Context and Perceptions….
The mind is a wildly powerful thing—and I’m talking in ways we don’t even realize or choose not to think about because it can be absolutely terrifying to know what the mind can do.
Scarier is what another person can do to someone else’s mind. The mind is so complex I don’t think we have the tiniest clue what it really is or can do.
Let’s look at context versus perception for just a second as an example.
When I repeat back unkind things people have said to me, in a logical tone, without inflection, they are blatantly unhealthy and wrong. But when they are coming from some people's mouths they can have intonations, inflections, body language, and physical touch that muddies the logic with emotion.
Context.
How many times have you repeated something back to someone only to have them say, “that’s not what I meant, you’re taking it out of context”? But can a hurtful deed or word really be categorized this way, or is it—in certain situations—merely a disguise for abusive speech and actions? Whether the speaker intended to hurt or not, if hurt was inflicted and the speaker’s response to the hurt is, "you’re just too sensitive or you took it wrong"—chances are you really need to evaluate the person you are spending your energy with.
I recently tried to explain to someone that each of us have a perception of how things are and each of our perceptions is effected by our own individual bias’s. Therefore while I do not expect them to understand why I have made the decisions that I have made, I do ask that they respect them. My words were then twisted by one of the involved to use this theory as a means to prove why her perception was more right than my own. She even went so far as to “shrink” my perception with her own limited understanding of the situation. While she neither has the knowledge of me or my life experiences, nor the college degree that would qualify her for such observations, in her mind she is right, why? Because…
Perception is reality.
With all that convolution, how then, does one fight against such ignorance?
I can’t. Our own individual life experiences are the only things that can humble us enough to realize that we cannot become another person’s mind and therefore have no right to determine what said person should do in any given situation.
The only answer then is this—remove myself from the situation and its toxicity and allow Karma to do her thing. Just kidding. It’s all ridiculous. It’s as easy to get someone to see your point of view as it is to take out your eyeball and give it to them expecting that will somehow make them see as you do.
It’s frustrating because I am expected to feel bad for doing something I have not—because they are only perceiving one side and receiving one context. Which in all honesty means if I let them make me feel bad for their perceptions, and/or continue to try and get them to see my perspective, I’m the idiot.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. Eleanor Roosevelts
I finally know who I am, and how to set boundaries, and I will, for the first time in my life, take care of myself despite the aspersions made by people who think they know anything about me when in fact, they know very, very little.