Who a person is to begin with

I recently entered into an argument with a long time friend, we argued about politics and on our point of view when it came to global politics happening right now in the world, I’ll spare you the details, the main point was I disagreed with how it was being done meanwhile he agreed.

We spent over an hour to say the least debating, each of us taking turns to present our points and argue why we believed what we believed, eventually he said something which stuck with me and gave me an epiphany, he said

“When you know you are weak, you just have to do what the stronger person compels you to do”.

Anybody can make of this statement what they’ll like, in and of itself it wasn’t the statement which was an eye opener but rather it gave me a deeper look into the character of this friend of mine and I realized something, our differences weren’t just ideological, they were much deeper than that.

From my experience of life so far I’ve always worked to challenge the odds, doing what seemed impossible, going against the grain and competing with people I had no chance of winning against. For me personally, life doesn’t just come down to you are weak so give up but instead I’ve been brainwashed by the messages of countless people who encourage me to challenge the odds.

Coward or Courageous

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “If you believe it, then you can achieve it”. So with all this I’ve had a mentality of not just accepting injustice because I am weak but instead fighting against it despite my weakness. However, this friend of mine after some questioning, I came to understand that he was a coward, he was ready to do anything just to survive and he didn’t care about his integrity, fairness or even human decency, the only thing that mattered to him was what he could do to survive and thrive even if it meant harming others. I am not even kidding, one of the things he said was to blame victims for not obeying their oppressors orders and submitting to them sooner. This was certainly hard to hear.

What type of person are you?

With this epiphany I realized that we couldn’t understand each other when it came down to this topic, our differences were much more deeper than a political view. I think that’s one aspect we tend to forget about others whenever we are called to collaborate or argue, we forget to realize that our differences and misunderstanding might be much more deeply rooted than just some superficial arguments.

Its important to understand who a person is first before you can even hope to find common agreement with them.

We tend to just walk into every interaction with the assumption that we are all the same and we will all agree just off of logic alone. Even though we might have the same goal, the path to that or even the understanding of that goal might vary drastically between individuals. Right now your mind is being shaped by your experiences and the information you consume which will eventually lead you to think in a certain way, meanwhile another person might not even have the same amount of information as you do yet you’ll have to both come to the same understanding, that can really be complicated.

Conclusion

Our divisions may arise from several places, whether it is; socially, economically, culturally, intellectually. It is important to first take a moment to figure out which type of person you are dealing with before you can even begin finding a path to a possible agreement between you. Not doing that work would eventually lead to disagreements down the line, you’ll eventually end up having a conflict with each other because you didn’t realize sooner who you were dealing with.

When your collaboration with someone is just limited in time or to a specific context it’s okay not to care about which type of person you are dealing with but when it is someone you have to interact with over an extended period of time, it does help to have a deeper understanding.

Thanks for reading ☺️