Interpersonal Conflicts

Not that it happens often, but I think that one of the ways that I have most often been upset or frustrated with other people (and vice versa) is by the mood and intention being different between two people in an interaction. Specifically, I mean that one person is trying to joke and have fun while the other person is trying to be serious. I have been on both sides of this issue, and I am surprised at how narrow minded and full of assumptions that I can be, thinking that the other person should just relax and laugh, or that the other person should sober up and see how serious this is.

I recall when I spent time on a WWOOF farm near Toledo, Spain for instance, when a man named Edua would regularly say very silly or illogical things which I suspect he intended as jokes. However, it would break up the flow of the discussion. For instance, he told me that I shouldn't be reading on my computer but rather I should be out by the swimming pool practicing my breakdance like he had seen me to previously. I responded to this by saying that I can't only strengthen my body, but I must also strengthen my mind. He responded by saying “look at how crazy and wild your hair is! You already have too much information in your head!”, which is great for a laugh, but which is terribly for trying to reach a serious understanding or progress in a debate. It could also be a cultural difference, in that I am familiar with some customs of intellectually debating a subject, but Edua and his family members never attended much school, and likely were never introduced to the specific cultural practices of debating.

Running with a thought from the previous paragraph, it was as if only physical exercise was valued, and things that made use of the mind but not the body were not seen as worthwhile. Physical act X (riding a bike/swinging on a swing/climbing a tree) without thinking new thoughts was more valuable than mental act Y (reading philosophy/history/fantasy) without moving my body. It seems that on the WWOOF farm, Edua valued mental/intellectual ability so little in relation to physical skill/ability that regardless of what I was doing on my computer (I doubt it would make a difference whether I told him I was playing Tetris or I was designing a poverty reduction program for rural India) he thought that I should go hang out by the swimming pool and lay in the sun instead. I think that we do this to children sometimes, (or at least it happened to me as a child) telling them to go ride a bike rather than watch a movie or read a book or play a video game. I think it is sometimes too easy to forget that doing mainly mental acts which are mostly physically motionless help a brain to grow and a person to develop in ways that are very different from physical activity. Although I know that I have a strong body now, I am sure that it is due mostly to the martial arts throughout my life, and not to riding a bike. In fact, I remember being miserably bored mentally at times when I was told to go outside and ride my bike, where as I was (of course not always, but sometimes) deeply engaged in a story while playing video games or watching a movie inside. I wonder if I will observe the same behavior in myself in respect to how I act towards children in the future? A false dichotomy, of course, but interesting to ponder nonetheless.