Stupid

If your chinese(and other assorted dialect) speaking friends (in the loosest sense of the word) and English speaking co-workers think you're stupid does it mean that you are?

Can they define who you are and do they? Can you change that perception?
With my little understanding of the influence people have, especially the charismatic ones, over the people they come across, I realize they can. Socially at least. You find out that charisma isn't always given to the ones who most deserve it nor the ones who will use it, to your definition, of well. You feel you're on the loosing end. If you don't suck up to them or buck up and be smart. They can ruin your reputation with just one sentence, word or even look.

It's true, you can shape who you are in words and present it to the world. Distorted or otherwise, the options for chameleon like change of colours in your personality are limitless. You also find out, you can be limitless. Then where do you begin and this apparently fictitious character ends? Or was it a part of you all along. Just another aspect of what makes you YOU?

Understanding their point of view helps only a little and then you realize it's so superficial. You present that superficiality to the world and the world presents it's own to you. It's definitely true you can never know everything about a person. And knowing the incapabilities, incompatibilities and loopholes within a language and the different ways we communicate and misscommunicate, I'm in awe that we can connect at all. Yet there are unspoken comradreries between two likeminded people. Not gained through so many words but the knowledge that they are similar.

It's frustrating that when you don't connect to a wavelength you're considered stupid. They'll assume you're the lowest demonination of the word. And when asked for opinions or maybe some advice on a particular topic you think they're well versed in, retell one that's been repeated hundreds of times, in turn, revealing their banal thought process and yes, stupidity. Yet life goes on. You learn to be smarter, you learn to deal. It's nothing personal, it's just the way it is.

You realise it's no point taking things personally, because most of the time it isn't, even things like gossip are technical things. It becomes a game and you wonder how people can live like this. True, you can't please everybody and even with people of similar mindsets, there are falling outs. Not every aspect of your personality can be pleasing to the other.

You can't fathom anything from first meetings or initial conversations, but it doesn't stop people from trying.

I am cynical. Yes I am.

The length and depth of the word, the tone of delivery, the cultural history behind the word, even the positioning of a word. It DOES matter.