communication too is adulterated and contaminated beyond use.

The need to communicate our thoughts in some form or other is of course, one of the driving motivations of the human race but let us also at this point take in to consideration the communication that happens within our mind.

Our mind, though appearing as more or less unified in its illusory image to the outside world and in it's behaviour and interaction with it, is very much divided in its functioning.

For example, our emotions have to be processed by our mind for us to actually deal with it - either through communication, suppression or any other form of action. How much miscommunication happens even at this level of our consciousness for us to be forced to think or maybe even say at some point "I don't really know what I'm feeling."

How much of us, then, do we define by what is communicated - either by us or to us?

Is there such a thing as 'true communication' at all or is all that we know mostly a product of re interpreting fragmented pieces and then piecing them together to suit our individual and collective needs?

Perhaps this is why in all the practices of self discovery and truth, thought  -which can be considered the vehicle of miscommunication - is seen as the enemy of peace and enlightenment. Maybe it is by design that we have to communicate ourselves to everything else; why we feel the need for a representation of our 'self' to that which exists outside it - so that we are forever doomed to be slaves chained by nature to this tormenting cycle of half truths and gaudy lies that lure us over and over again to the promised place of clarity, only to find ourselves grabbing at the dry sands of misery and unending questions.

So that's what I feel about miscommunication. You got it right? Yes? Thanks. No? Why not? 

Maybe I should have expressed it more clearly. Or maybe you should have tried a bit harder. No?

But what the hell... at least you know where I'm coming from, yes? Me? Who am I? What do you mean who am I? The sheer nerve... I know you... Wait... don't I?