Read Between The Lines

How failure to do so, by misinterpreting and assuming, has grave consequences.

Have you ever been in the situation where people read you wrong and fail to comprehend your point? Where they refuse to understand and quickly base their views on a simple but yet silly assumptions. Yes, I believe we have all been in a similar situation at least once in our lives.

As we see in the play Julius Caesar, the reason to murder Caesar is based on an assumption made by the conspirators. They believed Caesar was becoming too powerful and if he accepts the crown he might snatch away the people’s freedom.

Much of the play deals with the characters failure to interpret correctly the omens that they encounter. The same goes for today. We often misread situations and the consequences are so great they can be life changing or life threatening.

Another problem which also arises from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar is that the people often confuse their private selves with their public selves. They simply do not know the barrier between the two and then begin to combine the two. We can use Brutus as an example: regardless of the fact that he was a good and close friend of Caesar, he goes ahead with the murder thinking he is doing it for the good of the people of Rome. This confusion assists in our failure to recognize, read certain actions and events which again leads to assumptions and misinterpretations.

Many of the world’s life changing events have been related to such topics, all which can be related to Julius Caesar. For example, the murder of Caesar and the assassination of the thirty-fifth president of the United States. As the authorities have made assumptions about Caesar, similarly the authorities of the U.S have had certain misunderstandings of John F Kennedy and therefore had him killed. Although Oswald is known to be his assassinator, there is reason to doubt as some still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy. A similar story can be told of the Princes of Whales, Lady Diana, who was also believed to have been murdered in a conspiracy plot.
Another valid reason why we as people fail to read between the lines in interpreting situations correctly without making assumptions is a lack of communication. When there is a gap between communication there is automatically going to be misinterpretation of the situation and then any further views would now be based on assumption.

This shows the importance of communication between you and your associate. In order to bridge the cap one should not be afraid to ask questions and in doing so one should be upfront and clear. Once this gap is bridged and we are now able to understand the next person’s views it now becomes easier to relate to that person and we then begin to interpret the situation we are in correctly.

As a leader and as a person, one should stand firm on ones feet and should not be swayed easily. Once we begin to confuse, misinterpret and assume we, to a certain point, loose the plot we were initially striving for. Let us not be caught up in this situation again and if so that we are, we can detangle our selves easily.