Different People

Yesterday someone asked me for directions and.. Well I "errm"ed gave them - and about 5 minutes after realised I'd said the wrong way!

I'm sorry random misdirected stranger!!

I hate giving out bad directions. I've come to believe if you're not sure it's way better plus much more courageous just to say you don't know. But I honestly didn't really parse the question and heatedly blurted something out.

Which is weird for someone who naturally sides on the side of overthinking basically everything. So why the exception?

I've a personality flaw and I know it. I get lost in things at times, get lost in my stuff and I get far enough that sometimes things don't get through. I don't know if that is unique to me, though I doubt it, but it can be unfortunate. The possibility I'm not there for people for whom I really want to be scares me because if they choose to put their faith in me I'd always wish to match that in kind.

But it's also one in a long line of thoughts about others. More and more recently I've been trying hard not to just to appreciate but to truly understand what it means to be a world full of different people. Nothing is uniform - our perception of situations, our values. And I think maybe true tolerance comes from a place of not just being accepting there is Other but in the way in which we account for it.

We can't control much beyond ourselves. And even then, I was watching an interview with Jon Stewart yesterday and he put it perfectly: we can only really seek to have clarity of our intention. We can't decide how anything will be perceived and interpreted. The consideration in itself seems oftentimes malleable, how much do we bend and how much do we stand strong.

What's undeniable is we congregate with those, long term, with whom we have commonality. That's why friends are friends and many many others are not. So what's left is if there is an extent to our openness and it's a thing in keen to explore.

Because I wonder about the lessons around it that I am yet to be taught.