In those saucy, sassy,
arrogant years of young adulthood,
I thought myself a good judge of character,
and it wasn’t until years later
that I discovered just how wrong I was.
Back in the days of Lyndon Johnson, JFK,
Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater,
there was another player on the stage,
and that was Hubert Humphrey.
Quite cockily
I decided
and declared to anyone who would listen
(not really that many people:) )
that I would never vote for him . . .
he was so obviously a bad man . . .
who could believe that someone with ‘those beady little snake eyes’
would ever have our country’s best interests at heart?
I don’t know why I targeted him so cruelly.
Perhaps it was because he supported the war in Vietnam.
In truth,
he changed his views later,
but I did not know this.
It was only upon Humphrey’s death
that I realized he was actually a man of greatness,
a passionate advocate for civil rights
and other liberal causes.
He was not only
not a snake,
but a great humanitarian
who respected everyone he tried to help,
whether they wore a suit and tie,
or a farmer’s work shirts and overalls.
I learned that lesson
on the day that I heard that he had died,
and have always felt a little sorry
for my callous thoughts and behavior . . .
since then
I have never overtly judged another human being . . .
the ‘snake eyes’ thing
sticks in my throat
and I am deeply and permanently humbled by this lesson.
Being old helps too . . .
I’ve softened my tendency towards judgement
because I’ve “walked a mile
in many other people’s moccasins”,
and understand that s**t happens.
It’s happened to me,
and I’m pretty sure that it has happened to every one of us
as some time in our lives.
I still judge big corporations
and things like that,
but not my sisters and brothers who share my journey. ♥
Ps. There are a few people of note
that I have trouble with,
who are cruel and brutal to others,
but that is for another Question
and another day.
I might be wrong about everything. How I perceive others and how I’m perceived, is an ever changing and fluid situation. I have been right about people and I have been wrong about people. Of course I should try not to judge, but it’s impossible.
Seeing people as whole and three dimensional, helps me to more accurately see others fully. What I am seeing more and more in the people that I don’t agree with, is fear. Fear and trauma. Un acknowledged and un addressed trauma.
As difficult as it is to be proven wrong about someone’s character, it can go both ways.
As long as I remain open to re evaluating and correcting my beliefs about someone, I feel I will be okay. One difficulty is, holding two things at once.
People can express their beliefs, that I disagree with, and still be kind and compassionate people. That’s a hard one for me.
I’ve been a close friend to a co-worker for years. In the last few months the individual has become quite distant, and punitive, not including me in critical information to do our job, let only invite to join in the “pick up lunch orders,” so I ask and give my order and quickly pay. There’s not even a mutual ‘morning but I persist with a hello and have a good evening at shifts end. I think there may be a health challenge that the person thinks I know about. I do not. Last week in the midst of everything else it dawned on me-the additional sadness for me at work, that I do not show, is that I miss the rapport we used to have. I encircle the person daily w/prayer for their well being, health, etc. (Direct communication isn’t working). There may be others I have errors in my perceptions about them. This one is the most pressing. Have a gentle Monday all-Re-entry to your tasks. ☮️
The duality of the question–right or wrong–ruffles my feathers and reminds me of something I have been pondering about and that is the difference between “eternity” and “eternal.” I think we humans are more comfortable with the term “eternity” because it fits into our construct of time. Joseph Campbell said in the “Power of Myth” series that “eternity is NOW.” But “What is “eternal?” What always was, is, and always will be? From my life experience and spiritual journey, the only answer I can come up with is unconditional Love. So I try to trust enough to believe that the origin of creation was Love.
I can’t make it through a single day without observing that Life lives on Life. I can’t peel a carrot, skin an orange or eat a bean without being reminded that it was nurtured so it could come to fruition. And so I try to pray for those I consider enemies.
I remember one time, I had wasps determined to build their nest on my front porch. I sprayed them with poison every evening and in the morning, some wasps would still be there working on building a nest. After 3 days of spraying, I lost my temper. I screamed at those wasps. I said, I understand that you need a home but it can’t be on my front porch where friends and family enter my HOME. Please, I do not want to kill anymore of you. You are welcome to build a nest anywhere on the house but not at my front door.”
The wasps left. I think they sensed that I was not judging them. They were welcome just not on my front porch where humans would be in danger when they protected their nest. I think I was expressing a “Both And” mentality. We humans have developed an “us and them” mentality.
I don’t know that I can answer a question about WHO I might be wrong about. I can remind my self that eternally I believe others came from love just as I came from love but we’ve all been battered and bruised by circumstances and past those bruises on from generation to generation. So as Desmond Tutu says, “Let us be quicker to praise than to find fault. Let us be quicker to thank others than to complain.”
