Mini Rant

I'm sure most of my audience has read Leadership and Self-Deception, seeing as my audience is me and Brent. :) I've been musing on some of the concepts in that book, which is all about how we perceive and treat people. This book maintains that we are either "in the box," or "out of the box," when we interact with people. Being in the box is more self-focused; being out of the box is focused more on seeing how our interactions affect another person. My lame example is how you treat other people when you are driving down the road. If they are objects to get around, you are not seeing them as people with lives and jobs and errands to run. A lot of times we further objectify people by thinking, "That stupid Honda just cut me off!" Obviously, someone in the Honda cut you off, but by allowing ourselves to distance ourselves from the concept of humans, it is easier to blame and be angry. When you are "out of the box," you are more aware of your environs and how you can affect other people. Your whole perspective changes for the better, in my opinion. From a gospel perspective, I believe that if you strive to be "out of the box," you will strive to see people as the Savior sees us. That doesn't mean that you are blind to faults, of course, but that you see their worth. This is a wonderful book and one that will change your life. If you want a deeper perspective on your relationships with others, I highly recommend Bonds that Make Us Free, also by the Arbinger Institution (BYU).

A relative of mine (female) has recently hurt another relative (male) deeply. It was an action that she knew would hurt, and so she tried to soften the blow. It wasn't her idea, it was another relative's idea (true). If she had her way, she wouldn't do this, but she felt like she was forced into this course of action (truly her belief). She was counting on the male relative to be the bigger person and just accept the hurt and say nothing about it.

I happen to strongly disagree with her choices in this matter, but I respect the fact that these are her choices to make, disappointing as they are to me. The matter bothers me, however. I think the reason why I am bothered the most is that she is treating the male relative as an object and not a person. She is not stopping to see how this would affect this person. She might THINK that she thought things through, but to me this smacks of objectification. She put the person in a box and labeled him according to what she saw fit. She probably justified her actions by the labels that she put on, which is another concept that Leadership and Self-Deception discusses.

I strive not to label people, although I am not always the best at this. I strive to see people as they are. I dislike it when people cannot let go of the past to the point that they will always see another person as they were in the past. I'm not the same person that I was yesterday, so I think it's unfair to be labeled as the person I was 10 years ago. A mission companion lamented a similar concept to me. We were both at the end of our missions and she had gone back to an apartment where there were three sisters that she had trained. The sisters were laughing about all the mistakes my companion had made. She acknowledged to me that she had, in fact, made those mistakes. The frustrating part to her was that she felt like she had learned from those mistakes and grown. She felt that her companions did not recognize the growth she had achieved.

We are in this life to learn and progress. Why do people choose not to acknowledge the growth of others? Shouldn't we be cheering people on? Why do we intentionally cause hurt? I don't understand how that is justified.