I’ve been noticing recently how dependent we are on approximation for communication. Even in that opening sentence, I’ve used “recently” as an approximation of time—a general word to denote an arbitrary time period just prior to the present. But that could be any length of time... I could have stewed over this for years, or just sometime at lunch today. The first important thing is to note that both of those possibilities are okay. There’s no rules for just how approximate an approximation can be. However, the second important thing to note is that it matters very much how we interpret approximations. If I say “My flight leaves soon,” meaning within the hour, and you interpret “soon” as sometime in the next 4 hours, we will quickly run towards different levels of urgency. Adding in our own assumptions that we understand each other, we will each think the other is either far too relaxed or far too uptight. I’d wager that most altercations are at least in some part due to these misinterpretations; even small differences in expectation can cause real, far-reaching conflict.
The whole point of using approximations, in my mind, is to make communication easier—to simplify and expediate. Sometimes, we don’t have exact information or an easy way to provide it. It can be difficult or even impossible to tell someone everything about a given subject such that you both see it the same way. Which is why being able to throw a generalization out is so useful: it covers a significant breadth of knowledge in a short span. But I think we can forget that there are error bars on these kinds of things, and that those error bars can change drastically from subject to subject. It seems to me that we have perhaps lost some of the art of approximation, of being able to identify the whole scope of possibility contained in a single word and the capability to further prepare and adapt our own expecatations. Maybe another term for this would be self-awareness. Think about it; do we ever even consider that the person we present to each other is, more or less, an approximation? They do not know what has led us to this point. Close friends know a large part of your personal story; your family may know even more; perhaps your spouse knows the most. But nobody completely, absolutely knows you. They can’t be inside your head, with you every moment. Yet we often act as if they should; we expect those around us to implicitly understand the long and short of our any given situation, and retaliate against them when they inevitably misconstrue some aspect of it. We lack the self-awareness to identify missing details that would help bridge the gap between us. What’s even worse, we lack the vigor to take the time to explain ourselves even when we are able to identify those missing links! Until we are able to properly take care of the communication we have with each other, we will continue to blunder away meaningful connection and instead create unnecessary squabble. It takes effort, humility, and time. But that is the whole point! The goal is to give each other accurate depictions without sharing every impossible detail. There’s a lovely little path between the longest way round and the shortest way home that allows me to walk with you for a moment—and that is the most important thing.