If you’ve been living on planet earth long enough to be able to feed yourself, you have no doubt been shocked and disappointed by the actions or words of someone you thought you knew really well. As we get to know the people around us, we begin to get a handle on their personalities and attitudes. When we finally get to the point where we’re real close to someone, we tend to believe that we know pretty well how that person will react in any given situation. But sometimes that belief turns out to be based on a false assumption.
Over the course of my lifetime I have seen a number of close friends and loved ones catch me completely off guard with the way they handled situations that seemed to me to be rather routine (and I’m sure it’s happened the other way around as well). It’s natural to be shocked and even disappointed when that happens, but it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, each of us is an individual who brings our own assumptions, biases, personal experiences and memories of past injustices along with us as we interact with the people around us, and as such we all have our own ways of dealing with situations and circumstances as they arise. And that doesn’t make us bad people, it just makes us different.
Human nature being as it is, most people will treat others well, follow the rules established by society, and act in a more or less predictable manner in most areas of their lives. But each of us has the ability – maybe even the propensity – to catch others off-guard with our actions and reactions to situations that arise from time to time. We’re only human after all, and humans are prone to cause each other grief on occasion. But we also have the God-given ability to empathize and forgive. May God give us all the wisdom to know when it’s best to do just that.
A really profound statement!!