Way back when...

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As a teenager I was shy and naive. I was also high sensitive. And the fact that I didn’t speak out much didn’t mean that I didn’t have my opinions ~ it just meant I didn’t share those opinions quite as much or as loudly as my classmates used to do.

Over the years I have discovered that what others saw as me being naive, came from a very different perspective. I have a tendency to just see the good in people. To see what they can be, the things they can achieve ~ in other words, I see the kindness rather than the ‘acting out’. And from that perspective ~ certainly as a teen ~ it was totally beyond me why someone would say something or even tell me something they knew wasn’t true. If it wasn’t true, why would they bother to tell me, or anyone else for that matter?
Apparently because it was fun to see me react seriously to something that ‘everybody knew’ wasn’t true...

It is something that hasn’t changed over the years. I still see the good in people, how they are meaning well; how they are trying to do the right thing. It is still beyond me why anyone would state something they know to be untrue.
What has changed is that I have found a way to distinguish between the two. To still see all the things that can be ~ yet to also see the situation as it really is. To take the other person seriously; and yet to also know when what they are telling me is not quite the whole truth. In which case it well can be their personal truth, but it may not be a factual truth or ever become truth to me...

In a sense I have finally learned how my high sensitivity can be helpful to me in those situations. Something that makes me far less ‘naive’.

Something that has changed is that by now I have learned to speak out more ~ even in groups. I now enjoy giving lectures and workshops. And I have a lot of fun with my Dutch language biweekly radio show on internet radio.

What is interesting to me is that some things, some perspectives seem to have stayed the same since those long ago teenage years, as I would have thought that I had outgrown pretty much all of it by now...

A couple of years ago I ran in to one of my teachers from those days. We had a little chat, when he suddenly commented that he had admired me so much as I had always followed my own values and had refused to cave under peer pressure ~ even as the shy teenager I was way back when...
I have to admit; I had never quite looked at it that way.
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