It's All Relative
I hate to be trite, but sometimes the old sayings just can’t be said any better if worded another way. The one that comes to mind this morning is ‘everything is relative’. Judging where someone is today, in their career, with their accomplishments, and in life in general, is speculative at best if you have no idea where they started. Where someone is today can only be measured if your measuring tape is long enough to stretch back to their starting point.
We can all be rather judgmental at times. Yes, all of us. You too. Admit it. We all do it. We smirk at the woman in Macy’s whose clothes a bit too tight, her muffin-top folding 'attractively' over the top of her slacks, and we nudge the person we are with and we both laughingly pass judgment. What we don’t know is that this Size 14 woman recently lost 120 lbs, and today she is more than thrilled to finally fit into that Size 14 for the first time in fifteen years. We ask a well-dressed young woman at a cocktail party what she does for a living. She smiles confidently and tells us that she’s a secretary. Secretary! What can be more boring, right? So, we mumble a polite reply and wander off to find someone more interesting to engage in conversation. Foolish. She could very well be the most interesting person at the party. In not taking the time to hear her story, we missed out on learning that, at seventeen, she was tossed out of the house by her mother’s latest boyfriend; she lived in her car until a caring high-school teacher got her into a halfway house for teens; she won a scholarship to a junior college and managed to finish a one-year certificate program while working as a clerk/receptionist in a realty office, who happened to know a prominent attorney... Her most recent employer, the before-mentioned attorney, started her in his office as a secretarial aide, recognized her potential, and is now mentoring her. She is on her way to becoming a well-paid paralegal. Fascinating young woman really. You might actually need her help one day so be careful when burning bridges (another cliché, but…).
So, my point is this. Before you make snap judgments about people, take the time to look below the surface and find out a bit about who they really are, what their journey has been, and how they got to where they are today. That holds true for the shabby guy on the corner holding a ‘God Bless You’ sign (he was once a hard worker on the line in the factory that closed), as well as the ‘boring’ elderly neighbor who, if you would take the time to talk to her, could tell you stories about living in the Sudan and surviving malaria while teaching village children in Nigeria. Everyone has a story.
On that note, I am inserting a link to an interview with me on The Muffin, the Woman on Writing blog.
http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/
I can’t brag about receiving my M.A. in English Literature from Vassar, and neither do I have one single published novel credit to my name, but I have given a home to an elderly grandmother, and helped a husband finish his degree(s), and taken care of a mother with dementia, and worked my sizable ass off to continue my education so I could push my way up from engineering secretary to technical editor, so…. Knowing where I have been, I have to say I’m pretty darn pleased with where I find myself now. As my mother used to say, ‘the proof is in the pudding’.
We can all be rather judgmental at times. Yes, all of us. You too. Admit it. We all do it. We smirk at the woman in Macy’s whose clothes a bit too tight, her muffin-top folding 'attractively' over the top of her slacks, and we nudge the person we are with and we both laughingly pass judgment. What we don’t know is that this Size 14 woman recently lost 120 lbs, and today she is more than thrilled to finally fit into that Size 14 for the first time in fifteen years. We ask a well-dressed young woman at a cocktail party what she does for a living. She smiles confidently and tells us that she’s a secretary. Secretary! What can be more boring, right? So, we mumble a polite reply and wander off to find someone more interesting to engage in conversation. Foolish. She could very well be the most interesting person at the party. In not taking the time to hear her story, we missed out on learning that, at seventeen, she was tossed out of the house by her mother’s latest boyfriend; she lived in her car until a caring high-school teacher got her into a halfway house for teens; she won a scholarship to a junior college and managed to finish a one-year certificate program while working as a clerk/receptionist in a realty office, who happened to know a prominent attorney... Her most recent employer, the before-mentioned attorney, started her in his office as a secretarial aide, recognized her potential, and is now mentoring her. She is on her way to becoming a well-paid paralegal. Fascinating young woman really. You might actually need her help one day so be careful when burning bridges (another cliché, but…).
So, my point is this. Before you make snap judgments about people, take the time to look below the surface and find out a bit about who they really are, what their journey has been, and how they got to where they are today. That holds true for the shabby guy on the corner holding a ‘God Bless You’ sign (he was once a hard worker on the line in the factory that closed), as well as the ‘boring’ elderly neighbor who, if you would take the time to talk to her, could tell you stories about living in the Sudan and surviving malaria while teaching village children in Nigeria. Everyone has a story.
On that note, I am inserting a link to an interview with me on The Muffin, the Woman on Writing blog.
http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/
I can’t brag about receiving my M.A. in English Literature from Vassar, and neither do I have one single published novel credit to my name, but I have given a home to an elderly grandmother, and helped a husband finish his degree(s), and taken care of a mother with dementia, and worked my sizable ass off to continue my education so I could push my way up from engineering secretary to technical editor, so…. Knowing where I have been, I have to say I’m pretty darn pleased with where I find myself now. As my mother used to say, ‘the proof is in the pudding’.