A friend was recently visiting my new apartment when, standing in my kitchen, they commented, “I really like your drying rack, did you just get that?”
“Thanks!” I said with enthusiasm. “I technically have two—one’s at my parent’s in PA. I’ll bring it back here eventually. That one I inherited from an old roommate when they left the city.”
“Yeah it’s really nice.”
“Thanks!”
“And it’s nice that it doesn’t take up too much space on the counter.”
“Wait what?”
That’s when I realized my friend was talking about the place we put our clean dishes, next to our kitchen sink. And I was talking about where I hang my wet laundry, folded away in the space between my counter and my refrigerator.
I explained this and we laughed at the harmless miscommunication.
“That’s so funny,” my friend began, “because if you hadn’t said that just now, we just could have left this conversation never realizing that we meant entirely different things.”
And it is funny. Because it doesn’t matter.
But what if it did?
And if it’s this easy to have misunderstandings when we’re both coming from a clear, light-hearted place of casual chit chat, how easy it must be to do so when you’re walking into a deeper conversation with your emotions high.
And perhaps then, this is an important reminder to be intentional with our words, to check for understanding, and to believe the best version of the story.
