Alan Turing: “What’s that you’re reading?”
Christopher Morcom: “It’s about cryptography.”
Alan Turing: “Like secret messages?”
Christopher Morcom: “Not secret. That’s the brilliant part. Messages that anyone can see but noone knows what they mean unless you have the key.”
Alan Turing: “How is that different from talking?”
Christopher Morcom: “Talking?”
Alan Turing: “When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. They say something else. And you’re expected to just know what they mean. Only, I never do. How is that different?”
Christopher Morcom, handing him the book: “Alan, I have a funny feeling you’re going to be very good at this.”

(From “The imitation game”)

 I’m not an animal person. If you ask the typical “are you a cat or dog person?” I would probably say cat. They know what they want and don’t desire your constant attention. (Is that how I see dogs? Insecure and in need for approval? Hmm, I guess… Anyway.) But the OCD in me can neither stand the hair nor the leftovers on my hands after I was in contact with any kind of animal. So why don’t I wash my hands you ask? I do. Right after an un-avoidable encounter with a non-human species. It’s not that I don’t like animals. I do. But I prefer to admire them from afar.

Of course I know that humans have a strange attraction towards pets. And one of my theories to why that is, could be summarised with: animals don’t talk. Learn the signs and a cat or a dog is easy enough to understand. I have yet to meet a dog that is all excited and wags the tail without being happy. Cats don’t try to trick us into believing something false. They are the queen of your household and they want you to know it. Animals are honest and true. They don’t lie to us. That makes them trustworthy companions. That’s why we like them and sometimes even prefer them to humans.

On the other hand we are quite different from pets. We say what we don’t mean. We hear what nobody said. We read between the lines and interpret every word. We ask ourselves what the other is thinking and what he thinks I am thinking. Everything is judged in the light of the circumstances and our relationship.

Studies have shown that most of us are especially quick to interpret something said to us as an attack on our person, our position, our opinion, and our life. But since most of us are not especially quick in attacking others it has to lead to some misunderstandings. In other words: what others say to us is often a lot less hostile than we think it is. So shouldn’t there be a way of avoiding these misconceptions?

I heard a comedian ask how many calories women burn by jumping to conclusions. But is not just women. We all do. All the time. In a way we need these filters to process the tons of information that bombard us every second of our life. We interpret and put it aside. And then again they can keep us from listening to what someone really says. But all that brought us to a form of communication where we don’t even bother to be straight. In a way our conversations are coded. And to understand what someone is saying you need the key. It is not cryptography in a strict sense. It’s more talking about something that is not clearly stated. I sometimes wonder how much time we waste because we are beating around the bush instead of talking straight. Of course we are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. And maybe of saying the wrong thing. But aren’t that all things we could straighten out with taking to each other? By clarifying our relationship?

But yes, there is the problem of saying the truth no matter what. And we enter in to the grey area. How do I say something hard and still be straight on? I guess that is the art in that. And again we could ask: how would we feel? The other needs to hear that and yet we have to enable him or her to listen and not shut off. And that I guess only works with mutual respect.

All in all I prefer people who mean what they say and say what they mean. And even though there are sometimes hurt feelings on the way we always know where we are and how to solve issues. At least as long as we try to avoid the need for interpretation and decoding.