Posted in A Moment in My Life

“Heart of Gold”

A Moment in My Life – Monday, August 23, 2021

Jeannie Yee Davis

When there are people involved, you know it’s going to be tricky. The cool thing about people is that we’re all individual and unique. We’re not robots programmed to be a certain way. How boring life would be if we knew the exact outcome of every situation. Who wants to hang out with the same old same old all the time? I don’t. After a while, I’m likely to say, “Let’s not do it and say we did,” and call it a day. Life is too short to waste a second of it in redundancy. The problem with people is that you never know what you’re going to get with them. People keep us on our toes. They help us grow and become better people or destroy us. I hope for the former for all of us.

Being individual means, we choose the way we live, our preferences, and our responses to everything. Everything about us is unique, making it entertaining being with different people. Yet, people are funny. We strive for individuality, but what do we do? We seek similarities in the people we associate with, but since we’re individuals, we don’t always share commonalities or see eye-to-eye—that’s a pro and a con. As neat as it is to be different, there’s a lot to be said for “We’re both the same way.”

It feels terrific to like the same things with my peeps, especially with new friends. It confirms we have a connection. Anything other feels like we’re not getting along, and that’s not a good feeling. I can guarantee you that you’d have a disconnect with every relationship at some point. It will happen more often than we’d like. Only a select few I know crave for a good debate of sorts while the rest of us avoid confrontation at all cost.

And that brings me to the tricky part—what makes people tick? You never know what you’re going to get, regardless of how strong your relationship is. There are too many drivers that could ignite an unexpected emotion out of the blue that can create havoc in your relationship. When it comes to emotions, we could be born twins and respond entirely differently, meaning if we can’t count on twins to react the same way, how can we expect anybody else to react the same way?

I have a FB friend, who has a lot in common with me. We share interests and enjoy good banter like we did Saturday. Our conversations contained merriment and compliments. I thought everything was peachy when suddenly, he said something that caused me to go, “What are you talking about?” He tried to explain, but he did so in his riddle way. You see, although we have a lot in common, we handle confrontation as different as day and night. He tends to beat around the bush and hope I get it. I prefer you cut to the chase and tell me straight. Eventually, we got there but only after a bushel of hurtful words.

I am not proud of my verbal response to his accusations, but it is what it is when it catches you off guard. I did not see his comments coming at all. I honestly thought everything was fine between us. We had issues in the past, but we worked it out, and we had an understanding that I thought has been working for us. I don’t know what drove him to this point, but it did not end well. We did not see eye-to-eye. I prefer to resolve the issue and not leave it open-ended, but we’ve already been down this road before, and at this point, there is no sense in rehashing the scene.

I believe people are good, but with bents created by the individual circumstances that cause us to be sensitive to certain things that we could set off with the slightest effort. Something during our banter set him off. I believe he honestly thought he was doing me a favor in saying what he said, but that’s his belief, and that’s where my agreement ends. However, it doesn’t matter what the content of our disagreement was. What does matter is how we handled the situation. 

I strive to be more like Cassie Nightingale, “The Good Witch,” who always sees the good in people and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. She miraculously works out all situations in a positive manner. I admire her because it’s not an easy task for any human. My unfavorable response to my friend clearly showed that I have much work to do in achieving my goal of being like Cassie. Serendipitously, the song “Heart of Gold” appeared in my Amazon queue this morning. This song comforted me and refocused the unfavorable situation to the root of the problem, which was, as I mentioned—our bents. It doesn’t make it right or wrong. It is the way that we respond to whatever propelled the hurt. People hurt people because they were hurt. We’ve all been there. 

My mistake propelled my hurt to my friend in response to his hurtful words that tore my spirits when I should have taken a step back and not take it personally. I should have tried to understand where he was coming from and discuss the scene diplomatically instead of taking it personally and attacking back. What my friend should have done was sleep on it since it was so close to bedtime. After a good night’s rest, if he continued to feel that he should say something to me, then he should have spoken up. There was much both of us could have done better. I can’t control my friend’s actions, but I could control mine, and I should have done better. It’s too late for this situation, but it’s not too late to exercise kindness and compassion in my future situations if I want to be more like Cassie Nightingale, who is the perfect example of one who has a heart of gold.

2 thoughts on ““Heart of Gold”

Leave a Reply