Thursday 24 November 2016

it's all about the perspective

The other day somebody told me that I mustn't be so negative. Interestingly, it turned out that the person had felt that I had been negative with regard to her objectives in life (which I hadn't).
When  I mentioned it to somebody else, she said: I can't believe it. You are one of the most positive people I know!

Personally, I think I am somewhere in between. Depending on the matter at hand, as well as my mood. More often than not, I do see myself on the more positive side though. Which is a considerable change from my younger self. I will never forget a round of therapy (a board game) where my question was: How pessimistic do you rate yourself on a scale of 1-10. In the game, you win a point, if your own assessment matches that of the other player, who happened to be my then best friend. And of course we both scored myself a 10...
To which my teacher (it was at a school retreat) said: Why is that? You have no reason to be so pessimistic.

Also an interesting reaction from somebody who knew fuck all about me. One would have thought, she might take this as an opportunity to find out from me what was going in (in private). Instead she went to speak to my maths teacher, who then asked me to stay behind in class one day and asked whether everything was ok. For a very short moment, I did consider confiding in him. But decided not to, and simply said everything was fine. Quite a few times, did I think about that decision and somehow regretted it. But more because I wanted his attention rather than feeling the need to share something with him.

Once the gates had opened, a few years later, I would tell my story to just anyone - whether or not they wanted to listen to it. I wonder what people thought about me back then...

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