Shades of grey...

Is anything in life “black” or “white” or just shades of grey!?

Perspective, opinion, impression, conclusion… All of these are very heavy words but we all in no time come up with values for all the above words. It is our basic nature, we all do that, we also have  a fancy term for this “the first impression”.

We look at every situation from our own ‘glasses’, the ‘glasses’ whose number is decided by our own share of experiences and whose shade is decided by the nature of experiences. What these glasses do, they look at the situation and declare it “right” or “wrong”. Is our perspective enough to judge the situation? How many of us take the efforts to look at the situation from another person’s perspective? We might be trying to, but then how many times could we actually successfully do it? When you try and look at a situation from someone else’s glasses that you might realize that its neither “right” nor “wrong”, neither “white” nor “black” but just shades of grey!

Let’s take an example, we see a lady wearing short dress and smoking and drinking in the pub and we immediately conclude “ ill-mannered, ill-cultured, selfish babe”! Is it always true? Do we really know her as a person? Are we not being too harsh on her? Are we not stereotyping her? Someone might say, what’s the problem with me judging her, I mean her no harm. Now imagine next day you go to office and the same lady is the new joinee in your team and as your colleague. Now by judging her already, you have created a perception about her and her every action and effort would be viewed with some prejudice. It would take a while before that prejudice would change and the harm might be already done by then. Is it fair for you and/or for the other person for that matter?

Let me take another example of a situation I went through very recently. I was having bad time and a particular bad day where I was hurt by expectations I had from closed ones. I decided I would go for a massage and entered the spa irritated and skeptical about how the masseur would be. The masseur comes and she is a thin very lady with minimum hygiene and with what seemed to me to a septic eye infection. I was all furious and almost felt like crying over my bad luck. In that rage, I didn’t greet her and replied to her queries in mono-syllable. But then I went inside, while I got my 5 minutes to change, I made a conscious decision to not let my “first impression” rule my massage experience. “I came here to de-stress myself and not to judge someone for next 1 hour or so” is what I told myself. So I took a 5 minutes effort and strike a conversation with her about her experience, her education, her background and in the entire process calling her by her first name(which by the way makes a huge difference). I immediately realized she is very qualified in her field and what I thought of as septic eye infection is her lost eye…. She had achieved all that she had with a single eye…. I felt so thankful that I took that 5 minute to understand her, to strike chord with her, to connect with her. And not to mention she was highly skilled and I had an amazing massage experience. I also praised her at the end for her massage and the smile on her face was priceless. I saved myself from a troubled experience and her from a rude client :D. All it took was 5 minutes of effort to look at things from her perspective…to understand her.

Do I manage to do it every time, hell no! I am always in too much of hurry to come to conclusion especially with loved ones. My husband is the one who suffers the most from my prejudices, my conclusions, my paradigm. But I have realized that all it takes to save both party trouble is 5 minutes of pure thinking, 5 minutes of listening. Is listening enough or there’s more to it? I did this course my manager thought I should. There were few take aways from it, very important ones. They asked a simple questions, “How many times do we listen with the intent of listening and not with the intent of speaking/reacting?”, “How many times do we simply try to understand the other person’s emotions without being judgmental about it from our own set of paradigm?”. I honestly thought about it and was surprised that its bloody true, I seldom do that. As soon as some person starts to share his/her problem with me, I start looking at it from my glasses and even the suggestions or advice I give is what my glasses suggest me. Why I don’t just listen, try and understand the situation from the other person’s perspective. Why can’t I simply remove my glasses and listen empathetically? Empathy is missing…. And without empathy even if I take those 5 minutes to understand the person or the situation I would do so from my glasses. All efforts wasted.

You must have noticed that how the perspective towards a particular situation changes as soon as we experience it! Reason, our glasses now have stored that experience as “right” as opposed to “wrong” (or vice-versa) that it was earlier. But we all are not fortunate enough to have experienced everything in the world and hence won’t always get chance to modify our perspective on many situations. So I suggest, take  a moment, be empathetic, look at the situation from the other person’s ‘glasses’. Your vision might not suddenly change from “black” to “white” or vice-versa but you might realize the shades of grey which you never thought existed.

Once you realize there is nothing like “right” or “wrong”, you would realize that you have suddenly opened yourself to new set of possibilities, a new set of experiences, a new found broad vision, a new perspective, a new outlook which is so positive and is such a learning experience. Let’s not be victim of the stereotypes that the world and our experiences present us with. Let’s take those 5 minutes of effort to be empathetic and to listen with the intent of listening and think from other person’s perspective before we conclude. Would be a very happy life, what say?

I am no saint to preach this, I am not even claiming I have attained the art of empathetic listening, but atleast I have realized and I am trying. I sincerely hope sharing my experience would help you to do the same .