Sometimes it is very hard but I remind myself to “BE KIND.”
Good Question. I am not too sure how to respond.
The older I get the more I realize how little I know about so many things, the world, people etc. I try not to judge, I try to have an open mind & stay in my own lane. However there are times I find myself judging & struggling to be accepting of other’s behaviors. So many of us suffer in silence & many have no idea what the person next to them is struggling with. We are all walking each other home. I remind myself of this often.
I/We need to be more compassionate & less judgmental to our fellow travelers. Kindness goes a long way. Love is the Way.
Happy February All….🩷🕊️
This is very timely for me. Last week a series of interactions with a particular individual at work left me frustrated, and protective on behalf of a member of my team whose work they seemed to dismiss pretty callously.
This other person certainly has their reasons for their statements and actions. If I say I respect that and then simply reject what they say, I’m not really demonstrating respect. I need a reset on my attitude toward them.
This is a great question to ponder.
Honestly, I might be wrong about everyone, including myself. People are complex. I can’t presume to understand their motivations, their fears, their dreams. I can ask and they can tell me about themselves, but what I hear is filtered through my own interpretation, my judgemental mind. That same judgemental mind, I recognize to be my own harshest critic.
I really try to live gently and not judge people, lovingly accept them as they are.
Part of my daily contemplation is to consider who am I “othering”, that is to say who am I’m separating myself from, considering them to be evil, my adversaries, my competition, or even just undesirable company. I try to imagine where they’re coming from, why they say what they say and do what they do, and look for good in everyone and be grateful for that.
I’m not good at it, but sometimes I surprise myself.
Tom, it’s not easy. This points back to my response to Drea’s comment on my post and my post itself yesterday about individualism on how it’s both interesting and complicated.
I could be wrong about a lot of people. It’s easy to pigeonhole and make assumptions about someone, it’s what our brains do to make sense of social cues. I prefer to not hold onto those assumptions tightly, and be patient as things unfold.
My first thought was, I am pretty open to people and accepting. I dug a bit deeper and there is a nagging thought I have about a certain group in my life. I need to give a listening ear to them.
This is an interesting question. My first thought was, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”. And people “tell” us that in many ways, as we do them. My next thought was, it doesn’t matter. What matters to me is how I treat them, show them respect, and either stay or move on. I don’t believe that everyone is meant to love us, nor us them. I don’t believe that is right or wrong, it just is. But respecting someone as they show up is important, and challenging, and worth the effort. ♥️
I love this question. It is a good opportunity for me to reflect on those I might have misjudged. I think that seeing someone as right or wrong is not just a matter of seeing in black and white, but also a matter of my own perception and open-mindedness. Therefore, I believe I may be wrong about many people in my life, from my family to strangers.
My Ngoc, especially with family. We share the same complex views. My experience with Paw Mu can serve as a good template since she did treat me like family at the time too which is quite common in Traditional collective Asian settings. Families stretch out creating a family of families environment. Ok, all that extra stuff aside. The other half of the equation is that I was too corrupted to receive her messages correctly. We can apply this concerning our families too.
Purity is one thing I love about our traditional Asian side. It’s simple with more defined standards. People generally just want whatever’s best for us.
If this question came up a year or 2 or possibly 6 months ago, I’d say Paw Mu. But now that I’m more at ease with what she taught me, I feel that my blind spots are treated. Getting past my strong resentment, rebellion, and regret towards her aka the 3Rs, helps me be more at peace with others around me no matter how difficult they may be. Strong enthusiastic energy coming towards me every now and then makes it easier to accept.
Extra time and space helps strategists like me. I need a good amount of that to process whatever’s going on having mentioned yesterday for my 6 ennielgram with a 5 wing as my secondary tritone on my response to Yram from Michele’s posts. Heart people will probably disagree with me on needing to learn techniques in order to respect differences. Fair enough. Techniques and personal agendas go together, and with love, anything is possible. But however, where I’m getting at as a head person is that not all things can mix. Some things are just downright impossible to combine. Putting oil and water together is the last thing we want which is a major reason on why I’m a firm believer in boundaries.
Boundaries and intimacy don’t play nicely together. Not every good thing can mix. Too much of a good thing turns bad. I’m all familiar with the old saying of not barking up the wrong tree. It’s like me talking about business ventures at a table of my mom’s friends when they’re sharing personal experiences of their lives. I can take my business venture conversations to my circle of buddies who share that interest with me or at a meeting setting even on a casual level where the main topic is business. This all points back to my exchange with Antoinette on how we share the common value of nature when I mentioned how right intention and action are equally important.
