Being misunderstood feels like a disaster. It’s actually just Tuesday for anyone with a real personality.

Being read wrong is not a special misfortune, it is the ordinary cost of being a particular person rather than a general one. People assemble you out of the fragments they have, and fragments are always incomplete. The ones who get you right managed it with time, not with a better first impression.

When you find you have been misread, decide whether the person matters enough to correct. Often the answer is no, and letting it stand costs less than the explaining would. Save the effort for the few cases where the misunderstanding is genuinely in the way.