Reblogged from The Magical World of G. Michael Vasey:

One idea that constantly occupies some aspect of my thoughts is how transparent people really are. I can think of a couple of examples immediately and in each case, I confess I am often troubled and upset by it. It seems to me that these people believe they know me. They plainly have a picture of me in their mind. A sort of working model. The problem is is that while that picture may have my outer appearance, it is almost certainly a facet of themselves that occupies that outer form in their mind and yet, they do not know this. It makes for an endless source of irritation in our communications. It means that everything I ever say or do is seen against their expectations of how I will behave and their responses are informed by this. In the end, we never actually talk with each other at all but with ourselves. A constant stream of miscommunication in fact. Knowing this, I have changed my approach altogether now and simply ignore the reaction as far as I can in an effort to focus on the actual point of the communication.

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