Standards Of Evaluation

A friend of mine, actually a 12 year old girl, had invited a class mate of hers home to fo homework and share lunch. My friend's mom had cooked an elaborate meal for get daughter and daughter's friend.

The friend was supposed to cone at 9AM on Sunday. But the friend, along with her mom, came at noon. And they had not called to say that they would be delayed. My friend's mom had been waiting for her daughter's friend to come so she could go out to see her doctor. Because of the 3 hour delay, she had to cancel the doctor's appointment. 

My friend, a very sweet girl, recounted what happened to me. 

When finally her friend came with her mom at noon, my friend's mom told them that she had been waiting for them since 9AM and that they should have called and informed of the delay. The guests, mother and daughter, felt very bad at being admonished - my friend could see it in their faces.

My friend told me that her mom is always like that. Very hard. My friend had felt very bad about her mom's behavior.

I asked my friend. Did she feel anything that her mom had cooked an elaborate lunch for her and her friend and that because of the delay her mom had missed the doctor's appointment? Her mom apparently has little time during the week for personal stuff, she works somewhere.

My friend told me she didn't realize that her mom had been affected in the first place. My friend is a person who understands only sweetness. Being sweet is character for her. And being harsh or hard is not good.

She reacted to the hurt in the visitors' face, she saw that. She reacted to the harsh comments of her mom, she heard that.

But the fact that the mom's personal stuff had gone awry was not obvious to her because that was not told. Her mom's face did not show her, mom's, pain. So my friend didn't know about that.

Character, I explained to my friend,  is not about just being sweet. 

Every human being thinks of what he has and proud of as what is most important in a human being.

If I am a sweet person and know that i am sweet and proud of it, then I evaluate every person on how sweet they are. Sweetness is what becomes most important to me in a human being.

If what i am proud of is my intelligence and integrity, then that becomes the most important thing to me. I evaluate people based on how much intelligence and integrity they have.

If I love taking care of people and if I am good at it, I evaluate everyone based on how caring they are.

And so on.

The standards of evaluation depend on each person's character.

Insensitivity to the unexpressed seems to be a hallmark of sweet people. Or, is it that when you are tuned off you don't hear what is not explicitly expressed? Then when someone doesn't hear you, not once, not twice, but often then you may conclude that they are not that into you.

My friend isn't that into her mother. 

And all these thoughts occurred to me just because the guests arrived 3 hours late!!