This quote has been doing the rounds on the internet & social media, with many people endorsing it, liking it & sharing, retweeting it countless times. I did so too, as it rang an instant bell in my head and made me exclaim "how true!".
Just a few days ago before I came across this quote, I went through an unpleasant situation at home when my husband and daughter said they were afraid to say anything to me as I tended to react with anger and hostility. I was distressed, and as I took time to understand this "feedback" from them I recognized that I was similarly evaluating others and felt I was correct in doing so.
So many times we make a quick evaluation of people we meet : He is very hyper, she is too sensitive, he is too impulsive etc.
We think we "know" people. But do we?
For that matter, do we know ourselves at all? Actually the only person we have lived with all our lives is ourself. Yet, do we really know ourselves truly? I might think "I am a calm person" but that is true only till I lose my cool when provoked.
We seemed to have an image of ourselves, and of others and we are constantly reacting to these images. This is brought out so well in an interesting illustration by Shri S.N Goenka in the 10day Vipassana course in his Day 9 discourse
We meet a person and like him very much. It's because in our perception (which is an evaluation of what we experience) he is very good, wonderful , helpful and makes us happy. We meet him after a gap of few years and that image of his good persona comes to mind. If he acts different from our image of him, we become so unhappy , unable to comprehend what went wrong in our impression of him.
Similarly we keep forming images of everyone around us including our own selves and keep reacting to these images based on our evaluations. If we just pause and think that it's only our perception that helped build that image, we would come closer to the reality that each of us change and grow every minute. The so called "obnoxious" person was so only because of our perception of him, he may have a good side to him, and just because we did not see that good side does not mean it does not exist.
We all have different facets to ourselves, some visible and some hidden and it would help us a lot if we did not make harsh assumptions and evaluations of others, as these are based only on our limited experience of the individuals we come across. The truth of what the person really is, would be much more than what we are aware of.
To the person who is at the receiving end of the evaluation, like me at the start of this blog, it would be good to pause and get in touch with our inner self and not get distressed but look at the evaluation more objectively. Develop our equanimity and continue our practice daily.
