So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren’t kiddin?
She’s been singing it all along
But you were hearing a different song.
–White Stripes/Denial Twist
Sometimes people are trying to tell you something, but you hear something very different from what they really mean.
This happens to me all the time.
More than it probably should.
In the past it was largely because I would read meaning into the simplest things because I would assume that people’s intentions were bad. Not people, lovers. Men. And that isn’t necessarily the case.
By “in the past” I mean last week. Or, uh, yesterday. This morning. OK, I am really, really trying to assume good intent. It’s hard. Trying. Really.
And why was “you must want to hurt me” set as my baseline? Most people don’t want to hurt other people in general, and certainly not me in particular. In my whole life only a couple of people have ever hurt me on purpose.
I’m not talking about people accidentally hurting me, or hurting me because they don’t want me the same way I want them. You can’t get through life without a certain amount of hurt. People don’t always have wishes, desires that mesh completely. Sometimes they want different things. I’m talking about people setting out to do damage on purpose.
There haven’t been very many times when someone has acted that maliciously.
But my default was already set to suspicious.
Maybe there were just enough times when I was hurt accidentally that I had a hair trigger for mistrust.
For most of my life, I didn’t even try to curb it. I let it rule everything. To my detriment, as I finally learned. There is only so much mistrust that you can feel without it poisoning everything.
So now? I’m trying not to do that. At work, wherever. Assume that people are not out to get me. At work the challenge is that other people’s competence/work ethic/inability to do their own job can impact my own job and my standards. Still, though, most of the time they aren’t doing it because they want to screw me over. They just suck at what they do. Sometimes they can be helped, sometimes they can’t, but if I approach it with a mindset that it isn’t about ME it can help. It also helps that they can’t really hurt me all that badly because I’m not that emotionally invested into work. The damage is limited.
Outside of work? Well, it’s easier to assume good intent with friends, family, loved ones. After all, you love them. They love you. Of course, the possible downside is proportional. Those are the people who can inflict the most damage.
There’s a certain amount of vulnerability that goes with trust. I don’t know about how a person goes about being that open all the time. I guess it depends on what the upside is.
Supposedly, you get a richer life.
I guess I will find out if I keep trying.