Relevancy is the first thing I think of when I think of right intention and action. As I said yesterday, it’s a shared challenge for the ADHD and autism. The former goes on wild tangents while the ladder brings personal interests into almost every conversation.
My Ngoc, god is good, and correction happens on its terms. It’s why I’m able to have fun going around creating my own umpire. As long as everything runs through god’s energy, it comes from a good root. No need for worries.
This is an interesting question. I might be wrong about all kinds of people. I do my best not to judge others, but I do have an ego like everyone else and can find little stories in my mind. I’d like to be wrong about this cute little old lady who has come to a few of my deep stretch classes. The first time I met her, I didn’t think she liked the class. It was the look on her face. But she came back, so it couldn’t have been that bad, although she still had a sullen look on her face most of the time. I do know people carry their own “stuff,” so I do my best not to take things like that personal. I’d also like to be wrong about my mother-in-law who has caused so much pain and trauma to my husband. Unfortunately, she has shown herself to be the way she is, so at this point it’s just acceptance.
In the meanwhile, I will just keep my faith in humanity and hope that I’m not wrong about that 🙂
Sunnypatti, it’s very easy to overread into certain details and make assumptions off of others based upon that. For example, I can say that every woman who has a natural sweet voice and long hair is a kindhearted woman. Newsflash. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place based on some of my past answers and even comments on other people’s posts before too.
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In those saucy, sassy,
arrogant years of young adulthood,
I thought myself a good judge of character,
and it wasn’t until years later
that I discovered just how wrong I was.
Back in the days of Lyndon Johnson, JFK,
Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater,
there was another player on the stage,
and that was Hubert Humphrey.
Quite cockily
I decided
and declared to anyone who would listen
(not really that many people:) )
that I would never vote for him . . .
he was so obviously a bad man . . .
who could believe that someone with ‘those beady little snake eyes’
would ever have our country’s best interests at heart?
I don’t know why I targeted him so cruelly.
Perhaps it was because he supported the war in Vietnam.
In truth,
he changed his views later,
but I did not know this.
It was only upon Humphrey’s death
that I realized he was actually a man of greatness,
a passionate advocate for civil rights
and other liberal causes.
He was not only
not a snake,
but a great humanitarian
who respected everyone he tried to help,
whether they wore a suit and tie,
or a farmer’s work shirts and overalls.
I learned that lesson
on the day that I heard that he had died,
and have always felt a little sorry
for my callous thoughts and behavior . . .
since then
I have never overtly judged another human being . . .
the ‘snake eyes’ thing
sticks in my throat
and I am deeply and permanently humbled by this lesson.
Being old helps too . . .
I’ve softened my tendency towards judgement
because I’ve “walked a mile
in many other people’s moccasins”,
and understand that s**t happens.
It’s happened to me,
and I’m pretty sure that it has happened to every one of us
as some time in our lives.
I still judge big corporations
and things like that,
but not my sisters and brothers who share my journey. ♥
Ps. There are a few people of note
that I have trouble with,
who are cruel and brutal to others,
but that is for another Question
and another day.
Well said, Sparrow.
It was a pretty dramatic epiphany,
dear Carol Ann.
It’s stuck with me all these years. ♥
I might be wrong about everything. How I perceive others and how I’m perceived, is an ever changing and fluid situation. I have been right about people and I have been wrong about people. Of course I should try not to judge, but it’s impossible.
Seeing people as whole and three dimensional, helps me to more accurately see others fully. What I am seeing more and more in the people that I don’t agree with, is fear. Fear and trauma. Un acknowledged and un addressed trauma.
As difficult as it is to be proven wrong about someone’s character, it can go both ways.
As long as I remain open to re evaluating and correcting my beliefs about someone, I feel I will be okay. One difficulty is, holding two things at once.
People can express their beliefs, that I disagree with, and still be kind and compassionate people. That’s a hard one for me.
Like Carol Ann,
dear Charlie,
I hear you,
and I agree. ♥
I hear you, Charlie
I’ve been a close friend to a co-worker for years. In the last few months the individual has become quite distant, and punitive, not including me in critical information to do our job, let only invite to join in the “pick up lunch orders,” so I ask and give my order and quickly pay. There’s not even a mutual ‘morning but I persist with a hello and have a good evening at shifts end. I think there may be a health challenge that the person thinks I know about. I do not. Last week in the midst of everything else it dawned on me-the additional sadness for me at work, that I do not show, is that I miss the rapport we used to have. I encircle the person daily w/prayer for their well being, health, etc. (Direct communication isn’t working). There may be others I have errors in my perceptions about them. This one is the most pressing. Have a gentle Monday all-Re-entry to your tasks. ☮️
We never know,
dear Carla,
what kind of battle
another person is fighting . . . ♥
(paraphrased from a quote
that’s bee attributed to everyone
from Ian MacLaren to Socrates and Plato.)
