People are so quick to use the “you don’t understand” line, even when they have not done justice in explaining, they just believe that you don’t or won’t understand and I’ve learnt to be very patient with such people. Not pushing them to explain beyond what they have but admitting that yes, maybe I really don’t understand, so can you please make it clearer for me?

It has taken me my few adult years on this earth to understand how the human mind works and in summary, as our thumbprints are different, so are our perspectives to things and so it is aberrational when I see people getting offended when they are misunderstood or misinterpreted. Cause being human as we are, it is something I think we need to leave space to accommodate. That ‘people might misunderstand my intentions sometimes’ and that’s totally okay.

It is also so easy to get caught up in the misunderstanding seat. To be the one who misunderstands someone, which is why we must be graceful with people who do misunderstand in certain situations cause we also fall prey sometimes.

I remember meeting a girl once who was so bent on dating this guy because of how affluent he was and she was bold enough to even admit it, saying that asides his affluence, he was god-fearing and nice and all, so essentially, she was not in just for the money although that was a plus and I remember telling her off one day about how she was making money such a determining factor in her decision of who she would want to settle down with in life and I honestly even got a bit angry and said things I probably should not have till in replying me, my eyes were open to seeing it from her perspective.

When you grow up with or without something, it becomes the standard or the norm for you. By God’s grace, I had my parents provide for me to a level I was not seeking outside of home, she didn’t have same story and so had come from a place of ‘I need to seek the one who’s gonna provide for me’.

From our different backgrounds, we formed ideologies of life and so it was foreign to her for me to be saying ‘why can’t you go home and get it rather than seek it outside’.

This is just one of many examples where I’ve imposed my own standards from my background on other people and where I have been imposed on from the backgrounds of others as well. It is something we will all need to be wary of so that we are not blocking ourselves from ministering to people at the level in which they are at and not the level we think they should be at.

It is kinda similar to the post on Culture difference pt 1 where I spoke about how we carry expectations in our heads from the places we’re coming from and when we meet with people who don’t carry same expectations and ideas, clashes ensue.

It is a daily thing for all of us, being able to remove ourselves from our own shoes and stand in the place of another. This is in no way endorsing or compromising the values we stand in, but challenging ourselves to see it from a whole new perspective that could even equip us for future connections.