A bilingual Newsblog for the bilingual community.

One can try with all one’s might, but perception is in the eye of the beholder. And what is perception exactly? Aside from the sight perspective, we –view- the developments around us and sense them with all our senses. Memories are called up as our mind reaches cataloged memories triggered and the world becomes our reality. We all live in different worlds. We all experience life differently and at different levels. God’s gifts are individual to each and our perception is as individual as a fingerprint. With so many different views, how are we able to create a society? How are we able to show tolerance and compassion to each other? And how do we help each other “do the right thing”?
There is beauty in diversity. I have been blessed to have the opportunity to work for 9 years in an environment where I get to know different people and families nearly every week. People have come to me with a desire to meet a need in their plans for a better future and ask me to tailor-make products and services to facilitate and ensure that there is a plan in place and regularly that they are on track. As a young kid out of college, the opportunity to serve these clients was a welcomed challenge. Then it was a matter of proving that the theory I had absorbed and processed for long could have practical applications in support of my work. My goals were to reach the best batting average and make sure that my name would always be atop the leaderboard. Looking back, helping people had become a sport. It was easy to stay detached from the essence of the client relationships because experience is what make a job a career.
My career was built atop a strong foundation of Christian and specifically Lutheran values. From humility to frugality, my culture and religion make me the professional I am today. Beginning my career it was difficult to find too much in common with the generationally-wealthy individuals I have always worked with. Thankfully for generations my family has never, thank God, gone a meal without food, a winter without warmth or a time without hugs. My sales phycology trainings always revolved around the search for commonality; finding that one intersection point where two individuals whom by cosmic randomness or not meet. Of course I have always been of the belief that nothing in my life has truly happened by chance, humbly I want to be a number only in the greater Plan. But when two people meet for the first time the newness and any skin deep attraction dissipates very quickly, In my opinion great sales people are able to keep that lead warm enough at all times. A delicate balancing act akin to chemistry labs. Must admit that in my field, rarely does one meet anyone unprepared. By means of databases and recorded habits my industry has lead the creation of human profiles. The recording and or use of this manipulated information is a topic of its own, which I struggle at times with but chose not to jump into at this time. Profiles gives the professional a framework to guide us through the process of filtering the types of conversations and or experiences we must highlight in order to trigger that common trait. Sadly after years of utilizing techniques, meeting a new person with something in common becomes as easy as an experienced driver driving stick-shift transmission; second nature.
It is at the moment one believes these profiles and techniques tell you all you need to know about a person that a lesson is learned. Humans are random, individuals are unique. Unique in the same manner a mother tells their children they are unique. Each individual has experienced life through their years and seconds in a unique manner. Biologically our bodies are the most sophisticated machines at adapting. Some adaptations are simpler and more welcomed than others, say snow birding cold-weather bodies down south. Some bodies have been through so much stress that they become numb to different elements. Emotionally people experience life differently and their life’s experiences of lack of experiences make them who they are today. Some cultures express emotions in different manners, in many cultures emotions are to be kept inside.
Yet with all the differences in the world, common traits are ever-present. We all need to belong. Some chose not to belong, of course, building barriers around them telegraphing to the world that they are lost. We have all struggled at some point, and yearn for moments of happiness. And then there are the abstract commonalities not described or measured by any physical, psychological profiling system. Some people just find that somehow they understand each other. Explaining how that understanding comes is less important than the fact that having the common fabric “by chance” brings amazing excitement to our lives. As much as we need to belong, we yearn for understanding. Understanding come less with knowing someone or their profile and more with the knowledge that we truly know very little. Tolerance truly is coming to peaceful terms with accepting what we don’t yet know and understand.
In the age where Google and financial organizations record our every move and keystroke, profiles are seemingly becoming perfected. Each of us is cataloged by millions of criteria. Pandora gathers our listening habits, Youtube and Tivo’s record viewing habits, Amazon and Itunes tells us what book we will like next, etc… A new era is upon us where people are “matched” with each other based on compatibility levels (Thank you Dr. Phil) profile genome engines seeming can facilitate the process of sufficient common traits to keep people together forever. But what happens when we follow our human nature and veer off the highway of logarithmic equations?
The beauty of human relationships is NOT knowing what is in the other person’s mind, NOT knowing if the manner in which we perceive life is similar. Guessing and even educated guessing is usually a dangerous path to take. Direct questions can sometimes be “perceived” by people as interrogation. Tolerance is our willingness to come to terms and accepting the risk that not fully knowing brings.
Human relationships are built on trust. Trust is welded with common traits that are elemental to us. Tolerance becomes easier when these commonalities are honesty, compassion and love. The last can exist in its many representative forms from fraternal and brotherly to romantic and everlasting, but never absent from a strong relationship. Trust CANNOT be built with words; words but refine communication and further define what is felt by our human ability to perceive each other. Human bonds are stronger than words, and language.
A wise poem says people come into your life for a Reason, a Season or a Lifetime, and when you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person. Tolerance and compassion is understanding that even if you find what type of person you are dealing with, they can see you entirely different. And one can fight the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and spend a lifetime attempting to change what cannot: perception. Some people grew up without hugs, some people grew up without trust and feeling loved. Sadly some without belonging and without understanding. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Matt. 7:7-8) Fotunately, if we have the HONEST desire to belong and be understtod, be trusted and loved, all we need to do is but ask and work commonly on one task: Welding the type of trust that can serve as the foundation for loving, compassionate and honest relationships that bring daily joy to our lives. That give us a breath when we are winded and a helpful hand when we fall.
Doing the right thing is NOT a relative equation. Doing the right thing requires us to jump outside of ourselves and into our peers shoes, and attempt to understand each others perception. Not because they fit a profile, but rather because it proves that we care. It proves that even if we are unable to communicate we still can try to understand each other better. We have history’s best tools to understand each other today. Doing the right thing is not doing what is right to us, sometimes the right thing requires us to shed our pride and accept that our perception does not define us, that our perception can grow and that our purpose to to become a daily better version of who we were yesterday. We can be more tolerant, we can be more compassionate and we can love more and better every day because we have the profiling tools to be surgical with our approach. Our perception is unique and sharing it is human.

http://itsourrealitymagazine.com/reason.htm