Interpretations
This week we'll be talking about the questions of interpretations. Our very first topic talked about how experience is made different by each person. Why are experiences different? Remember i also, i said people experience one situation with different levels of thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings comes from a history of past experiences as well as actions. On a very big scale, these thoughts and inspirations comes from how we look at things- our interpretation. How would interpretation work to our advantage and how might it harm us? What are the connotations of seeing things in more positive way? Is thinking/interpreting positively a good thing? Or is there another way of interpreting things?
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Interpretations- Seeing, looking and understanding differently.
There were some really good discussions on the topic of experiences and choices, i really encourage you to tag on the board just at the bottom after reading the entries. It has been a busy week for me at the same time a great deal of self reflection had been done. I am someone who strongly believe that the right choices I remember saying that choices affects where you'll be, what you'll do and who you'll meet but i felt very strongly that something was missing. What could it be? What made people see the world in a different light if choices was the main reason things happen? Thinking about why i am where i am today and the kind of choices i made really woke me up again to take every action to make my life a worthy legacy...
However the antiphon only came to me when i was reading my communications textbook on organizational communication. Quote: "The systems of meanings that individuals create together influence their impressions of one another, their interpretations of their relationship, and the meanings that they attach to their communication." (Strategic Organizational Communication In a Global Economy, by Charles Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole) Not wanting to bore you with the details, what the chapter that i read wanted to say was the meaning we give to things forms realities. In the book it talks about how organization is an entity formed not only by the top management but also by the members. Through communication people as separate entities comes together and brings with them two things, they are histories and expectations. With these two things people form the norm of the organization and its skeleton.
What am I trying to get at? If you see an organization as an entity that forms norms and logic and how things should be done and make decisions, how about how people becoming who they are? How people form their logic and how they decide. Also, something that happens before we make choices are affected by the two points that I pointed out; histories and expectations. Do you know what it is?
It is again, one word. Interpretation. If Interpretation of a situation comes before we make choices and decisions, isn’t it important that we know something about it? What is interpretation? Interpretation in the very simplest definition would be how we understand things, situations and problems. I find that the best way to explain or to get across an idea is to tell stories. For this entry you’ll get two stories and I’m not going to elaborate on them because I think many readers get a lot more from the tag board than what I write so here it comes:
This first story requires you to put yourself in the main character’s shoes. So try your best to imagine that you are in that situation…
Imagine you are at the airport you just had a great meeting with a friend from Perth and you are waiting for your flight home. Because you had such a great talk with your friend you forgotten to have lunch and it is now 3pm. Your empty stomach starts churning and then it starts growling.
Dragging your trolley luggage on the carpeted traveler’s shopping area, you find a cookie shop. The smell of sugary rich cookies made your mouth water. You decided to buy 200g of cookies. After buying, you start to look for a seat so that you could have your cookies.
You found a seat just at the end of a row and you sat down. Beside you there was a man, wonderfully dressed with a coat and a tie. You smiled and he smiled back. After sitting down your stomach starts its protest again so you reached down into the plastic bag and pulled out the box of cookies you just bought earlier. The funny thing is you start feeling this man staring at you… no not at you but at the cookies. What is he trying to do? He was staring intensely at what you were doing.
You opened the box and took one cookie and started munching on it. To your surprise the man reached into the box and took one as well and he started eating your cookie! But he didn’t just take one, after every time you reached into the box for a cookie; he reached into the box for another! Is this guy mad? What is he doing eating my cookies. But you being a nice person, you thought probably he is as hungry as you were, so you didn’t do anything about it.
This goes on for about a few minutes (you take one cookie, he takes another) until there was only one cookie left. You look at it for a long time. This time, he doesn’t wait for you to take a cookie (probably because there would be none left after you take the last one). However he doesn’t just take the cookie, he broke it into half and gave half a cookie to you!!! Then you start thinking about how you are going to tell all your friends about this strange man; eating your cookies, sharing the last one with you.
He finishes his half, stands up smiles and leaves.
