Look Beyond What You Want To See

When we deal with people who annoy us, we seem to try very hard to find all of the things that annoy us about that person to justify our annoyance. In doing so, we fail to see beyond what we want to see.

For some reason, our brains tend to compartmentalize things and people into neat little categories, leaving us to file people in places they may not necessarily belong all of the time, ESPECIALLY when the people annoy us.

For example, if a person displays egregious behavior on a consistent basis, or what we believe is a consistent basis, we often fail to see the good that lives within them. We don't look beyond the egregious and see the good. I'm just as guilty as anyone of this error.

We see a person repeating a story over and over as annoying, where the person telling the story may just be wanting to make conversation and try to get to know other people. We see people getting emotional about trivial situations, but fail to see how the person is simply trying to be the best they can be, but failing miserably because their self consciousness and frayed nerves have taken over any sense of seeing the humor in anything. We see people acting horribly toward one another, believing there's absolutely no good in them, but we fail to see how alone and isolated they feel. We see people failing to say thank you, but we fail to see how for some people, overwhelmed by the generosity of others, don't know how to say thank you that would be good enough to fully express their gratitude. We see people who are happy and cheerful as insincere, but we fail to believe they may actually be sincere. We also believe those people are incapable of feeling isolated and alone. We believe those who are famous and successful are incapable of failure, raising them to idol status, but we fail to believe when they fall when they say they're only human. We see people who make jokes too often as not taking themselves seriously, but fail to see the humor.

I could go on and on and on. My point is, however, is that we (yes, me too) have to see beyond what we want to see. It may just change what we actually believe.