Wake up!

Happy Radar?  http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/happy-radars/   I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, ‘Never judge a book by it’s cover’, but I’d like to add, never judge another by your own cover.  Sometimes we see people and we project our own emotions onto them and then assume they must feel like we are feeling at that moment.  If we look beyond our own emotions, step outside our own heads and view the situation from above, maybe we can better appreciate the true emotion coming from someone else.   There is one instance that I will never forget where I was completely wrong.  My friend and I were coming back from a trip to Tanzania..the flights were really long, we were really kinda grumpy and tired..we were sitting in the airport waiting for another flight and basically just people watching.  Too tired to do anything else.  We were watching these two little boys and their dad and basically judging the whole situation.  The boys were totally out of control,  the dad seemed unhappy and wasn’t trying to get them to behave and he seemed to be indifferent to the people around him and both my friend and I were having a little unspoken, eyeball type of conversation with each other about what an obnoxious family that must be….we both almost started crying when we saw a young woman with down’s syndrome come off the plane and these little boys so excited and happy to see their sister..leaping up and down, hugging her…the dad was so happy too and there was instant peace.  They became like little angels, instantly caring about their sister.  It was like getting a bucket of cold water splashed in our faces.  Wake up! Not everything is as it seems.  I do feel the more I pay attention without my own emotions getting in the way, the stronger my radar is to receiving true emotion from other people, whether happy or not.   Developing your own radar for others emotions really involves losing oneself and ones ego.  Thank you airport family for setting me straight!