O wad some Power the giftie gie us
    To see oursels as ithers see us!
    It wad frae monie a blunder free us
    An foolish notion …
— Robert Burns, “To a Louse”
Have you ever run into a perception of you that seemed so stunningly at variance to your own self-perception that it left you in a quandary? I’m not talking simple judgment call sort of stuff (“You’re not as Xxxx as you think you are, you know,” or “Did you know Xxxx went out of fashion a decade ago?” or “I just don’t like the way you do Xxxx“). I’m talking serious mind-blowing cognitive dissonance sort of stuff (“Did you know you have a evil, glowing eyeball in your forehead?” or “I’ve told all my friends you’re the Antichrist because I truly believe you are,” or “Based on the evidence you are an evil, bitter, nasty fellow“).
It is … a puzzlement. To say the least. And even when you’re rock-bottom sure that there’s really nothing to that opinion, you keep glancing in the mirror anyway to see if you can spot that eyeball. Because assuming the other person isn’t simply insane, obviously there’s some basis for that judgment call, no matter how outré. If you could just figure out what it was … or if it’s something you can change … or even want to … and, ultimately, what you do aside from that to deal with it.
And, yes, I realize that there’s a certain measure of the US “Why do they hate us?” thing there, but that’s really not what I’m talking about.
Just dealing with a local patch of surreality.
I run into this… more than I’d like.
I’d be more worried about it if the people dropping these bombs could agree with each other. To my detractors, I’m an elephant to a blind man, I guess. 🙂
I made that reply all about me, but then, I’m a narcissist. 🙂
Well, I did preface it as “Have you ever …” so that sort of invites the narcissism.
Oh, yeah.
I usually try to think of it as transference and move on with my day.
“I am rubber and you are glue; what you way bounces off me and sticks to you.”
I have a no-doubt-unhealthy over-concern about what others think of me. Especially those I have some connection to (as opposed to, say, random goofball strangers). Ah, well.