The Ace of Spades

A friend recently presented me with a deck of cards, with the usual invitation, “Pick a card, any card!”

I stared at him for a moment, and then confessed that having been raised Baptist, I had no idea what to do next. I’ve never played cards and I have no idea what you call those funny shapes. Clover and shovels, maybe?

You see, we weren’t all born on the same planet, and we don’t all have the same terms of reference. I don’t know what it feels like to be Asian or Catholic or gay. But I do know what it means to find out late in life that my ancestry was not what I had believed. You probably don’t have that issue, but I’ll bet you have another.

Each of us has a story, a culture, a universe of our own. Nobody else quite shares it.

Because our personal universe informs the way we understand the world and the way we understand messages, we receive communication through a certain filter. Thus, as a speaker or a writer, you need to appreciate that your listener or reader plays with a different deck than you do, if I may now use that term.

Next time you get puzzled looks or a response which “comes out of the blue”, stop to consider if you and the audience share the same experiences.

(Thanks to Robaire for enlightening me on this! See his story, below.)

Robaire

Robaire is not only a dear friend, but a former law partner. As I have done, he is getting ready for “life after law” and has applied his considerable intellect and presence to becoming a mentalist. Robaire will absolutely make you believe in magic, but then he’ll show you how it’s done. He’ll teach you, literally, not to believe your eyes! I can’t say enough about the astounding show he presents. Magic for the Intelligent Mind. Check him out here: http://www.stateofmind.ca/
Magicians

A midget magician escaped his prison cell. The police sent out an alert, “Small medium at large!”