The other day a guy was working here on the house, and I wound up telling a story I'd forgotten all about. Seems like a good time to share it here, too.
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| Remember this? Some people saw blue/black, some saw white/tan. Same dress. |
The last few years of high school, after the bus picked up a bunch of us near my house, it traveled a couple of miles before the final stop for one lone girl. By the time we got there, everyone had stretched out across their seats, taking up the whole thing, and when she boarded, they wouldn't make eye contact, forcing her to ask them to let her sit.
After watching this a few times, I started picking up my stuff before we got to her house, and making her welcome to sit with me. I would have hated to start every day facing a busload of people who made me ask for a place to sit and felt uncomfortable for her. We sat together for at least a year.
Probably 10 years later, I ran into her at a party where she had been... shall we say... a bit longer than she should have been. When she saw me, she loudly and proudly proclaimed to the whole party that nobody would sit with me on the bus, but she felt sorry for me, so she'd sit with me.
You know what they say... "Don't do things for people for their gratitude." GOT IT!
So... yes, my feelings were hurt, but the real point of this story is that neither one of us could imagine what the other one was thinking OR experiencing. I still believe that if she'd given it a moment of thought, she'd have figured it out, but as is human nature, she felt that she had done a good deed, as did I.
... and that's how it works. We will each always see our own side of things more clearly. None of us like to give ground and admit that the other person has a point (even if we don't agree with it).
Just something to think about.
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