I get to meet many people in my life. I am thankful to meet these people. Living in a highly transient community, I think I get to meet a higher variety of people than maybe most people might. Moscow & Pullman are two college centric towns within 8 miles of one another and we receive students from all over the world just for the state schools, not to mention the other schools present in the community.
l have to admit a downfall of mine is, I will often make assumptions about the people I meet. Or worse, I’ll make assumptions about the people I do not know based on very little information, time, or interactions with them. I pretty much hate that I do this. I know it is wrong and I try hard not to continue to do this. But every time I evict this habit, it still finds a way back into my life. My only true defense is to remember how much they have lived and how little I know them.
I am meeting these people after 20, 25, 30years, or many more. I am meeting these people and getting to know them for a couple days or a week and making decisions far too large about who I think they are based on the bit of information I am gleaning from them.
If I build a case study, I can see what I am really doing to these people.
For instance, someone who is 25 years old has lived for more than 1300 weeks. So when I decide about the whole of who they are based on interactions over the course of two week. I am literally using a picture of 0.23% of their life to decide who they are.
How can I do that?
What kind of picture can I actually develop?
Granted it takes time to develop these pictures and often times someone can be off putting. But does that give me the right to take a snippet that small and make decisions about their whole persona based on this brief interaction?
What percentage of a person’s life do you spend with them before you decide who they are?
Taking my time,
–JT
