What Other People Think

So often I find myself surprised at how as human beings we obsess about how much other people think about us. We think that other people are always plotting against us or doing something drastic in their own lives that affects us only for the purpose of affecting us in a negative way. I can't tell you how many times people have told me that someone did something just to be mean or to make them feel self-conscious or to exclude them or.... whatever. Whatever it is, these people are insistent, completely sure that these people acted with the sole purpose of causing them pain or harm.

It makes me wonder how many people think I'm out to get them when I'm just living my life with really no thought about them. It's amazing how much I don't think about other people in terms of doing something that will affect them unless it's someone I love or am good friends with and I want to enact some sort of positive change.

I suppose it's hard not to take anything personally -- it's your life, after all. It's what you have. It's the vision you see of the world. And when other people come into your world or change it in unexpected or negative ways, it feels like surely they must have done it purposefully or calculatingly.

I'm always shocked to discover that I have said or done things that could have offended others or affected them and I had no idea at the time. I was just...talking about something and I made a comment that had nothing to do with what the person interpreted. But looking back, I completely stuck my foot and my ankle and half my leg in my mouth.

I wish I could post the particulars of some of these stories but surely the people who are the subjects of these stories would read them and then they would be convinced that I was out to sabotage them through my blog and then it's just an endless cycle....