Sometimes My Biggest Failure is Forgetting to Remember That Most People Don't Think Like Me

I once dated this boy. Long long ago around 1996. He was nice, sweet in fact. Fairly handsome even with some definite thinning at his hairline. He was cute and kind and actually quite good to me.

Imagine my dismay about three weeks into our relationship when I learned he was a racist.

It just snuck up on me. Comfort levels dropped and things were said. Little things at first. Generalizations. Things I always called him on.

But it got worse. So I told him point blank to cut it out.

And he couldn't. He barely even tried.

So I dumped him.

And he was perplexed, bewildered. He couldn't understand it. He was good to me. Loving, giving, respectful. Why should it matter how he felt about racial differences? Weren't we happy?

Well, yes. Yes I was happy until he started shooting his mouth off about people who weren't white.

I couldn't abide by it. And he wouldn't change so I ended it.
Just like that.

True story.

One of the last things he told me was that I was living in a dream world. That most people felt the way he did and that I was rejecting him, rejecting LOVE because I lived in a naive bubble.

I was the one not living in reality.

That may be the case. And he was probably right although I hope he wasn't. But regardless, my "dream world" as he called it was a nice place to live and love or not, there were no racists allowed.

And that was that.

But I remember being surprised and dismayed at what had happened. And while most of my friends applauded my decision I realized that maybe he was right about one thing.

I did live in a bubble and I somehow had managed to surround myself with people who were to some degree just like me.

And in some ways I've spent the rest of my life trying to see other people's sides in things. I tried to open my mind. I attempt on many occasions to put myself in other people's shoes. I try to use empathy and compassion.

But I have begun to realize that ven as I try to change, I am creating even more of a bubble. Because most people live in a black and white world and they get very miffed when they encounter people who disagree with them. It is or it isn't. It's good or there's bad. When all I usually see is shades of grey.

Are there people in this world who piss me off? Oh yes. Of course there are. I am easily miffed. I am quick to upset. But I never stay mad for that long usually.

We came to California from Chicago, the land of tooting horns. No really, people will honk their horns at anything. Honking is acceptable and normal in Chicago. So one day i was driving through Palo Alto and was at a red light waiting for the truck ahead of me to notice that the light had changed to green. i naturally gave a little tap on my horn. No biggie to me. Well the driver of the truck got PISSED OFF she jumped out her truck and started screaming at me. Waving her arms and just pitching a fit. She lost it.
I started laughing, it didn't help things much. But she was just hysterical and really, what else could I do?
Then she jumped back in her truck and roared off.

She wasn't from Chicago and she didn't think like me. And I had obviously ruined her day.

SO that's hard for me. It's challenging to know that others just don't think like me. I could talk myself blue in the face and they just will never ever see my point of view. I can try to see theirs but I don't know, sometimes that is just futile.

My friend once told me to think of everyone I know as their own movie director. Yeah, we're all just walking around with our own cameras getting our own shots. And we're all the stars in our own lives. Everyone else is a character actor or a co-star or an extra but we are the stars of our own movies. And that's it. That guy in the drive-thru? He's making his own movie. Your best friend? Making her own movie. Your kid? Yep. Making their own movie. And the thing is, you don't get to decide what part you play in everybody else's movie. Only they can do that. The only power you have is in your actions and how the people around you interpret them.

In my movie, that old boyfriend became The Racist. In his movie, I'm probably the fickle minx (I love that word "MINX" oh I just love it!) who dumped him for no good reason.

Everybody's got their own movie going.

I've got to start remembering that. It's important.