One of the most frustrating things is to be misunderstood. To have your explanations fall on deaf ears or a hardened heart.

Once I lost a friendship because my friend believed I had done something I hadn’t done. My assurances fell flat. Worse, I knew who had actually done the thing I had been accused of but didn’t say because that might jeopardize their friendship. So I became the exiled one. And watched that other friendship prosper. The protected friend knew I had paid the penalty for their own actions but wasn’t about to confess.

Misunderstandings can be so frustrating. Much better to be punished for something you actually did, a choice freely made, even if wrong. There is sense in that. But misunderstandings bring a helpless feeling coupled with an anger at the injustice of it all.

I wonder how many relationships have been lost over misunderstandings, for reasons that weren’t even true. Or how many people, even, wrongfully convicted. What of all that hurt and loss over things that aren’t even true?

What do you do in the face of that kind of senseless tragedy? One thing, of course, is to fess up if someone is bearing a penalty for something you did. But beyond that maybe is the way we open our own ears and soften our hearts to make sure that we’re not the ones cutting people off and ending relationships over things we might be wrong about.

No one captures this angst of being misunderstood better than Nina Simone with her prayer, O Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.