On Believing and Accepting What People Show Us About Themselves

There have been hundreds perhaps thousands of self help, psychology and other type books written putting forth elaborate and complex theories about why troubles develop in every kind of human relationship.

As I have gotten older I have come to realize that most troubles in human relationships come down to a few very simple explanations. Here is one of them: We meet or experience another person and that person very early on gives us a very clear, very complete indication of who they are, so to speak---what their values are; what their strengths are; what their weaknesses are; what their core wounds, challenges and injuries are, etc. We then take all that information in and then promptly choose to forget or pretend to forget almost every single shred of it (except for the parts that serve our hidden agendas). "Trouble" then ensues because the people themselves refuse to go along with our little game of amnesia. They tenaciously continue to religiously be who they have shown us to be all along.

We however, deny that, try to change that, won't accept that or want to believe that somehow what they have shown us simply cannot be "true." The trouble then is essentially our failure to accept, what is.

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