Isn't it amazing how much of life is a mater of timing? Like in a bad soap opera, you overhear the wrong part of a conversation, take it out of context, and put into a play a series of events that permanently alter your path.
It always surprises me that despite the outlandish nature of soaps, the framework is not that far off reality.
And then we spend most of our adult lives with these weird habits, beliefs and idiosyncrasies (like having to finish all the food on your plate). All instilled into us from our childhoods - where we spend most of our time complaining about this that or the other that our parents did.
Or we carry it into our jobs and our friendships, our relationships. And we have all these weird issues about what should be benign stuff.
Then we use all these mind reading tricks and assign meaning and ulterior motives to other's behaviours.
And somehow we never figure out that if we just put our assumptions aside, and talked to people, instead of trying to "figure them out" life would just flow so much more smoothly.
I guess I have noticed lately that we all seem to be living wrapped in our pasts. I noticed originally because I remember being curious about how upset people were getting about things I didn't think were that big a deal.
At first I wanted to attribute it to my maturity - but then I smartened up and got to thinking about everybody's buttons.
So, I don't know if there is anything I can do about it, but I sure hope to try not to live trapped in my past and be upfront and straightforward with others.
That being said, I know I've never brought it up before, but I've been wanting to talk to you about .......
3 comments:
Bring it on!
I think the best thing is to realize how your past has influenced you as a person, and try to be aware that this colours your outlook on the world. This doesn't always work (i.e., it's easy to forget to do), but it's certainly a good exercise.
I'm not so sure I agree with the bit about life flowing smoother if we just talk to people instead of trying to figure them out, but I think I'm on the same page as the rest of it. And my reluctance on that one point probably stems from dealing with too many unbalanced people who just make things more confusing in conversation *laugh* (so without 'figuring them out' to establish a 'translator' of sorts, actually talking to them can make things a whole lot rockier)
I think that's mainly because if both people aren't being full-on upfront and honest, then the system breaks down. The other person is still using their filters and private logic to assign meaning to what you're communicating through your words, behaviours and body language. Wether you mean what they intrepret or something else entirely. So you still end up miscommunicating.
Post a Comment