hello, are you there?
Have you ever had the distinct impression that certain people are deliberately avoiding you?
How can you tell? When the usually long MSN conversations you have with someone suddenly reduce itself to brief and hurried greetings and messages; or when you have to wait days to receive a reply to your SMSs which ultimately forces you to call up that person; or when you need to send countless e-mails just so that particular person will be induced to write back to you.
What are the kind of reasons given? Some people may be too busy that they really have no time for themselves, much less to call up and chat with you - which they might perceived as a luxury; some people are contrained by a confluence of unfortunate events and circumstances, preventing them to keep in touch with others at a particular moment in time; some people are just not bothered or despised by your company, thus having to come up with one weak reason after the other for supposedly not being able to contact you; and some people just choose to remain silent, preferring to let others make the first contact.
Why are we so upset over it? Because we are hurt by their passiveness and couldn't-care-less attitude; because we felt that all of our effort to initiate contact have gone down the drain; because we expect them to at least return the favor; because we want to make them feel bad for ignoring us; because we want something else other than their replies and company.
Granted, we have every right to feel uptight and offended if a certain someone happened to ignore all our attempts to communicate him; but I guess we too are obliged to re-examine our true motives and intentions to initiate that contact in the first place.
I believe that if we truly have faith in that particular person, no matter how often he or she ignores your e-mails, MSN messages or SMSs, we will keep on sending them in hopes that eventually they can bring themselves to reply.
If our intentions are pure, then we will be able to muster enough faith and patience to do that without succumbing to doubts and ill thoughts. After all, it takes a whole lot of courage to believe in someone rather than to doubt them.
But if that person chooses to ignore your attempts to contact him or her, then perhaps you should respect his decision and cease your efforts. It may be kinder to him/her and yourself to do that - you should know a lost cause when you see one.
Some people might abhor any attempts to read too much into a given situation and that one should always be willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. For them, it is too much to get all worked up just over the indifferent behavior of a single person.
I guess as much as it is proper and necessary for us to always be sensitive to the needs and intentions of our friends, it is equally important to learn when to respectfully back out if our friends felt that we are carelessly trespassing their personal space.
It all boils down again to the issue of trust and your true intentions - when it is too much that you should back out or when it is too little that you should move in.
Ignorance and concern each have their own suitable niche in any friendship and one should always be mindful of that.
But I suppose when you put the whole issue into perspective, it's not really the end of the world if one person decides to ignore you altogether; as long as you have exempted yourself from the blame and cleared your conscience, that should be good enough for you.
Besides, when one door closes, another door opens, right? For each person who have been hurt, they will always be another who have the ability to heal, another who can offer you refuge and comfort, another who can share your pain and frusfrations.
It is precisely in understanding the situation, putting it into perspective and taking the best course of action given the circumstances you are in which differentiates those who are in control of their emotions and those who let their emotions control them.
Having those emotions running unchecked in one's mind does not bode well for one's well-being; despair, resentment and angst are bad for one's soul.
It is detrimental to keep them in for too long because when it eventually comes out, it might get ugly.
How can you tell? When the usually long MSN conversations you have with someone suddenly reduce itself to brief and hurried greetings and messages; or when you have to wait days to receive a reply to your SMSs which ultimately forces you to call up that person; or when you need to send countless e-mails just so that particular person will be induced to write back to you.
What are the kind of reasons given? Some people may be too busy that they really have no time for themselves, much less to call up and chat with you - which they might perceived as a luxury; some people are contrained by a confluence of unfortunate events and circumstances, preventing them to keep in touch with others at a particular moment in time; some people are just not bothered or despised by your company, thus having to come up with one weak reason after the other for supposedly not being able to contact you; and some people just choose to remain silent, preferring to let others make the first contact.
Why are we so upset over it? Because we are hurt by their passiveness and couldn't-care-less attitude; because we felt that all of our effort to initiate contact have gone down the drain; because we expect them to at least return the favor; because we want to make them feel bad for ignoring us; because we want something else other than their replies and company.
Granted, we have every right to feel uptight and offended if a certain someone happened to ignore all our attempts to communicate him; but I guess we too are obliged to re-examine our true motives and intentions to initiate that contact in the first place.
I believe that if we truly have faith in that particular person, no matter how often he or she ignores your e-mails, MSN messages or SMSs, we will keep on sending them in hopes that eventually they can bring themselves to reply.
If our intentions are pure, then we will be able to muster enough faith and patience to do that without succumbing to doubts and ill thoughts. After all, it takes a whole lot of courage to believe in someone rather than to doubt them.
But if that person chooses to ignore your attempts to contact him or her, then perhaps you should respect his decision and cease your efforts. It may be kinder to him/her and yourself to do that - you should know a lost cause when you see one.
Some people might abhor any attempts to read too much into a given situation and that one should always be willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. For them, it is too much to get all worked up just over the indifferent behavior of a single person.
I guess as much as it is proper and necessary for us to always be sensitive to the needs and intentions of our friends, it is equally important to learn when to respectfully back out if our friends felt that we are carelessly trespassing their personal space.
It all boils down again to the issue of trust and your true intentions - when it is too much that you should back out or when it is too little that you should move in.
Ignorance and concern each have their own suitable niche in any friendship and one should always be mindful of that.
But I suppose when you put the whole issue into perspective, it's not really the end of the world if one person decides to ignore you altogether; as long as you have exempted yourself from the blame and cleared your conscience, that should be good enough for you.
Besides, when one door closes, another door opens, right? For each person who have been hurt, they will always be another who have the ability to heal, another who can offer you refuge and comfort, another who can share your pain and frusfrations.
It is precisely in understanding the situation, putting it into perspective and taking the best course of action given the circumstances you are in which differentiates those who are in control of their emotions and those who let their emotions control them.
Having those emotions running unchecked in one's mind does not bode well for one's well-being; despair, resentment and angst are bad for one's soul.
It is detrimental to keep them in for too long because when it eventually comes out, it might get ugly.
posted by wanaimran at
9:41 PM
1 Comments:
I am going through the same thing like this post. It is depressing but I am trying to control my emotions by not letting it control me. Thank you very much for this post/advice. Really grateful =)
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