*As a belated 2015 New Years Resolution, I decided I would write a daily (or, almost daily, I know some days I just won’t be able to find the time) blog answering a thought provoking question from a long list of questions I found 365 Questions in a quest of self exploration.
Today’s Chosen Question :
What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
I was thinking about this earlier today, in fact, so its an ironically fitting question.
I isolate incidences and examine them one by one rather than using my personal feelings and biases to come to illogical conclusions. Its not always the easiest thing to do, especially when you are a sensitive and emotional person (as I am) but when you allow your initial defense mechanisms and/or your immediate anger toward someone to drive not only your actions, but your viewpoints and values, you allow reality to skew inside of your own mind and more often than not, you end up hurting others as well as yourself.
For example : Lets say for explanation sake that you have a friend who has an enemy. He or she has told you what went down between him/her and said person that lead to them being enemies and her story shocks you; you fully understand that this person deeply offended your friend by disrespecting them and although you don’t know this person, based on what you heard they did to your friend, you don’t think fondly on what this person did to your friend.
Fast forward to later down the road. You have a difference of opinion that lead to the end of your friendship with that person, or a falling-out.
Question : Do you now look differently upon the situation you once heard about between your friend and this stranger whose actions toward your (ex)friend based on what they did to your friend?
A lot of people, I have noticed, seem to allow their change of opinion about one person influence how they view another person. For example, they might be very sympathetic toward you and what you went through with another person, but if they are no longer fond of you, suddenly, somehow whatever that other person did to you does not seem to matter at all.
Where I differ is that I view the situations separately and one does not influence the other. If a persons hurtful words or actions upset someone, even if my view of that someone changes, it doesn’t change the fact that the other person behaved in an undesirable way. Just because I no longer like Person A, it doesn’t mean that its suddenly completely okay for Person B to be a jackass toward Person A because when you take your view of Person A out of the equation, you’re left with Person B being a jackass regardless.
I may differ from a lot of people for thinking this way, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I value my ability to separate things because I feel like my views and opinions are far more genuine this way than if I let them flow together and influence each other.
Kell Frillman - Author 