Eye to eye
If you work with any type of person for longer than a nanosecond, you will learn that what you see isn't always what you get. You do your absolute best to make that really good first impression, and even if you don't realize it you make mental first impressions on other people who you are meeting for the first time. And since we're all human beings, your first impressions of other people can sometimes be dead wrong. With me, my first impressions of people are almost ALWAYS dead wrong. One of my really good friends from college? I thought he was a jerk before I really got to know him. This past weekend, I was away in the "Kentucky Shire" (if you know me for longer than 2.5 seconds, you'll know I'm a big Lord of the Ring/Hobbit buff) with some friends I met back in September. It was just a chill, relaxing and laid back weekend up in Harrodsburg. Anyway, there were some new people there that I had never met, and my first impression of someone was not a very positive one. They came across as sarcastic and a bit condescending towards me. But as I got to know this person more and have more conversations, I realized that my opinion about them was completely in the wrong direction...of course.
It just got me to thinking, why do we do that? Make impressions on people firsthand without getting to know them at first to form our own opinion? This has gotten me in a bind so many times, like this weekend, and I felt guilty. However, sometimes first impressions do go right. At work, there was a patient that rubbed the other staff members the wrong way and they spoke very negatively about this patient. Yet my encounters with this patient were nothing but positive and I never felt rubbed the wrong way at all. It just goes to show you; it's really unfair to judge someone before you meet them. And nobody's immune to it, and we all do it subconsciously whether or not we even mean to. I suppose my point to all of this rambling is to just really take the time to know your fellow strangers. I'm reminded of Hebrews 13, where it says to entertain strangers, for all we know we could be entertaining angels and not even know it. Or something like that. Loose Kelly Korb translation, but you get the point.
It just got me to thinking, why do we do that? Make impressions on people firsthand without getting to know them at first to form our own opinion? This has gotten me in a bind so many times, like this weekend, and I felt guilty. However, sometimes first impressions do go right. At work, there was a patient that rubbed the other staff members the wrong way and they spoke very negatively about this patient. Yet my encounters with this patient were nothing but positive and I never felt rubbed the wrong way at all. It just goes to show you; it's really unfair to judge someone before you meet them. And nobody's immune to it, and we all do it subconsciously whether or not we even mean to. I suppose my point to all of this rambling is to just really take the time to know your fellow strangers. I'm reminded of Hebrews 13, where it says to entertain strangers, for all we know we could be entertaining angels and not even know it. Or something like that. Loose Kelly Korb translation, but you get the point.
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