The duality of the question–right or wrong–ruffles my feathers and reminds me of something I have been pondering about and that is the difference between “eternity” and “eternal.” I think we humans are more comfortable with the term “eternity” because it fits into our construct of time. Joseph Campbell said in the “Power of Myth” series that “eternity is NOW.” But “What is “eternal?” What always was, is, and always will be? From my life experience and spiritual journey, the only answer I can come up with is unconditional Love. So I try to trust enough to believe that the origin of creation was Love.
I can’t make it through a single day without observing that Life lives on Life. I can’t peel a carrot, skin an orange or eat a bean without being reminded that it was nurtured so it could come to fruition. And so I try to pray for those I consider enemies.
I remember one time, I had wasps determined to build their nest on my front porch. I sprayed them with poison every evening and in the morning, some wasps would still be there working on building a nest. After 3 days of spraying, I lost my temper. I screamed at those wasps. I said, I understand that you need a home but it can’t be on my front porch where friends and family enter my HOME. Please, I do not want to kill anymore of you. You are welcome to build a nest anywhere on the house but not at my front door.”
The wasps left. I think they sensed that I was not judging them. They were welcome just not on my front porch where humans would be in danger when they protected their nest. I think I was expressing a “Both And” mentality. We humans have developed an “us and them” mentality.
I don’t know that I can answer a question about WHO I might be wrong about. I can remind my self that eternally I believe others came from love just as I came from love but we’ve all been battered and bruised by circumstances and past those bruises on from generation to generation. So as Desmond Tutu says, “Let us be quicker to praise than to find fault. Let us be quicker to thank others than to complain.”
Sometimes it is very hard but I remind myself to “BE KIND.”
I think
you might be a wasp whisperer,
dear Carol Ann. 🙂
Thank you, Carol Ann.
Good Question. I am not too sure how to respond.
The older I get the more I realize how little I know about so many things, the world, people etc. I try not to judge, I try to have an open mind & stay in my own lane. However there are times I find myself judging & struggling to be accepting of other’s behaviors. So many of us suffer in silence & many have no idea what the person next to them is struggling with. We are all walking each other home. I remind myself of this often.
I/We need to be more compassionate & less judgmental to our fellow travelers. Kindness goes a long way. Love is the Way.
Happy February All….🩷🕊️
This is very timely for me. Last week a series of interactions with a particular individual at work left me frustrated, and protective on behalf of a member of my team whose work they seemed to dismiss pretty callously.
This other person certainly has their reasons for their statements and actions. If I say I respect that and then simply reject what they say, I’m not really demonstrating respect. I need a reset on my attitude toward them.
It’s Monday–time for a fresh start.
I really resonate with TOMG’s whole answer. But then…I could be wrong 🙂
Thank you Katrina for the chuckle!
This is a great question to ponder.
Honestly, I might be wrong about everyone, including myself. People are complex. I can’t presume to understand their motivations, their fears, their dreams. I can ask and they can tell me about themselves, but what I hear is filtered through my own interpretation, my judgemental mind. That same judgemental mind, I recognize to be my own harshest critic.
I really try to live gently and not judge people, lovingly accept them as they are.
Part of my daily contemplation is to consider who am I “othering”, that is to say who am I’m separating myself from, considering them to be evil, my adversaries, my competition, or even just undesirable company. I try to imagine where they’re coming from, why they say what they say and do what they do, and look for good in everyone and be grateful for that.
I’m not good at it, but sometimes I surprise myself.
Tom, it’s not easy. This points back to my response to Drea’s comment on my post and my post itself yesterday about individualism on how it’s both interesting and complicated.
I could be wrong about a lot of people. It’s easy to pigeonhole and make assumptions about someone, it’s what our brains do to make sense of social cues. I prefer to not hold onto those assumptions tightly, and be patient as things unfold.
Simple,
dear Drea,
but not always easy. ♥
Drea, I’m all familiar with the saying of how assume makes an ass out of u and me.
My first thought was, I am pretty open to people and accepting. I dug a bit deeper and there is a nagging thought I have about a certain group in my life. I need to give a listening ear to them.
