Thursday, August 08, 2013

Things that baffle me about people

Many a times I think of various traits of humans and am appalled at the craziness of our behaviour. Surely human psychology must be very interesting: with a thin line between normal and crazy. So many things though in theory sound so simple and logical become totally different in reality.

For example, its amazing how we always have the right solutions/advice for other people's situations but nothing for our own. I guess it is much easier to look at someone else's situation objectively and suggest practical options, cuz we dont have to do it ourselves. But its difficult to take our own advice. It somehow makes sense only for others, not ourselves.

Ive also realised we humans value similarity. The more similar someone's background or life is to ours the more close we feel with them. I do like finding common ground with people but am more fascinated by people from other religions, countries, cultures. Also Ive noticed when we know someone different from us, the difference becomes very important. For example, when talking about a friend from a different country or religion you end up calling them "my french friend" or "My muslim friend".. how come we cant just say friend?

Similarity leads to another issue: of superiority: the desire to feel superior over others instead of acknowledging, respecting and celebrating differences. From small issues like "this is the way I like my food to be cooked and anyone else who cooks it differently is an idiot" and dissing others' styles to the bigger ones like "my religion is the best and rest everything is a sham" and deciding others aren't fit to live... All of us including me have knowingly or unknowingly mocked other people's way of doing things. If only we could enjoy our diversity instead of fighting so hard to stick to commonality, life would be more fun to live!

Another thing I hate: our tendency to fixate upon the bad more than the good. Especially in relationships we tend to obsess about that one horrible statement someone said that one time and totally ignore the other wonderful things they said otherwise. To the extent that we are ready to sabotage the whole relationship completely based on a single event usually the result of heated emotions. And then we regret it forever but its too late to make amends. Dumb dumb dumb.

Would we ever learn from our mistakes? Or continue making them to the extent they stop being called mistakes? I guess it will take a long time for us to reach maturity as a society, as a county, as people.

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