listen and learn

If you want to know someone, simply pay attention. People tell you who they are, we just ignore it.

-Anonymous

Have you ever given someone a chance and they disappoint?  Ah well, you think, we are all flawed.  Have you ever given that person a second chance and they still drop the ball?  Maybe a third, fourth or fifth chance too?  Still the same result.  Agony.  We feel anger, pain, even depression about the shortcomings of another who seemed so great, so charming, such great POTENTIAL.

But wait.  Remember that little voice, that tiny little feeling you had once?  Like an itch.  Like a gnat.  When something was said or something happened and you thought, hmmmm that’s weird.  Or hmmmmm something’s not quite right.  You wave it away.  When we decide we want something, whether it be friendship or a relationship, we choose to see what we want to see.  We temporarily blind ourselves and our intuition to connect with the parts of the person that is attractive.  But then when we get slapped with the other side, the side that is hurtful or dishonest- we are shocked.

It is our responsibility to ourselves that is at stake here.  We owe it to ourselves to be honest with what info we are actually getting.  In almost every case, we overlook that which we don’t agree with and create a person with only half a personality or half a heart.  In hindsight, which is always 20/20, we can pinpoint a specific moment when we allowed ourselves to finally see the truth that has always been there.  Families, friends. We can trace back a series of events that led to the truth being “revealed”.

If you really want to know someone, listen to them.  All of them.  Even the stuff you don’t want to hear.  More so, we often see the potential in someone and not who they actually are at the present moment.  Acknowledge and accept the whole person or gently let them go.

Either way, no surprises.