You can't go by what you’ve heard, from unreliable sources

“Me no speak Ingles”

How often have we made the wrong assumptions based on an unreliable source, about someone? 

We want to kick those assumption far away from our brains, if they overwhelm our thoughts, but we can’t, they leap back into our heads. I’ve known occasions where a comment about someone made me stop and think,  avoid making personal contact with that someone base on what I’d heard about them. No matter how the rumors got started, even if they were not true… they play like a broken record, stuck on a refrain, over and over in ones brain. 

“Wow, she is very sexy, is she  a stripper at a club?” Huh? Is she really? Maybe that might turn someone on, but others might get turned off by the thought of a woman they admire being a stripper, from stripper we start thinking sex worker. And so the avalanche of negative thoughts  roll down hill. Ooops, but the person in question only looks like a stripper, based on how she dresses, but  that was not her, on the pole. They could pass for sisters. The unreliable source eyesight was questionable, at night in a poorly lit room, filled with smoke,  so that should have warned me. He could not see too well from a distance, in day light, let alone at night. So why did his words carry so much weight? It’s simply because  we have a tendency to believe the negative about people first, and then after we find out they are not factual then we want to remove these images from our minds. But we really can’t!

Yes I’m from the  Dominican Republic.

Do I, really look like someone you know from D.R.?

But no, I’m from the island of Dominica!

 

                                    

 These images are not conclusive,  the only parts of these two women that look alike,  to me, is their hair lengths, and it may not even be  their real hair, and they are both about the same height and weight, even though one is not standing up straight and the other is at the beach.  My, in the past, 20/20 vision would not have mistaken one for the other….. like me friend did. But now I question what, and who I saw at the beach on a sunny afternoon, and who he saw at the club. If we could just do an 180 and forget what we heard. Why  can’t we just do that?

Maybe he mislead me intentionally, so that he could have a better chance of getting close to one of the woman he saw at the club,  and keep me at bay, Well, he had very little to worry about, because I don’t often hangout at stripclubs…..

My issue here is! 

Let’s not put people in unfair categories, just because someone was mistaken in their assessment of who they are, who they were or  who they might be . I must admit I have assumed the wrong things about a groups of people based on their cultures, I have heard things about their cultures that was never backed up by real experiences or facts. But my assumptions carried more of an influence... which I could not get out of my head.  Wow! even my mom, who was a very fair minded person, had directed me wrong about some people. She had a bias against a group of people. And since I knew nothing about them I assumed my mother could not be wrong. My dad had his biases against some other people also, but I didn’t agree with him because I knew some of the people of that culture, and he was wrong in my view, him and I were pretty much  left and right brained, when he said “Right” I thought ‘left....’ OK maybe he was right about some of them. But since I had not experienced the negativity he had. I made up my own mind, about what I felt and how I felt. Even years after both of my parents had passed away, these biases stilled played a roll in how I viewed people of a certain culture. This speaks volumes about why some of us never get over the negative ideas we conger-up in our minds, and hold on to them for decades. And we pass then along to our offspring and they  pass them along, also, and so it continues for generation after generation. Could it be that we are more negative brained than positive brained. If these  are such overwhelming thinking patterns, then how do we fix them?

      

Another  example that got me thinking : I took a moment to watch “the  red table talks,” hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith,  her daughter and Jada’s mom, they  were talking to the “Curry women,” Dell Curry’s wife, Stephen Curry wife,  Seth Curry’s wife, and their sister, who not too long ago got married to another pro basketball player.  The things that they revealed about their lives was amazing to me. Why, was it so amazing? It was because the assumptions about how they live their lives  in the spot light must be so overwhelming, we assume that these folks lives are perfect. But they are not even close. We see what we think we see, and hear what we want to hear and we believe things about people not knowing what really goes on in their lives. I’ve become a better listener, here of late, because I’m a bit more mature, now. The fact that women are much more open about their experiences is what makes listening to women much  more interesting. Had Jada, had the same conversation with the husbands then I’m sure I would not have heard even half of the things the wives revealed. I heard one of the ladies say that she had 5 concussions from playing volleyball, my thoughts were; Wow, would I marry a woman who had 5 concussions? She must be brain damaged or will be soon. While I know that female athletes suffer concussions, from playing lingerie football, or soccer even softball,are the sports that comes to mind. But surely I was Not thinking volleyball. And most surely not a woman having had 5  concussions, and continuing to play volleyball. This is Proof that assumptions are often dead wrong! 

Final thoughts (Men VS women conversations)

Here are 4 reasons why women talk, way more than men do. Women talk for a variety of reasons. Sometimes women talk for the same reasons that men stop talking. 

1. To convey or gather information. ( this is generally the only reason a man talks.)
2.  To explore and discover what it is she wants to say. ( a man stops talking to figure out inside what he wants to say. She talks to think out loud.)
3. To feel better and more centered when she is upset. ( He stops talking when he is upset, and goes Into his cave, so he has a chance to cool off.)
4.  To create intimacy. Through sharing her inner feelings she is able to know her loving self. (A man stops talking to find himself again. Too much intimacy, he fears, will rob him of himself.) 

Without this vital understanding of our differences, and needs it is easy to see why  couples struggle so much in relationships.