Flourishing Today

Ain’t Misbehavin’

Have you ever gotten in trouble or punished for something, and you had NO idea what you did wrong? It sucks, doesn’t it? In fact, if it happens often enough, don’t you get less and less inclined to co-operate with things in the future?

When people get in trouble like that, it is often because there is an assumption that someone is misbehaving. That the person both knows and is capable of doing what they should be doing, and for what ever reason they just chose not to. It is like if someone cuts us off in traffic, we think “What a jerk! They should have checked their blind spot.” But the thing is, that is WHY they call it a blind spot – because sometimes there are things happening in places we just can’t see.

So the question really is: what if people aren’t really misbehaving, but there is a good reason for why people do everything they do?

I once lost a friendship with someone I treasured. When we’d talk, we’d keep saying “Wow, we should really get together!” A couple months later, she wouldn’t return my calls, wouldn’t return my emails, and ignored me in social situations. 6 months later I found out from her boyfriend that she was no longer interested in having me as a friend, because I had never set a time or date for us to actually get together… and when she had been saying “We should get together sometime” I had been hearing as “Wow, our lives are really busy, I still care about you, so it would be cool if we could eventually have some more time to hang out again.” Instead of “I want you to set a time and date for us to hang out.” So, because that was a blind spot, I lost a friendship and had no idea why.

So, we do this in our lives with our friends, with our family, with our partners. We see someone who we think is misbehaving, and we push them away because we’re hurt. But we don’t think to ask ourselves; what if there is a really good reason for this, that I just don’t know?

In the case with my friend, all I needed was a structure that would work for her; if she’d said something like “we keep saying we should get together, but you’ve never proposed a time. I need you to propose a time because I’d really like to see this happen.” Then I could have immediately said “Oh, what does your schedule look like, can we plan something next week?”

So if we want to have satisfying partnerships and relationships, we get to ask ourselves:

• What if they don’t know they’re doing something to hurt us?
• What if this isn’t personal and there is a good reason (a perfect correlate) as to why this is happening
• Is something missing that I can provide – a structure, a distinction, a vision, a skill set, and
• How can I find out what this good reason might be? or what might they need to provide me with what I need?

Because chances are, we’re going to keep running into people with blind spots… and it would be nice to get—it’s not personal… it’s a blind spot.

Blinkers on –
Kaye