A few years ago I wrote a piece about a woman I met while working who threw me for a loop by commenting on how the media had invented the whole “holocaust thing”. The basis of the whole piece was how surprised I was when those words came out of her mouth. You know, how my perception of her was so different than reality.
I thought of that today as I was sitting in that little room they put you in at the Dr’s. Office. I saw the business card that lists all the Dr’s. there and noticed there only being one or two with what you would call “American names”. I then started thinking about people that wouldn’t even consider seeing this one or that one because of the Dr’s. ethnicity. I also thought about how wrong we can be about people’s feelings on the subject.
I can’t say what everyone I know thinks about every subject that enters all of our lives but I naturally assume that their beliefs on most social issues are in the same vane as mine. I’m always surprised when I find out their take on something is the complete opposite of mine. Some issues are easier to deal with than others of course. For instance, I’m totally for gay marriage. I wouldn’t think of disassociating myself from someone just because they don’t agree with me on that. The same goes for gun control. I’m all for the idea, though I’m also realistic, of taking every gun in the world and destroying them. I’ve got a great many friends that own guns and, again, I can live with that. I’ve got my reasons for not wanting guns around and they have theirs for owning them.
On the other hand there are things that would make me not be around someone because of their beliefs. Racism is the obvious issue that brought this whole thing into my head, I’ll sometimes meet someone and think that this is someone I could develop some sort of relationship with like the woman I spoke of at the top of this post. Then out of the blue comes some statement that just blows me away and I wonder, how did I miss that?
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