Perception Doesn't Always = Reality

        We all think our way and our perception is correct. It’s humbling to see and understand another’s interpretation of the same thing when it is opposite . . . and BOTH make sense.

The concept slightly makes the Golden Rule seem confusing. What if another person does NOT WANT done unto him as I want done unto me?

Here are two short stories. Just a little something to think about . . .

          There was a couple who had been married many years. The wife always made the husband a sack lunch in the mornings. She often made his sandwiches out of the end pieces of the loaf.

          After many, many years, the husband had enough.

He angrily said to his sandwich making wife, “WHY do you ALWAYS give me the worst part of the loaf of bread?! Is there some reason why I cannot have the good part?!”

In astonishment, the teary eyed wife said, “Oh . . . the end pieces have always been my favorite. I wanted you to have them . . .”

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A mother and daughter had a strained relationship for most of the daughter’s life. The daughter felt unloved and unimportant to her mother. She made attempts to be close to her mom for many years, and then surrendered and ceased making efforts herself.

The mom, “couldn’t care less, and was very uninterested,” from the daughter’s perspective.

As nature took its course, the mother aged and approached her final days. The daughter visited her with mixed emotions from all of the years of what she saw as rejection. She felt she had nothing to grieve, because they basically had no relationship. Therefore, the loss of her mother would be no different than the way life currently was and had been. Instead, she would grieve for what she did NOT have, not what she was losing.

She cried to her mom, “Why have you always shunned me? Why did you not want to spend time with me and experience life with me? What did I do wrong?”

In shock, the mother replied, “I was giving you what I did not have when I was a young mother . . . Privacy. I always had someone looking over my shoulder and was not allowed the independence to make my own decisions and choices without hearing an opinion. I was giving you the freedom I longed for my entire adult life. I tried very hard to never take that from you.”

A situation can look soooo obvious and one sided . . . but that is because we are only looking at it from one angle.

Misunderstanding and misunderstood,

Kasi