Women’s majlis: building worlds inside our heads

Every one of us has a personal world of our own creation. A world that we allow no one else to access. The amount of time we spend there varies from one person to the other. Some people might prefer it over reality; for others, their personal world is actually reality, because that’s where they spend most of their time. Some might even have different worlds – ones that are bright and safe, and others that are dark and cloudy, yet they can’t help but be trapped in them. All these worlds lie in our heads.

Those who spend the majority of their time in a world of their own creation are over-thinkers. Thoughts are what shape their worlds, and the more they invest in thinking, the bigger their worlds become. I could categorise myself as an over-thinker. I love building and wandering through my world. Sometimes, I get so excited about this world that I feel like sharing it with those closest to me. I want them to enjoy it as much as I do, and to be exposed to the creativity that I sometimes struggle to expose outside of my world.

If only we could deliver our thoughts to others as they are in those worlds. But we can’t open the gates for others to enter our worlds; we can only expose them to parts of it through words, and leave the rest to their imagination. We assume that they would perceive it exactly as we intend, exactly the way we view it. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Sometimes our intentions get lost in translation, and the more we try to edit our transcripts of thoughts, the more typos we end up with. It becomes like a continuing process of trying to fix and deliver our thoughts as they are in our heads, but it’s almost impossible to achieve.

Sometimes we end up unintentionally hurting others who witness this translation process, but we can’t control the way they perceive our words. They have their own word processing and translation centre in their own world that only they are exposed to. Their translation might be based on previous experiences, memories, books or articles they have read. There is an endless trail of meanings that exists in each of our personal dictionaries. It’s such a complex process that at times it can be ­exhausting.

If we fail to articulate these things, our egos are activated, and we feel our worlds are threatened. We start hurting each other based on our misunderstandings. We fail to listen to the other side, because we are fully occupied in our own worlds. Our own thoughts echo in our heads, and we become unable to accept any output from a different world.

The only way we can recover is by allowing our loved ones to build parts of our worlds with us. That’s when our worlds become more content and peaceful; by accepting and respecting that each world is unique to its beholder.

Zainab Al Mousawi is studying for a master’s in clinical social work at the University of Melbourne.

If you have a good story to tell or an interesting issue to debate, contact ­Melinda Healy on mhealy@­thenational.ae