Be Careful — of How You Present People to People.

It has taken me a month and some days of repeating this sentence in my head to finally say it. Weight lifted? No, there wasn’t really any weight. Anyway…

Lately, I have been very careful of how I present people to people.

I will try hard to explain so you get it — let’s hope you do

So, I have been learning to be very careful of the image that I create of certain people in the minds of other people; I now take more time, care and consideration to choose my words wisely and appropriately, and I reprimanded myself when I say not only bad things about certain people, but also when I use the right words but with different tonation or body language that tells otherwise, or when I outrightly use the wrong words to speak of other people.

What I am saying is that it is easy to present certain people the way we see them to others. But now, I find that I would rather let people create or construct whatever image of whoever with very minimal input from me. So when I’m talking about a mutual friend or acquaintance, I try to mention people only within the shared image of them I have with whoever is concerned.

It seems like quite a lot, believe me I know — it is real work — because I have to constantly make conscious effort to dissociate the character of a person from the activities they do.

It is actually a lot of mental work now that I think about it, but I’m learning to do it regardless…

I know the character of a person (which is who they are) can and is influenced by the things they do. But many times, while the character of a person is not questionable, the activities they take part in might not be agreeable to you, and for someone raised in a society with so much judgment and ‘over-zealous piety’, I’ve found that more often than not, it is difficult for people to accept that the things one does are not always and entirely a determinant of who one is.

I hope this makes sense, maybe not so much but a little bit?

So I might be a kind, compassionate and all-around great person, but some things I do or my style/methods of socialization might be questionable to people from a certain social group or background and these activities they do not agree with, become who I am to them and they then present me in that light to whoever and whenever I come up in conversations. So, the me that people are made to know is not based on who I am but on what I do, and how whoever constructs what I do to be conceived and accepted as who I am.

Further confusion? Forgive me, I’m trying my best, so please bear with me and let’s carry on…

You see that whole constructing people for people thing, I used to do it a lot (still learning not to), and you probably do/did it — I do not know. But we are either learning, re-learning or unlearning stuff anyway so…

I really do think that we need to let people discover one another for who they are and not who they were told or made to think they are. And maybe if we were a little kinder to ourselves and treated other people with a little more compassion and less judgment, maybe then we would learn to see each other beyond the construct of what and who we think we/they should be.

Hence, now I’m learning to present people only how people know them, and let people discover others (that is if they can without unneeded critique and myopia) by themselves.

Albeit, sometimes I do feel a sense of guilt for withholding ‘information’ about the character of a person. But as I’ve grown to do that more and more, and learned that my presentation of people can heavily influence how people see the character of others, I only speak about X within the parameters of the image that Y knows.

Don’t get me wrong, I will not excuse, encourage or be quiet about bad behaviour, if there is any. But, I will also no longer take part in creating a picture of a person without regard and care for who they are — that is if who they are holds value.

After putting all these down, I am now wondering even deeper why we pay so much attention to the image of people we are given when we can simply discover it ourselves. Why do we trust the word of people about people when we could just find out about people for who they are and as they are by ourselves?

Maybe it’s because no single person knows it all and can’t see it all, so we rely on people to tell us the things we do not know and cannot see.

I do not know these nor entirely understand - I can only ponder.

We made it to the end, and whether or not we both understood this, we’ll never know. So, increased confusion then???