Learning to Take the Long View

Learning to Take the Long View

I once asked my dad, in that way that young adults have of trying to revisit their childhoods and make sense of them, why people didn't seem to care as much about my struggles as I thought they should.

His response was something along the lines of "You have to look at it objectively and see how many times they did care, not the times they didn't. You have to take the gestalt."

I still stubbornly persisted in feeling like no one understood or cared enough about my struggles, even with mounting evidence to the contrary, more often than I would like.

In fact, I accused a lot of people of this. I had trouble reading the nonverbal messages people sent, of caring, concern and compassion. In my mind, it didn't count unless it looked a certain way. I had this image in my head of how caring and compassion would look like. What words would be used, how it would be expressed. Obviously, I was often dissapointed. Sometimes we talk a lot about wanting people to accept us for who we are, but then we don't let other people be themselves. This is a hard lesson to learn.

Then, tonight, I found out a friend who shares a lot of my social challenges had said to our mutual friend that she didn't want to be with me, because I was not compassionate enough to her when she slipped on the ice. Once I got through raging about how unfair and wrong that was, and how much I tried to understand and show compassion for her, I almost laughed. I laughed because I recognized myself in those words. This is a teaching opportunity for me. How can I be mad at someone else for having the same exact problem as I do? I can still be annoyed, but I can't honestly be mad. She taught me, without knowing it, how it feels to be on the receiving end of my accusations. She made me see how nobody can be even close to perfect all the time, and how someone could be feeling perfectly compassionate in their mind but just not be able to show it for a dozen different reasons at the time. I was probably too focused on not slipping on the ice myself to give much of a response! But she didn't know that.

I try to think of what response I could possibly have to her that would help her understand. I try to think of what would help me. People have tried to explain to me the concept of people having other things on their mind and not being able to respond all the time - "Maybe they're thinking about their grocery list, it's not anything to do with you" and that helped a little, but I still didn't quite get it. I think the only thing that could make me get it was to feel how it felt to be on the receiving end of that bias.  "You weren't compassionate to me when I slipped on the ice." My own words coming back to me. Fascinating. We get so attached to our old hurts. Sometimes, when we confront people years later, if they give us what we want... All we can think of is "But why didn't you give it to me when  I really needed it?" and the hole still remains unfilled. We feel unloved, perhaps. But it seems this results from putting people on a pedestal, thinking they can do no wrong. People make mistakes, and a lot of them. But at least they care enough to try to make them. In a recent Parenthood episode, the grandmother tells her adult daughter that marriage is all about forgiveness. That could be applied to all relationships. Perhaps my dad was right, you have to take the objective data and figure out, does this person care? Even if they mess up sometimes and don't show it in the ways I think they should, do they care? This can be hard to remember when you're caught up in emotions revolving around not getting what you want in the moment, but, I am now realizing, doesn't make it any less important.