Here’s something I’ve been realising recently in quite a profound way.

There is absolutely no way that you can know what is going on in someone else’s head. Even with people that we have a strong connection, all we’ll ever be able to know is our own story about that person and what they may be thinking based on their behaviour. All forms of language and communication are imprecise.

This also means that we can have no control over what people think about us or about anything else. Sure, we can influence their experience and their perceptions. This is not to say that we have no impact on other people, we have a big impact on other people. But the most we can ever do is put out "invitations" to other people (in how we act or what we say) and only they have any control over how they interpret those invitations.

And this is probably how it should be. We only have control over ourselves so there’s no reason to stress over other people’s reactions to us and what they might think about us or not.

An alternative to this would be unhealthy communication… where we think we have control over other people and they think they have control over us. And maybe that may be the root to the many unhealthy and manipulative types of communication that do sometimes exist in this world.