I want to look more closely at our words and our tendency to be critical of things we can’t imagine. ( This is a revised review of a T4D from 2008 that I felt the need to revisit)
We were having a family discussion about why some kids and adults seem to find it necessary to tease, berate, call names or bully others. I was impressed with the reasons my kids came up with which follows.
- They are insecure
- They don’t feel good about themselves and don’t want anyone else too feel good either
- They feel threatened in some way by the person they are attacking (lot’s of possibilities with this one – Jealousy & Envy
probably the leading causes) - They don’t like themselves
- They don’t really understand who they are
After a good discussion about how what we say to others and how we treat them is much more a reflection of us than anyone else I felt a renewed confidence in my children’s ability to respond to people who are critical of them…or just critical in general.
It’s been my experience that people who have the strongest sense of who they are spend the least amount of time talking critically of others, or worrying about what others may think.
Part 2 –
Recently someone criticized a political candidate that I admire in many ways calling him a phony. I asked the critic on what grounds did he consider him a phony. His reply, “Nobody has a family like that, they’re all a bunch of fakes.”
“Like what?” I said, probing for specifics.
The critic referencing a recent interview he had watched responded, “You know, that they all don’t all get along like that. Who has family discussions without talking over one another, acting all respectful and stuff? Families just don’t look, talk, or act that way…they were a bunch of fakes.”
I knew immediately the video clip he was referring too… it was one of main reasons I identified with the candidate. What my friend was calling phony, was to me, a living reality. What he couldn’t fathom as being real, is how I would like to think, my own family culture operates “most” of the time. But since what my friend saw was so far from any reality of his own life experiences, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that it could be genuine. In his mind families really could not act and communicate in that manner. In his mind the only explanation for it was it must have been a phony. He saw the world not as it was but as he was. Or more accurately he saw the world differently than I saw it. But my concern wasn’t so much that we each saw it differently – it was in considering what is lost to us and our potential when we close in our minds because we are convinced that we are right.
As I was pondering on these 2 thoughts – an idea came into my mind that I have tried to capture below.
What we can’t imagine or envision as a reality in our own lives, we often dismiss as a fanciful fantasy or phony in the lives of others. In so doing we stop ourselves from not only seeing another potentially better way, but of becoming better ourselves. ~Kirk Weisler
Mzsunflower's Say What? 