WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?
“It’s obvious why he’s so fat” I remarked, safe in my ignorance, as I watched the clearly overweight teenager knocking back a chocolate bar and lemonade at 830 in the morning. My companion and I were sitting outside a school. The teenager in question had just come out of the shop opposite the school.
“Well” said my companion “what you need to know about Joe is that he was starved by his family, and was taken away from them. So now if he can get his hands on food, he does”.
Ah.
Did that change my perspective on Joe? Just a bit.
Does that mean that Joe should go on eating like that all his life? No. But it might take a while for him to change. And he will need help to do so.
But here’s the thing. How often do we bother to do that? To get the back-story. To understand why somebody is behaving the way they are.
So much easier simply to judge them.
Let’s face it, I’ve not been starved. If I had been, am I any different from Joe?
And in the workplace? Try these.
“Andy’s a good manager, but he can’t take any criticism”. Yup, fair enough, but how much affirmation has Andy had in his life?
“Mike’s totally driven by money”. It does seem that way, but what financial insecurities did he suffer from growing up? Or what would redundancy mean for him?
“Amy’s impossible to manage. She just does what she wants”. True, but turns out she was brought up by highly controlling parents, and now she’s away from that no-one is going to tell her what to do.
What’s the point here?
If we’re lucky enough to (apparently!) have it all together, maybe accident of birth and consequent opportunity have a role to play in that.
And, if they’re comfortable with it, we should take time to understand those whose act appears less together. To begin to answer the question:
What happened to them?
Like Joe, staying the way they are might not be their best option. But if we can begin to understand them, rather than judge them, maybe we can be part of their growth.
How good would that be? And how much better?
FANCY A SLIGHTLY LONGER READ?
Maybe try one or more of the books
