Games and Guardians 163a lot of advice, mostly ‘Don’t do this’ and ‘Make sure you don’t
do that.’ And his son complains that he is always being criti-
cized. Father denies being critical, he says he just wants to help,
but nothing his son does quite makes the grade. He was com-
plaining to me recently that his son was resentful and wouldn’t
accept help and he hated to see him do badly. I asked him
casually what he would do if his son were an employee. He fell
silent, thought for a moment and then changed the subject.
Over the next few months he became more relaxed and per-
missive with his son and their relationship improved.
the channel of experience
How can our intentions be so badly misunderstood? How
can intention and result miss each other so badly? You have
no doubt marvelled at how some people can so completely
misunderstand what you say and do, and I assure you that
you have amazed them in the same way. Understanding (and
misunderstanding) happens in an instant. How?
First, we have limited attention, so we select from all pos-
sible experience. A video camera and a tape recorder would
capture much more. Then we make meaning of that selec-
tion. Some of these are individual meanings based on our
experience, others cultural meanings, based on general ex-
pectations. For example, when someone yawns, we generally
interpret this to mean they are either bored or tired. Then
we use these meanings to draw conclusions about others and
ourselves. In this case you could conclude that you were bor-
ing this person, or that they were tired (which has nothing
to do with you), or that they were rude, or even that they
were interested in what you were saying and wanted to get
more oxygen to their brain to understand it better. It is hard
to take any event just as an event. We are the centre of our
universe and so it seems everything must have a personal
meaning.
As a result of these meanings, we may react emotionally. If
we thought someone was bored by what we were saying, we