I hit upon a profound realization the other day.

Or, should I say “was slapped by” this realization as it came about in a very random and disjointed way.

It started when I was in the shower, scrubbing away, and thinking about people and the way that each person is interpreted by others.

(Deep thinking only comes when I’m in the shower…)

I started on this path of contemplation because I was thinking about my blog and wondering how I come across to people that I don’t know.

See, I originally created this blog as an outlet, a way to get all my ya-ya’s out and also to express a different side of me that people who live and work with me don’t usually see.

(Yes. The foolish side.)

In thinking about it though, I realized that a lot of the people that visit my blog are people that don’t actually know me, or know how I carry myself in my day-to-day life. They don’t have that foundation of understanding that comes from living with me and therefore this blog is their only link to knowing who I am and how I react.

That was a very scary thought to me, because there is so much more to me than just what I write about here!

That realization got me thinking about other people and how I perceive and judge them because of what they write on their blogs.

If I am this way and I write my life differently than how I live it, how many others are like that?

How many other people have I put into a box because of the way they express themselves on their blog?

This led to me thinking about people in general and how I perceive and judge them.

We know that people’s personalities are generally very multi-faceted. No one is ever “what you see is what you get” because people change and react according to their circumstances and the people around them.

Even people you live with—you may think you know them and are close to them, but you still only see the side of them that reacts to your personality and their current surrounding circumstances. Take the exact same person, put them in completely different circumstances, with different people around them, and they may turn into a completely different person!

To complicate matters more, there isn’t just the physical side of a person that lends itself to how they react, there’s also the spiritual side—what people are going through, what battles they’re facing, what lessons they’re learning—which also changes the way they react at certain times in their lives, and thus changes the way they are perceived by others!

Then there’s also the aspect that people change according to the choices that they make, and everyone makes about a million choices every day! That means a million chances for them to change their current way of operating and acting and start a down a completely new path.

In thinking about it then, since it’s a known fact that people change, adapt, and react differently according to the circumstances and the personalities that surround them, is there really any way that you can ever truly “know” a person?

And if you can never truly know a person, how could you ever dare to judge them?

Your judgment of a person is based on your perception of them, and your perception of them is biased by your own personality and the way that you think you would react in the same circumstances.

In short, you compare people to yourself and judge them accordingly.

But you’re only seeing one side of them, one tiny facet of their complex personality, and your perception of that one side of them may be very different than another person’s perception of the exact same side. For example, you may like an aspect of their character that the man beside you despises, and visa versa.

This whole line of reasoning convicted me to try to never, ever negatively judge a person by the way I perceive them. My negative perception of them may simply be because I am not seeing them in the correct light and need to “clean my lenses” a bit.

I’m learning that there’s always something beautiful to love about each person, I just have to make the conscious decision and effort to find it.

Because of this shower-time conversation with myself though, I am entirely convinced that I will never be able to figure people out—as you can tell from my roundabout reasonings and logic, it’s a subject that is just entirely too complicated for my small brain—so really, all I can do is take people at face value and accept them for who they are at that very moment, giving room in my understanding of them for them to change and grow and adapt.

So, I admit, I may never understand you, but I promise that I will try my best to always love you.