One thing about human nature is that we often tend to see things from our own perspectives in many situations. That implies that we may end up thinking that we were totally wronged and then being faultless. But is that really the case most of the time? As I had just read a few minutes ago, there are three sides to a story—my side, your side, and the truth.
There is this filter in our eyes that makes us blind to our errors. We are inherently selfish, and so it makes us "look right" before our own eyes. It takes deliberate and conscious effort to break it off, see just beyond the flaws of the other person, and introspectively observe one's shortcomings in the same circumstance.
I will tell you a short story of mine about something that happened between a friend and me recently. Rather than something that should be a blissful friendship, what we have now is a separation that happened abruptly, and we never talk anymore. In my books, of course, "I didn't do anything wrong." I had been kind and fair, and so the way she began to treat me afterwards seemed unfair to me. And so I let the severance between us be. I hit the replay button recently, and I realised some things as I looked at the whole thing from a new perspective: hers.
You see, my friend and I had only met recently in a faraway land I visited. I was on a quest to meet new people and develop good relationships with some of them, and that was how it started. We met in a dance group we joined; she thought I was terrible at it and found it hilarious, and fast forward, we became friends, or something like that.
Being Olujay's friend means that I can go to great lengths for you. That implies that I would pull all of the tricks up my sleeve just to get you comfortable, happy, and accomplished, as long as it didn't bend me too much. And so, I did something very nice for her at the camp we had both found ourselves at.
Undeserved kindness?
She was supposed to compete for our group out of ten in camp, but things weren't going as planned. I wasn't part of the show, so I knew nothing about it prior. On my way to use the restroom, a few minutes before our group representatives were to perform—my friend and her partner—I learned that her partner didn't show up. My friend was simply supposed to be a video vixen, although she sings very well, and her partner was supposed to do the singing. It was injury time, and this guy was harder to find than a needle in a stack of hay. My mind then began to race on how we could salvage the solution.
I thought I would step in for the missing guy and sing a song with her for our performance. The only barrier was that I didn't have the costume to qualify, so we debunked that idea. She couldn't sing the song that they had planned to deliver, considering that she was only going to be a video vixen, and so we looked for songs together, and then I ensured that she found the one she could do and prepared the instrumental faster than I normally would and got it to the DJ right in time.
The performance wasn't as stellar as it was initially intended because of the missing human, but it was way better than having our entire group penalised for not performing. And we were all happy in the end.
Fast forward to when we had to part ways. We figured we were headed to the same destination and would be there for a long time together, and so we stuck together again. And then we moved in together to the same lodge designated to us by the government as servants to our country in the area we were both posted to.
The lodge is quite alright. It's not the best you'd find in town, but it wasn't bad either. It wasn't perfect, but anyone living would jump at the opportunity to be in a better place. Night came on the first day, and we settled. We all in the lodge—14 of us—agreed to leave together at the same time the next morning.
Morning came, and then it happened that some people left way earlier than we had all agreed. It was then, a few minutes before the agreed time, that I received a phone call with instructions not to leave the lodge until authorities came to meet us. Apparently, we had not actually sorted out our accommodations, and so the authorities came to do just that.
Eventually, they took the few of us left to tour the better lodge. We were only taken there to see the place ourselves and meet other people living there, but we weren't told that we could get spaces there, as they had already told us that there were no available spaces left. There were available spaces, however, and so the few of us present simply grabbed them while we could and saved them. I moved in shortly afterwards. My friend, however, had been with the party that left us earlier and wasn't with me at this time, and then returned to see that I had moved.
At the end of the day, my friend started calling me a new name. No, it was not a pet name. It was "betrayer," signifying that I abandoned her and selfishly went for something better. She really meant it, and that was how the severance began.
"I didn't do anything wrong."
Or did? I mean, she was the one who left me first and went about her day without me, which wasn't what we agreed on the night before. I didn't even plan the relocation in the first place. It just happened, and I grabbed the opportunity. Any other person would have done the same thing.
Or would they?
"I didn't do anything wrong." I continued to think to myself. To me, she was being unfair with her treatment because I had been good to her normally. We had been good to one another. But when I replayed everything and tried to see things from her perspective, I realised that I had been wrong in some areas.
The moment I realised that there were spaces available in the much more comfortable and attractive lodge, I could have reached out to my friend and updated her on what I was doing and what I had found, and possibly found a way to help her grab the same opportunity. But, no, I was being selfish and didn't think of any other person than myself in that moment.
She has her own blame to take, like leaving me first in defiance of our agreement, and so do I. But in all fairness, hers was way less harmless. For all I know, perhaps something made her leave earlier than we planned, and she was probably going to tell me at the end of the day.
The Truth...
Introspectively looking at ourselves in certain situations, especially in rifts, one would realise that no one is actually perfect and we all have one or two things we may have done wrong. There are cases, though, where one may truly be completely faultless and it was entirely the other person's fault. Sometimes, we are all Thanos in someone else's life.
