How many times have we wondered, complained or troubled ourselves in our minds -oftentimes out loud as well- when it is revealed that not everyone thinks the same way as we do. Sometimes in a constructive way that provides us with knowledge and wisdom, and other times in a painful way that feels like betrayal. For better or worse, most of the time in such cases, the feeling is bitter and it leaves behind a scar like no other. “I would never do that”, “how could he/she think that”, “yes but if this isn’t obvious to you that..”. All these thoughts pop up in our minds more and more frequently.
Growing up as we discover the world and the people that live in it, we face this internal division more and more. Whether we admit it or not, each one of us trusts their temperament and mindset. It is natural to think that our way of thinking is also common sense. Eventually though, things don’t always turn out to be this way. As hard as it might be for someone to wrap their head around it, the confusion caused by the comparison between how we would act and how others do, upsets us.
Day by day, one interaction after another it is proven that -at least based on Elisavet’s experience- our way of thinking and how we would want others to think are inseparably linked with our expectations, and of course what comes with them. Think of it as something you have seen before in your everyday life. Between two friends, two people in a romantic relationship, inside a family, we always create an internal “expectation” that the person in front of us needs to live up to; behave the way we would want them to or the way we would behave toward them if we were in a similar situation. In everyone’s little world, this expectation has an impact of a different scale. Some people are affected less than others. And so, this atypical agreement that we have made, is canceled every time we are up against reality. Not everyone is you. What might seem obvious and reasonable to you -or even yet right and ethical- does not mean in any case that the same is true for everyone else. The truth is ugly, isn’t it?
As I put my thoughts on this paper, I face the following question; has it ever occurred to you that maybe we shouldn’t think this way? Maybe it is unfair? Maybe it is unfair to expect others to act, same as we would? Perhaps, if this actually happened, all the similarities would scare us. Maybe the behavioral triteness wouldn’t have had the results that we expect. We would never know, and therefore never get hurt.
It sounds enticing, but in reality the price we pay, when we realize that not everyone is how we expected them to be, is what it is all about. You figure out what you don’t want to do, when you encounter such behavior, you become a better person, you get to know yourself on a whole different level and discover new sides to who you are, having the ultimate goal of enjoying that not everyone is you!
