Do You Hear What I Hear?

I have a quick question. Do you like how your voice sounds to other people?

A friend and I were recently talking about how our physical voices sound so different when we hear them on an audio recording. Different, and in a somewhat negative way. We agreed that we prefer the voice that we alone can hear inside our own heads. Maybe that’s just because it’s the truest to how we view ourselves.

I started running with that idea and thinking about other types of perspective. I googled a bit and arrived at my AI pal’s overview (Google AI is my new, if somewhat creepy, 1984-ish friend). 

He/She/They/It informed me that “perspective” refers to someone’s unique way of seeing and interpreting the world, shaped by their experiences and biases.

Those are pretty thought-provoking word descriptors my AI friend is bandying about – unique, interpreting, experiences, biases.

This info, coupled with the aforementioned “I hate how my voice sounds to others” conversation, became a lightbulb-over-my-head moment.  

I went back, looking at my life, and thought about so many times when I may have taken offense, felt confused, hurt, angry, or even ashamed by what I was perceiving as the reality of a given situation. 

When, at the time, it was, in fact, just MY reality.

Unfortunately, I recognize that my personal default way of acting, and reacting, in a lot of these circumstances, was to retreat and just accept my version of what was happening. Sometimes with long-term, negative impacts on a friendship or relationship. Maybe even ending it.

Perhaps a little more communication with others, in that moment, may have exposed those different perspectives of what was actually happening. And could have helped to resolve things differently.

Rewinding a little… I grew up with an Irish Catholic background of emotional restraint. The silent treatment was often the default form of communication and argument. I wasn’t really encouraged to talk a lot about feelings or emotions. Therefore, many of the challenging thoughts and internal reactions that arose along the way stayed inside.

Kind of my personal spin on Vegas. That is, “What happens inside Sheila stays inside Sheila.”

Maybe that’s part of why I graduated college as a communications major. At the time, I think I knew what I didn’t know. And maybe wasn’t doing very well. And I wanted to change that.

That attempt at internal education continues to be a work in progress, to this very day.

Toward this same point, over these last decades I’ve had some conversations with family and friends in which our respective memories of past events seemed to be out of sync. One thoughtful person even noted, several years ago, that the rearview mirror is not always reliable. And mine may, at that time, have needed a good cleaning. The comment felt valid. But I’m not actually sure a shot of Windex is always the cure.

Maybe it’s more about accepting the reality that our individual points of view on what occurs may not be another’s point of view on what took place. And I realized that the absence of more substantive and honest, heart-to-heart conversations, when it is all actually going down, probably helps to solidify those different interpretations.

I do realize I’m not carving new ground with these musings. The classic 1950 film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa is the gold standard in movies for showing how people can perceive and react differently to the same event. Many other talented writers and directors in films and television have followed in his footsteps. 

And, similarly, as a prosecutor, I sometimes came across witness statements, each proven out to be absolutely truthful, which, curiously, seemed to be in conflict with each other.

Maybe, opening up our minds a little on this issue means that the title of this post should really be “Am I Hearing What You’re Hearing?” (I always love a good circle back.)

I’m not sure why this AHA! perspective moment hit me harder this time, sending me back to do a personal retrospective of past memories. Maybe the trigger was that this recent, simple acknowledgment – the fact that people do physically hear me differently than I hear myself – stuck the landing with me just right in this moment, making so many conflicts in my past seem clearer.

Or maybe I’m just getting smarter.

I’d like to vote for the latter. But that’s just the way I see/hear it, I guess. Your honor, I rest my case.