Welcome to a new week, dear readers. It is another beautiful time of musings on PILLOW TALK WITH FLOURISH. As you know, we love to keep it simple and real. Let us relax as we enjoy this story and the muse too.
A TRUE LIFE STORY
“There is this amazing man in my neighbourhood. Believe me when I say it didn’t begin that way. Let me take us back in time. This man moved into one of the rooms next door some years after I moved in. He appears to be a bit older than I am (but I don’t think it is a reason for not relating with others, right?). Whenever I greeted him, he would either not respond or answer the greeting from his nose (you know what I mean). It got to a point that I made up my mind not to greet him if we don’t see face-to-face. He was not a smiling type and he always looked too serious.
Several months after the seemingly silent treatment (and many other situations that raised lots of questions in my mind), an issue came up with our water-supply system. I convinced myself that it was the right opportunity to have an audience with him. I got out of my room and went to the main door. I knocked on the door and asked if I could talk with him for one minute. He answered and I spoke with him cheerfully about our water system. He explained to me that it developed a fault and they were waiting for the plumber to fix it. He told me that we’d have to fetch water from the backyard for a short period of time.
As soon as we finished talking about water, I quickly added the second reason I asked to see him. Still wearing the cheerful smile, I told him that I wondered why it appeared he wasn’t responding to my greetings. I said I wouldn’t know if my voice wasn’t audible enough or something else. His response shocked me. “Why would I refuse to answer you or respond to your salutations? I will surely respond to you whenever you greet me”, he said. This conversation was the turning point! All along I had thought he had an issue with me. We exchanged greetings the next day with enthusiasm. On some other days, he would smile at me and ask me about school work. On another day, he paid my fare when our paths crossed somewhere else. Ever since then, his attitude (or my response to him) has changed for the better.
My thought from this story is that many times we rush to conclude that some people are intentionally doing what they are doing. In the real sense, many folks don’t know the implication of their actions on the people around them. If we could just have polite conversations with one another, we might be able to see things from another perspective. Then we might need to meet face-to-face.
It is important for us to try really hard to put our previous assumptions aside. If we don’t try, they could make us tilt towards confrontation rather than the neutral and normal conversation.
‘Confrontation’ may not always yield the results we desire but conversations most likely will (of course, some people might just be naturally snobbish). I concluded that we should confront the issue while we converse with the person or persons involved. Instead of thinking that some people are intentionally hurting us, we should try to have conversations with them. We will have better relationships when we all are at peace with one another.
Thank you for staying with me tonight.
I will be glad to receive your comments and contributions. You can send me a direct message or leave a response here. Let’s have conversations.
We will meet again by Wednesday for deeper musings.
Bye for now!
– Flourish