After finishing your half, you still felt hungry (what a big eater!). And since your flight was still sometime away, you decided to buy another box of cookies to eat. You visited the cookie shop again and bought another 200g of cookies. When you got back to your seat (Thank god nobody took your seat), you sat down, stretched and got ready to dig into your cookies again. You reached down for the plastic bag but you felt nothing so you look under the chair. To your surprise you found not one but two bags with a full box of cookies in each.
Than you realized, that when you reached down for your cookies for the very first time you didn’t reach into your bag, the one you bought was still there. When you reached down to take the box of cookies you accidentally took the man’s cookies by mistake! Something really big changed just there, that’s right, your interpretation.
Just imagine what kind of impression would you have of that man if you haven’t found your first box of cookies? What kind of impression would you have of that man when you found your first box of cookies? What would you have told your friends about this, if you had not found your first box of cookies? And what you would have told you friends now that you had found your first box? Would you even tell your friends about it?
Ready for more? Here’s the 2nd story for this week’s entry:
I don’t remember where I read this from but there was once a man, lets call him peter. Peter takes the train a lot; to work, to gatherings, visits etc. And on a typical day he took the train as usual to work. Peter likes to read while he is on the train so once he got on, he found a seat and he took out his book and started reading. After about 10 minutes the train reaches a station and the doors open, two children ran in and started playing on the handles jumping and screaming at each other. The man behind them, who obviously was the children’s’ father sat down beside Peter and just looked at his children play disruptively.
The children a boy and a girl who seemed to be around the ages of 8 and 10 made a whole lot of noise, treated the handles on the ceiling of the train as monkey bars and jumped around in the train. In less than, 2minutes everyone on the train was looking at these two children AND their father.
The father of the two children didn’t seem to notice the stares from the other passengers. He just didn’t do anything to control his children. Peter was trying very hard to concentrate in his reading but failed, even worst, the boy who was jumping around crashed towards Peter when he lost his balance.
No being able to stand it anymore, Peter turned to the father of these two children and said, “Hey could you please ask your children to behave! This is not the playground!”
The father of the two children turned to peter and said,
“I’m sorry sir, we just came from the hospital… their mother just died, I don’t know if they can handle it… I know I can’t…”
This is just something to think about every time you interpret or judge people, things and situations. My suggestion is whenever you see something, don’t just interpret it with your histories and expectations, interpret creatively.
I do hope you have got something out of this week’s entry, I know I have.. Alot.
Please support this work by clicking on our sponsors under plugs. One or two clicks makes a difference.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Interpretations- Seeing, looking and understanding differently.
There were some really good discussions on the topic of experiences and choices, i really encourage you to tag on the board just at the bottom after reading the entries. It has been a busy week for me at the same time a great deal of self reflection had been done. I am someone who strongly believe that the right choices I remember saying that choices affects where you'll be, what you'll do and who you'll meet but i felt very strongly that something was missing. What could it be? What made people see the world in a different light if choices was the main reason things happen? Thinking about why i am where i am today and the kind of choices i made really woke me up again to take every action to make my life a worthy legacy...
However the antiphon only came to me when i was reading my communications textbook on organizational communication. Quote: "The systems of meanings that individuals create together influence their impressions of one another, their interpretations of their relationship, and the meanings that they attach to their communication." (Strategic Organizational Communication In a Global Economy, by Charles Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole) Not wanting to bore you with the details, what the chapter that i read wanted to say was the meaning we give to things forms realities. In the book it talks about how organization is an entity formed not only by the top management but also by the members. Through communication people as separate entities comes together and brings with them two things, they are histories and expectations. With these two things people form the norm of the organization and its skeleton.
What am I trying to get at? If you see an organization as an entity that forms norms and logic and how things should be done and make decisions, how about how people becoming who they are? How people form their logic and how they decide. Also, something that happens before we make choices are affected by the two points that I pointed out; histories and expectations. Do you know what it is?
It is again, one word. Interpretation. If Interpretation of a situation comes before we make choices and decisions, isn’t it important that we know something about it? What is interpretation? Interpretation in the very simplest definition would be how we understand things, situations and problems. I find that the best way to explain or to get across an idea is to tell stories. For this entry you’ll get two stories and I’m not going to elaborate on them because I think many readers get a lot more from the tag board than what I write so here it comes:
This first story requires you to put yourself in the main character’s shoes. So try your best to imagine that you are in that situation…
Imagine you are at the airport you just had a great meeting with a friend from Perth and you are waiting for your flight home. Because you had such a great talk with your friend you forgotten to have lunch and it is now 3pm. Your empty stomach starts churning and then it starts growling.
