We were talking about how we see things. How we mostly see what we want to see, or at least we inappropriately highlight things that support our already held position over things that do not. Fair enough, so I can be on the watch for me thinking or acting that way. Won’t always spot it, also fair enough. It’s still a good thing to check in on. But here’s my particular version, which has a bit of a problem that comes with it. What I want to see is this person being nice and decent and heck maybe even thoughtful. Then I inappropriately highlight things in that person which support that already held position, over things that do not. It took not one but two kind, dedicated, objective professionals to get me to understand all this. Took a while. I can be such a bear of little brain.
The problem, then, is not actually that I am failing to take responsibility for making my own reality, much as that is the popculture’s current favourite useful tool to bludgeon people with in inappropriate circumstances. No, the problem here seems to be that I am not seeing clear signs of goofiness specifically because I want these tentative maybe-style positive possibilities to be what’s really going on. Sometimes I even find myself actually thinking that if this positiveness is nurtured it will end up being what’s really going on. A beautiful thought, true enough. But if it turns out to be not so… has turned out to be downright dangerous. Funny that it should be so, but it is.
And sadly it is absolutely a mark of the behaviour of the people I have been walking among, that I should find discovering that the person truly is nice and decent and heck yeah thoughtful, that I should find that at all a surprise. Happily I seem to be hanging out with a better class of people, where actual delivered kindness is both the norm and no big deal. I’m not sure why it’s happening, but it is.
Actual delivered kindness.
No big deal.