Forced Interaction

I’ve never been one to love large crowds. I prefer to be alone. Sitting under a tree reading a book or lying on the decking of my house and staring up at the night sky. It’s probably why I spend so much time sitting behind my computer. Too much people are noisy. Everyone’s trying to speak at the same time. Everyone asks you questions, and they all expect to answer as if they’re the only one there. They make up their own rules and regulations and expect you to follow them, and then form silly opinions of you when you don’t. When you’re alone, you can choose the voices you want to listen to, which ones speak and which ones stay quiet.

But God never made us to be alone. We fear it. We always want to know that there is someone there, that we are always in the presence of another. We all want to get to know the people around us. I, being no different, craves social interaction despite my dislike for large numbers of people. But I’ve found that it is not as easy as I would assume it would have been.

I can write well. English follows grammatical rules, there is only one way to spell a word and sentences have a specific way that they must be constructed. But when you start speaking to people it is as if you were speaking an entirely different language. Words are said that don’t mean what they are supposed to. Interpretation of signs and signals are far off from what one may assume they may mean. And even though they all speak their own special language, they expect you to know it. I never seem to understand these dialects and customs, and I often find myself doing something that is particularly weird or insulting by their culture. I would often say to myself that I should be a contortionist, seeing as how I am really good at putting my foot in my mouth. I usually just give up and trying to understand them at all.

But today I stood up in front of a group of people to do a Bible study. This wasn’t just a regular conversation. This was a matter of religion, something of utmost importance. People who have made mistakes with this have started wars. I was nervous and scared. I prayed and I began talking as best as I knew how. And somehow, somewhere around the line I found myself understanding them. Hearing their voices clearly for the first time and understood their speech. And I realized that it wasn’t that they were now speaking my language, but that I was speaking theirs. I hold in my hand right now a list of email addresses of the people that were there today, hoping to make a mailing list so that I can send them summaries. I never liked talking in front of large groups of people, but it seems that when I am forced tom I can do it. They say they best way to learn a language is to live in the country that speaks it. So I’ll go live in this country, and perhaps, one day, I may be as fluent in it as they are.