So who are we really ?

In light of a blog buddy's recent posting, I thought it appropriate to wade in on the perils of stereotyping people. A classmate of mine recently gave a very good group presentation about language. The key point he made, in his own stuttering way, was that we are largely defined who we are as a person by our ability to communicate. If the message we are trying to convey is not received and translated in the manner we intended, then people will preceive us in a different light to that in which we view ourselves. In a nutshell, our personality gets redefined through miscommunication. If we're not careful, we eventually become what people already think we are. Sounds all rather hypothetical, and of course people aren't like stupid. So I thought a couple of years ago. Now I think that my uneducated Arab classmate was a little smarter than I had first suspected. In fact, in writing the previous sentence, I further strengthen his argument. I have been, and continue to be, rather shocked by the accuracy of this revelation. On a daily basis I see the change in the eyes and expressions of people the moment that they realise I am not as fluent in Swedish as a native Swedish speaker. I can see that they have immediately classified me as a lesser person than themselves. Not consciously, and not maliciously. But assumptions are made. Because my speech is weak, so must the rest of my abilities be weak. And my value as a person becomes reduced. A classic example occured in our body corporate. There are about 40 apartment owners in our body corporate. Probably 90% of them are pensioners and, for the most part, friendly people. One apartment owner recently had a ventilation problem in their apartment. An email request went out to all members of the board (of which I am one) for suggestions. No worries, thought I. Time to put my university education and 25 years as a building services engineer in NZ to good use. So, loaded up with monitoring and testing equipment from work, I visited the affected apartment and tested the air flows and quality. I calculated the required figures, compared them with the actual recorded figures, and reported my findings and recommendations (in Swedish) for a simple solution back to the board. Top marks for me, and no charge to the board for my professional consultancy services. The response from the board ? A request to another apartment owner: "Hans (aged 175 yrs), you're a bit of a home handyman. Can you go and look at this apartment and see if you can figure out what is wrong ?" At first I used to blame the Swedes for this. Bunch of arrogant pricks. Just because I don't know one thing very well, doesn't mean that I don't know anything. I'm doing work today that I had moved on from almost 15 years ago. Because people think I'm not capable of understanding anything more complicated. But once the urge to smack a few heads together had subsided, I had to face the truth that I had spent much of my former life behaving in exactly the same way. We live our lives at such pace, that we tend to speed read situations. We pick out the key points and paint a picture around those points. I assumed that a lack of communication skills meant a lack of knowledge. And therefore a lack of value. It's wrong, but that's just the way things are. There's nothing like being on the receiving end of a gross injustice to realise the error of your ways. I have a good live today, and a good job. Better than many who have arrived in the same way as I have. That should be enough. But, knowing that people are not really seeing me for who I am, and yet believe that they are seeing all that there is to see, makes it not enough.