The other day, I made a mistake. I’m not often off the mark, but in this instance, I projected what I wanted to be true upon another person and blurred my perception of this individual over how this individual really is. Although someone may not seem like the type to do something, your experience with people is limited. No matter how close you live to them, you are not in their shoes, and spending a lifetime living with or observing someone doesn’t make you an expert on their personality or character.
True, evidence of character shines through in what we do, but a lot of people actively mask who they truly are. Others project onto other people what they want them to be like. Either way, we find out that person isn’t who we thought them to be, even if they remain true to who they really are. At that point, we express our disappointment when they don’t live up to our expectations, but are our expectations reasonable or based on misconceived notions?
A friend of mine recently gave up trying to date a guy she really liked. He contacted her last week to boast of how he was dating two girls at the same time who knew it and didn’t mind. This kind of wanton disregard for principles of monogamy rightly turned her off, and she turned to me for insight. I told her that she “liked what he wanted you to think he was” and that she saw “the man you wanted him to be”. When I got out of my last serious relationship, I remember her saying all the time about how I changed, whereas I remain the same person today that I always was. Ergo, she must be the one who changed or else I wasn’t what she imagined me to be.
I am who I am. I do not change to please the jury. Are others are you perceive them to be? What empirical evidence do you have that they are how you believe they are? Unless you subject them to myriad of different circumstances to cover as logically as possible the realm of possibilities, you may never know who they are. I scowl at young people who only go out to dinner or to the movies. When they get down to starting a family and establishing a home, other things far removed from those categories become the rule, and they often find themselves incompatible, much to their surprise and chagrin. This is why I advise people to date or court for at least a year, for it becomes harder for someone to maintain a charade over longer periods of time, and the longer you date the more time you spend together doing a variety of things like shopping, cooking, etc., and see how another person handles the minutiae of life.
As people around us change, their perceptions of us change. Many girls I know, because of men they knew who treated them badly, distrust my motives and actions. Although I personally never offended them, what I do reminds them of things that lead to pain and ruin in their life, and those predilections turn them away. I don’t hold them at fault. I think people do the best they can with what they have.
Which segues well into the conclusion. We do not have all the answers, all the information, or all of the options available. People are bound to disappoint you because in our limited confluence of interaction, they may not seem like the type to do certain things. Of course they are- they are human, and if there’s one way humans are consistent, it is that they make mistakes. It’s part of what qualifies you to be human. Human behavior never ceases to amaze me, but then again things are never as they seem. If they don’t have everything, how can they be perfect? If they do the best with what they have, aren’t they being as perfect as possible? I have great expectations, but I also have realistic ones too.
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