Thank you, YRAM
This is an interesting question. My first thought was, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”. And people “tell” us that in many ways, as we do them. My next thought was, it doesn’t matter. What matters to me is how I treat them, show them respect, and either stay or move on. I don’t believe that everyone is meant to love us, nor us them. I don’t believe that is right or wrong, it just is. But respecting someone as they show up is important, and challenging, and worth the effort. ♥️
Respect
deserves a lot more credit than we give it,
dear Mary,
and it can surprisingly
morph into love when you least expect it. ♥
Beautifully said.
Thank you, Carol Ann.
I love this question. It is a good opportunity for me to reflect on those I might have misjudged. I think that seeing someone as right or wrong is not just a matter of seeing in black and white, but also a matter of my own perception and open-mindedness. Therefore, I believe I may be wrong about many people in my life, from my family to strangers.
My Ngoc, especially with family. We share the same complex views. My experience with Paw Mu can serve as a good template since she did treat me like family at the time too which is quite common in Traditional collective Asian settings. Families stretch out creating a family of families environment. Ok, all that extra stuff aside. The other half of the equation is that I was too corrupted to receive her messages correctly. We can apply this concerning our families too.
Purity is one thing I love about our traditional Asian side. It’s simple with more defined standards. People generally just want whatever’s best for us.
If this question came up a year or 2 or possibly 6 months ago, I’d say Paw Mu. But now that I’m more at ease with what she taught me, I feel that my blind spots are treated. Getting past my strong resentment, rebellion, and regret towards her aka the 3Rs, helps me be more at peace with others around me no matter how difficult they may be. Strong enthusiastic energy coming towards me every now and then makes it easier to accept.
Extra time and space helps strategists like me. I need a good amount of that to process whatever’s going on having mentioned yesterday for my 6 ennielgram with a 5 wing as my secondary tritone on my response to Yram from Michele’s posts. Heart people will probably disagree with me on needing to learn techniques in order to respect differences. Fair enough. Techniques and personal agendas go together, and with love, anything is possible. But however, where I’m getting at as a head person is that not all things can mix. Some things are just downright impossible to combine. Putting oil and water together is the last thing we want which is a major reason on why I’m a firm believer in boundaries.
Boundaries and intimacy don’t play nicely together. Not every good thing can mix. Too much of a good thing turns bad. I’m all familiar with the old saying of not barking up the wrong tree. It’s like me talking about business ventures at a table of my mom’s friends when they’re sharing personal experiences of their lives. I can take my business venture conversations to my circle of buddies who share that interest with me or at a meeting setting even on a casual level where the main topic is business. This all points back to my exchange with Antoinette on how we share the common value of nature when I mentioned how right intention and action are equally important.
Relevancy is the first thing I think of when I think of right intention and action. As I said yesterday, it’s a shared challenge for the ADHD and autism. The former goes on wild tangents while the ladder brings personal interests into almost every conversation.
It’s lovely to see that you enjoy your life with no burden, no need to think a lot about if you might misunderstand somebody. 🌸
My Ngoc, god is good, and correction happens on its terms. It’s why I’m able to have fun going around creating my own umpire. As long as everything runs through god’s energy, it comes from a good root. No need for worries.
This is an interesting question. I might be wrong about all kinds of people. I do my best not to judge others, but I do have an ego like everyone else and can find little stories in my mind. I’d like to be wrong about this cute little old lady who has come to a few of my deep stretch classes. The first time I met her, I didn’t think she liked the class. It was the look on her face. But she came back, so it couldn’t have been that bad, although she still had a sullen look on her face most of the time. I do know people carry their own “stuff,” so I do my best not to take things like that personal. I’d also like to be wrong about my mother-in-law who has caused so much pain and trauma to my husband. Unfortunately, she has shown herself to be the way she is, so at this point it’s just acceptance.
In the meanwhile, I will just keep my faith in humanity and hope that I’m not wrong about that 🙂
That is a good thing to hold onto,
dear SunnyPatti . . . ♥
Sunnypatti, it’s very easy to overread into certain details and make assumptions off of others based upon that. For example, I can say that every woman who has a natural sweet voice and long hair is a kindhearted woman. Newsflash. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place based on some of my past answers and even comments on other people’s posts before too.
I am having trouble with this one… it’s Groundhog Day – wonder if he is wrong about the prediction, lol.
Thank you for that laugh Michele!
If I was in Florida, I, too, would hope he is wrong! Be safe…stay warm!
it has literally been freezing down here with temps at night 26, 27, 28, 31, terrible.