Besides thinking about what I should prepare for dinner, I have also been thinking about the difference between how we view ourselves, and others see us. When I mentioned this to my friend, Sally, she responded in her best English teacher voice, ”Ae wad some pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as ither see us.”
She claimed that, Scottish poet, Robert Burns thought that one up when he watched a large bug slowly climbing heavenward on the back of a woman’s elegant hat in church. The woman was praying, the bug was preying, and “Rabbie” obviously had his head somewhere else.
So many times, I have heard someone say, “ I can’t retire. I don’t know what I would do with myself. I am my work.” If done well, retirement is an art. I have a friend who retired from being a banker. His professional reputation and lifetime work does not impress his toddler grandson, who already knows what really matters in life, and whose eyes light up when he sees, “The Grandfather!”
Children of celebrities don’t see the Nobel Prize winner or the “sex symbol”. They see mom and dad. When being interviewed, CNN journalist, Anderson Cooper, (whose mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, the famous designer) said, “I could never understand why girls in jeans had my mother’s name on their butts.”
So how do you see yourself? We all know that anorexics look into a mirror and see obesity. Tragically, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” doesn’t work for them. Mirrors should probably be banned, or at least heavily taxed. Teenagers see a pimple and think everyone will notice. Little do they realize that their peers are so self-absorbed that they won’t see the pimple. As a matter of fact, they probably won’t notice that anyone else is in the room other than themselves.
A mother who thinks she is “helpful” may have a child who sees her as “interfering.” An office worker who prides himself on “taking charge,” may be viewed as an “overbearing boor.”
A bit of sensitivity to the self-image of others can be helpful. Waiting in line for a movie ticket, I overheard a young ticket taker being berated by an extremely irritated customer. When she left, I suggested that the young man could avoid such confrontations in the future if he would say, “You’re not old enough for a senior ticket are you?” rather than, “Do you want a senior ticket?”
I read people pretty well. If someone is smart, he doesn’t have to tell me how smart he is---I will know. Most people like friendly folks, and they avoid rude and nasty people. If you want no friends, cultivate your nasty side. It works every time, unless you meet a masochist. He will think you are terrific!
I’m not sure if it was an urban legend, but one of my favorite stories about Tucson, Arizona involves an establishment that sold extremely expensive pianos. The store was located near some railroad tracks. People in Tucson are quite casual and unassuming. Maybe it has something to do with 350 days of sunshine. But I digress. Clerks in the piano store were trained not to approach anyone who wanders in, unless the prospective customer sits on a piano bench.
One day, a young man, wearing a torn tee shirt and sloppy jeans wandered into the store. No one approached him until he sat down and began to run his fingers over the piano keys. At that, an experienced salesman said to a new hire, “You go take care of that guy. He’s probably just a bum who wandered in off the tracks.”
The rookie salesman approached the young man and politely asked, “May I help you?” The man replied, “I like this piano. How much does it cost?” “$45,000.00,” replied the clerk. “I’ll have my man pick it up in the morning,” said the young fellow. The customer was Paul McCartney.
So the moral of this tale is: Don’t be too hard on yourself, and be careful how you view others---unless they are nasty people. Then, “What you see is what you get.”
Esther Blumenfeld (“Here’s looking at you, Kid.”)
Friday, December 29, 2023 at 08:58AM