Now that I've managed to set the mood, here's what I really wanted to blog about. Whether you know the Babel fish or not, you will most likely recognize what happened to me last week (not a unique moment in itself, mind you).
I am talking to a colleague at the office. It's a good discussion. At least I thought it was - I'm always in for a discussion in which people are open to each other's opinions. I always end up learning something. This discussion wasn't different in any way, other than that I was very surprised to hear my colleague argue a point of which I was convinced she would have a very different opinion.
I'm very analytical in my thinking. And although I am an admirer of people who dare to take a different view to life once in a while (especially an opposite view), this new opinion somehow didn't add up. I decided to do my analysis thing and approach the argument in small steps in which I would see where her opinion had changed. Confusion was just around the corner, because as I did my step by step and received the answers I would have expected in the first place. I also received a mild irritation in the way she responded, but that is not completely new and unexpected, especially where some of the steps I take are overly obvious.
So 1 and 1 is 2 in my book (synergetic 1 and 1 is 3 sounds great, but I've never actually encountered it that favorably), my obvious deduction was that she really should have the opinion I would have expected her to have, not the one she was voicing in the discussion. I'm never one to hold back on the punchline, so I gave her my 1 and 1 along with the conclusion that we should thus be agreeing. Wrong! Irritation levels were now reaching the level that we were drifting away from a discussion into an argument.
This wasn't what I intended! Something really didn't add up. It was at that point that I decided to let all logic go, ease away from the analysis mode and put the Babel fish in my ear.
"I think we're not talking about the same thing here:, I said. Irritation and frustration got the better of her and with an exasperated sigh, she started her story from scratch. I let her talk with only a few confirmative remarks such as "do you mean" and "so if I understand you correctly".
When she finished clarifying I could only say "I thought we were talking about...". In the end we were laughing about the confusion, but it took us nearly 45 minutes to get to this point.
I started to wonder whether, if we had put the Babel fish in our ear from the very beginning of the discussion, we could have prevented wasting time on the discussion. But alas, the Babel fish is just a magnificent figment of the imagination, straight from the mind of the late Douglas Adams. I guess we'll just have to listen closely to one another for now.
