A few weeks ago, I wrote about seeing Pixar’s excellent movie Inside Out. That movie has done a wonderful job in presenting the complicated nature of our personalities and how a range of emotions work together to form…well, “us.” There were several good points to note from the movie, but at the time of my viewing, three really stuck out to me.
The first one I wrote about was that “there is so much going on in the mind, the emotions of a person that no one ever gets to see.” Well, the second point hinges on that idea. It’s this…
Each person you deal with on a day-to-day basis is the product of events that you don’t know about.
This isn’t, of course, a new idea. In fact, I wrote about this to some degree last year after seeing Disney’s movie about Mary Poppins….Saving Mr. Banks. They’ve come back to this point yet again.
In the story, the protagonist is a sweet young lady of 11 whose family moves to a new, and larger, city. She had previously been a very happy child, but now the change has challenged all of that and, perhaps not surprisingly, she is discomforted with this new life. Utlimately, she moves to being a morose, gloomy child dealing with the change. Of course, being a Pixar movie, there’s a warm happy ending (you should go see the movie), but as we know in real life, it isn’t always so happy.
So, think about a person you know who is typically gloomy, or maybe angry, or perhaps distant or someone who does not trust easily. What about the person who always has to be in charge or the person who rarely speaks up in a group setting to offer their own opinion.
Each of these people are the product of a life lived where events happened to them. Those events change them, impacted them, made them to a very large and real degree “who they are.” Who you are. Who I am.
What that means, at the very least, is that we should always strive to be so very patient with one another. You literally don’t know why they are thinking the way they are. Even if you are the parent or have been married for 30+ years, you don’t know what is going on in their heads.
Be patient. Be gracious. Give space. Be curious enough to just enjoy them.
Oh…one more thing from the point. Since we “don’t know about” the events that create your personality, both events from the past and ongoing emotions, you must share. You, whoever you are (me too)…how many times do you wonder or get frustrated why people don’t get you, or don’t realize the emotion or concerns or challenges that you are facing. Well, they don’t know because they can’t see inside your head.
So, while on the one hand we all need to be patient with each other since we don’t know why a person is the way they are….we also need to work to be more communicative with what is going on in our heads. Open up. Let your close friends in. Share the inner feelings some. Explain why a certain current event stirs up your response in your own unique way based on the events and emotions from your past.
The more we open up, the better things become as those close to us begin to really understand what makes us so unique.