The illusion

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There is a woman who lives in my neighborhood who brings her son round every year to sell me things to support the organization he is involved with.  I remember so clearly how agonizing it was for me to sell girl scout cookies door-to-door.  So every year I buy something from him as he nervously stands on my front porch. 

Well, when Ellie started school I noticed this woman on the school grounds.  So, when I would see her, I would smile and wave.  She however, would not even acknowledge my existence.  At first I thought, well maybe she didn't remember me.  But after a

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couple of times I started to get a little annoyed, I mean who did she think she was?  I knew that the next time her son was selling something she would be at my door as nice as could be.  But if she saw me on the street, she wouldn't even say "hi".   Rude.  That's what I call that.  The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became, knowing that I would not be able to refuse her son when he showed up on my doorstep. 

One day as we were walking home from school I saw her walking towards us.  I didn't realize it was her at first, because my first thought was how the person walking towards us seemed to have some difficulty seeing.  Then it suddenly hit me that she couldn't see very well and THAT was why she wasn't acknowledging me.  She wasn't trying to be rude, she just could not see who I was.  Boy, color me stupid. 

[caption id="attachment_339" align="alignright" width="270" caption="As if you needed even more evidence"][/caption]

The whole scenario reminded me of a story told in a book by Ronald Regan's daughter.  (This is in no way an endorsement for Ronald Regan and his politics which I know very little about.  I am not as astute as my sister-in-law, Sara, in matters of politics.  When Ronald Regan was president, I was in high school and college and had much more important things to focus on.  Like how high my bangs could stand up.  Or which socks best matched my shirt.)  In the book, Patty Davis talked about how one day she and her father were in a grocery store and the clerk was rather short with them.  As they were leaving, Patty said something about how rude the clerk had been.  Her father stopped her and told her that they really didn't know anything about the clerk's life so it was not their place to judge how she was acting because they did not have all the information to do so. 

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There was a morning within the last year when we were out to breakfast and Ellie was consuming a bag of potato chips.  A passerby sarcestically commented how Ellie was really having a nutritious breakfast.  At the time, Thom told this person that it actually was good for Ellie.  How could chips possibly be good for you?  If your sodium is low, as Ellie's was, a bag of chips is not the worst thing to be eating.  Not everything as a simple as it seems.

Once Ellie was having a seizure and we were racing through Madison trying to get her to the hospital.   We were driving crazy because we had been told that if Ellie went into a seizure and wasn't coming out of it, she could have brain damage or get to the point where she could not come out of it.  As we were driving through red lights and in the bus lanes, I thought of how the other drivers had no idea that we were having a medical emergency, that we were not just being idiot drivers.  I thought of all the times I had been offended by someone else's driving and vowed to not be again because how could I possibly know what was going on in their car?

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We were in a restaurant a few years ago with our great friend, Jenny, and her family.  Ellie was not feeling well, I don't recall if she was undergoing chemo or getting ready for surgery or she'd just had surgery.  Whatever was happening, she was struggling through something and just not feeling well.  When we went to this restaurant together, Ellie suddenly and loudly started losing it--crying, yelling, screaming, totally and completely inconsolable.  We knew that Ellie was not really upset about the fries or whatever she claimed to be upset about at that moment.  We knew that there was a lot more that she was upset about at that moment.  At one point, Jenny looked at me, bewildered and said, "Nobody here knows what is really happening with Ellie."  She meant that all the other patrons in the restaurant were making up stories of why Ellie was inconsolable.  Perhaps Thom & I were bad parents who could not control their child.  Perhaps Ellie was a bad seed.  Perhaps the other patrons just wanted us to vacate the premises.  But what I took from Jenny's statement was that really none of us knows what is really really going on with anyone else, even those closest to us. 

In social psychology there is a theory that says that when we react to something we attribute our own reaction to environmental factors.  We say, "Oh, it was Monday, that's why I was so grumpy."  But if someone else has the same reaction, we often assign a characteristic or personality trait tto that person.  "Man is he a grumpy person!"  Typically we will give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but we won't give the same benefit to others. 

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 My challenge to you on this election day is to give those around you the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe even give yourself a break.  If someone does something that you don't like, what if you just let it be and decided that you would not sit in judgement.  I'm not talking about being fake nice or stuffing your anger (I am trained in psychology afterall).  I am talking about deciding that maybe just maybe you don't know the whole story.  What if the person who seems like such a jerk is really doing the very best he/she can?  I envisioned what an amazing day it would be if we all just gave eachother a break.  Plus you have the extra bonus of not feeling like a total idiot (like I did) when you realize that the other person actually can't see you.  Imagine how good it would feel for just one day.  (Maybe you could even right a "comment" to share your experience...)