I was at a BRT stop one evening, maybe four years ago. I had just closed from work and was taking the bus home and joined the queue of waiting people. I brought out my phone and began to listen to music while checking out my social media feeds. Suddenly the girl in front of me in the queue who at the time I estimated to be in her early to mid-twenties, asked if my phone was the latest Samsung Galaxy at the time. I responded that it was a Techno Phantom A Plus and not a Samsung.
The next thing I knew, this lady hissed loudly, sized me up from head to toe and turned around in a huff. I was in too much of a shock to respond and even if I was not, I was unsure I would have found the right words. Apparently having a Techno meant I was no longer worthy of courtesy or respect. The obvious disappointment and subsequent behaviour was astounding, indeed. She clearly now looked at me as beneath her, a broke guy, as only a moment before that she was all smiles, nice and warm. Na wa oh!
I had a similar experience years ago when a lady I was interested in made it clear that she could not date me, and her reason was that I was, to put it mildly, broke. In fact, she declared boldly that since I was a graphic designer, I would be broke and forever be so. To her, anyone who was into design was going nowhere fast and would be poor all their lives. Suffice to say this brought my plans to woo her crashing to the round and I must confess I also began to give her a wide berth as regards even being friends. While I still stand by my recent article on the need to not see women as evil because they want to be comfortable in life and settle down with men who have lots of money, the fact that a person considers another a failure or less than they are because they do not have what this other person sees as important or the best, is not right at all. That is quite insulting.
I think of this and I am reminded that sometimes we are too quick to assume too much about people. We size them up and think we know them through and through, what they earn, where they live and what they can afford and yet we could be wrong. A friend of mine who works in a bank told me one of the biggest account holders he knows in their bank wears cargo shorts and puts on slippers anytime he wants to make a transaction. If you were to see that man walking along the road, you would have no idea of his net worth and could easily assume it to be very little and yet the opposite is the case.
People see a lady who doesn’t want to wear makeup and they condescend saying she is ugly and suffering and yet it could be her choice to not do it. They see a man who is using a phone with a broken screen and so they say he must be poor and struggling. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes this is truly the case but sometimes, like me in the first example, this person may have other interests and priorities that have taken their time and so to discount them would be far from wise.
Bottom line, be you and enjoy what you want but do not go around thinking less of people and putting them down over your own personal views and standards. You’d be surprised that there are people who view you the same way too.
