A little Bible reading to get us started

I feel like something dramatic.
Genesis 11: "Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.' Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.'

God came down to look at the city and the tower that man had built, and He said, 'If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech, so that they do not understand one another.'

Thus God scattered them from there over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there God confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there God scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

Truth is we don't really understand each other even when we do speak the same language. Words hide, distort, confuse. We use them thinking they have universal meaning, but they don't, because you will never be inside someone else's head. Worse, even if you can find a way to wiggle inside, just a little bit, you might just as easily reject what you find as nonsensical, something you simply don't agree with.
And that's even if you're lucky enough to have gotten the message right.
But who really knows.

Do you really understand me?
Do I really understand you?
Did we ever?
Will we?

Does it matter?

Its interesting to note that contrary to the commentaries I've read before, man did not build the tower to try to reach God, or to assert his might, or to equate himself with the Divine, but rather simply so that he would not be forgotten and scattered to the winds. More importantly, God did not confound our speech for our alleged haughtiness, but rather because with unified language He apparently feared that we could do anything.
So maybe that's what our failure to understand each other, whether because of differences of language or otherwise, is all about. Its a hinderance, a challenge to be overcome. Because if we could overcome it, nothing would be impossible.
If we could only understand one another, the only limit to what we could accomplish would be our imagination.

If only it were that simple.

Too melodramatic? Ok, I'll stop then.