Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 January 2006 09:26:35
I had a lesson in sensitivity.
Being sensitive to others seems to involve worrying about things that seem to you to be nothing to worry about at all. Even something which you see as positive is something you need to worry about if it is something which upsets someone you wish to be sensitive to. So something which you might otherwise feel obliged to do (the something which is positive) can become something which you are forbidden to do (because someone else sees it as negative, and you want to oblige them). This leads to some puzzling guilt-related feelings, and a confused conscience. And some quite abrupt volte faces.
I'm sure everybody else knew all this before, but I've only recently encountered such conflicts of interest, and am finding the whole thing strange. Some of the problems are, I know, down to me deluding myself and failing to see a genuine difficulty. But others aren't, and really are just down to two people seeing the same thing in very, very different ways.
To put it in an extreme way, it's almost as if one person is admiring a beautiful sunset and another says "Yuk, why are you looking at that, that sunset is disgusting!" This is going to take some getting used to.