Dragging your trolley luggage on the carpeted traveler’s shopping area, you find a cookie shop. The smell of sugary rich cookies made your mouth water. You decided to buy 200g of cookies. After buying, you start to look for a seat so that you could have your cookies.
You found a seat just at the end of a row and you sat down. Beside you there was a man, wonderfully dressed with a coat and a tie. You smiled and he smiled back. After sitting down your stomach starts its protest again so you reached down into the plastic bag and pulled out the box of cookies you just bought earlier. The funny thing is you start feeling this man staring at you… no not at you but at the cookies. What is he trying to do? He was staring intensely at what you were doing.
You opened the box and took one cookie and started munching on it. To your surprise the man reached into the box and took one as well and he started eating your cookie! But he didn’t just take one, after every time you reached into the box for a cookie; he reached into the box for another! Is this guy mad? What is he doing eating my cookies. But you being a nice person, you thought probably he is as hungry as you were, so you didn’t do anything about it.
This goes on for about a few minutes (you take one cookie, he takes another) until there was only one cookie left. You look at it for a long time. This time, he doesn’t wait for you to take a cookie (probably because there would be none left after you take the last one). However he doesn’t just take the cookie, he broke it into half and gave half a cookie to you!!! Then you start thinking about how you are going to tell all your friends about this strange man; eating your cookies, sharing the last one with you.
He finishes his half, stands up smiles and leaves.
After finishing your half, you still felt hungry (what a big eater!). And since your flight was still sometime away, you decided to buy another box of cookies to eat. You visited the cookie shop again and bought another 200g of cookies. When you got back to your seat (Thank god nobody took your seat), you sat down, stretched and got ready to dig into your cookies again. You reached down for the plastic bag but you felt nothing so you look under the chair. To your surprise you found not one but two bags with a full box of cookies in each.
Than you realized, that when you reached down for your cookies for the very first time you didn’t reach into your bag, the one you bought was still there. When you reached down to take the box of cookies you accidentally took the man’s cookies by mistake! Something really big changed just there, that’s right, your interpretation.
Just imagine what kind of impression would you have of that man if you haven’t found your first box of cookies? What kind of impression would you have of that man when you found your first box of cookies? What would you have told your friends about this, if you had not found your first box of cookies? And what you would have told you friends now that you had found your first box? Would you even tell your friends about it?
Ready for more? Here’s the 2nd story for this week’s entry:
I don’t remember where I read this from but there was once a man, lets call him peter. Peter takes the train a lot; to work, to gatherings, visits etc. And on a typical day he took the train as usual to work. Peter likes to read while he is on the train so once he got on, he found a seat and he took out his book and started reading. After about 10 minutes the train reaches a station and the doors open, two children ran in and started playing on the handles jumping and screaming at each other. The man behind them, who obviously was the children’s’ father sat down beside Peter and just looked at his children play disruptively.
The children a boy and a girl who seemed to be around the ages of 8 and 10 made a whole lot of noise, treated the handles on the ceiling of the train as monkey bars and jumped around in the train. In less than, 2minutes everyone on the train was looking at these two children AND their father.
The father of the two children didn’t seem to notice the stares from the other passengers. He just didn’t do anything to control his children. Peter was trying very hard to concentrate in his reading but failed, even worst, the boy who was jumping around crashed towards Peter when he lost his balance.
No being able to stand it anymore, Peter turned to the father of these two children and said, “Hey could you please ask your children to behave! This is not the playground!”
The father of the two children turned to peter and said,
“I’m sorry sir, we just came from the hospital… their mother just died, I don’t know if they can handle it… I know I can’t…”
This is just something to think about every time you interpret or judge people, things and situations. My suggestion is whenever you see something, don’t just interpret it with your histories and expectations, interpret creatively.
I do hope you have got something out of this week’s entry, I know I have.. Alot.
posted by Steven at 4:57 AM
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