Blowing
Dust
Hi 74 °F
Gusty and dusty. Wonderful. Must get out the neti pot, again. Moby very excitable.
Thinking about the people I've met, and been subject to, who claimed to be experts at judging people, who were so wrong about me. My eldest brother, career Air Force, was the first and most persuasive. Being young, I didn't trust my own assessment of myself, but only suspected his was even more wrong. But it's human to bow to such confidence, whatever underlying revolution in my heart. He saw me as a manager of people, which I have found I have absolutely no talent for. He tried to push me away from religion when he was into all the New Age ideas, and back into it when he returned to be a staunch Catholic. What he never saw of me was my innate stubbornness that would remain standing once the decorations of my youth fell away. He never saw that I knew my own mind, and resented his meddling to the point of expelling him from my life. Probably he doesn't care, except insofar as it upsets his ideal of family.
I watch people, and although I know who I will trust at my back, that doesn't mean I know who they are, or even if I will like them. Some people I would trust with my life, I would not want to talk with over lunch, given a choice. Likewise I have friends who I could spend days chatting with, that I would not loan $20 to. Give them, sure, loan with any expectation of seeing again - not a chance. The ones I would count on to show up and help us move, the ones I would tell my most vulnerable truth to, I spotted as such pretty quickly. Charm and reliability come together, but they are very discrete traits, and do not necessarily link.
I always knew I wanted D at my back, and I liked him immensely as well. Likewise Moira, who proved herself over and over in our work together, and in our lives since. I don't pretend I can read either of their minds, only that they are both strong, courageous, and whole.
10 comments:
good to have someone you can trust at your back
It seems like a kind of controlling, that claiming to know and understand someone better than they do, parents do it of course. Mind you, some people I know have a way of being able to give me the nudge, or whatever else I need without presuming.
I never heard of neti pots still I started blogging. Bloggers seem quite into them, probably a nonsense correlation...
I like that tiny little picture.
Rosie,
Indeed, and I'm very grateful.
Lucy,
I tried the neti pot thing at the suggestion of a blogger. It's really helped. I even asked an ENT doc about them, and he seemed to think they were at best helpful, and at worst harmless.
The little picture is from NOAA, on their forecast page.
(o)
Are there people, I wonder, who don't think that they're especially good judges of people?
It's not something you hear people say. "I'm a terrible judge of people, but..."
Certainly I know the exasperation of being judged to be something wholly other than what I am, though.
Dale's point is interesting. Actually, though I wouldn't probably say 'I'm a rubbish judge of character' in so many words, people are so closed and perplexing to me that I really don't think I'm very good at judging them at all.
Also, I know I have changed so much over the course of my life in terms, if not inwardly over everything, in terms of what I do about it, and even from day to day, that I can't even tell with myself let alone other people, what kind of person I am and how I'll behave...
So I happily admit her and now, I'm a fairly crap judge of character, even or especially, my own!
I've known enough computer/engineering guys who will say clearly that they just can't read people, can't pick up on the social cues. So, I don't think admitting as much is unusual.
(O)
I like the clear thinking here - that to trust someone doesn't automatically mean you like them and vice versa, and so on.
I think sometimes I feel safer to suggest that I'm not a good judge of character. I'm not saying that it's necessarily the case, but what it means is that I can often benefit from questioning certain (and reasonable) assumptions that I've made about people.
Often I cam empathize really well with someone to the point where, of course, I don't really know them, but I kind of feel like I do.
Other times... I'll be having a conversation where normally to express my comprehension at what someone is saying to me, I will provide a short phrase which basically reiterates their main concept in my own way, and I fall flat on my face being completely incorrect. I do not tie this to the other person's inability to express themselves properly, but rather, my inability to empathize properly with that person.
As for judging people (different from empathizing), I do my best to not judge people. For the most part I succeed. Where I fail most often is in watching other parents interact with their own children in a parenting way with which I disagree.
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