On First Impressions and Misjudging Others

You know how they say that the first impression you make matters? If you really think about it, how many of your friends were people whose first impression was negative? It’s only once you get to know them better that you realize that they’re all right and that the negative vibes they gave out at the beginning were misleading. Actually, maybe there was nothing wrong with the vibes they gave out. What was wrong was actually the sensor you carry inside of yourself, since it’s calibrated against your unique past experiences, and judgments.

Yet despite knowing this, how many times have we judged someone based entirely on what we’ve heard about them from others? So in this sense, not only are we receiving data that is calibrated against a different setting than ours, but our own receiver works on that data as well so that the data is doubly distorted.

Living in the small Kemeni society such as ours, where it’s easy to know so much about someone without ever meeting them thanks to the highly fibre-cable-like networks set within the society, let’s break out of the norms and actually take a minute to listen to each other before we start making judgments based on third parties (or our own first impressions).

Once I was walking around and I saw two rows of green chairs. All the chairs were facing front, except one of them on the front row that was facing backward. My first instinct was to orient the chair such that it was facing the front as well. But then it struck me, that’s how we’re built up as a society. Anybody who decides to change the order of social protocol is either forced to change their mind or is shunned. However, having that chair facing the chair right behind it is how we can actually speak face-to-face with each other, and open the floor for conversations. And that’s how we get a diverse and rich society instead of a single-bland-flavored one.

Ending with a quote, “There’s a reason behind every person. There’s a reason why they are the way they are. Stop judging and start listening.”