182. KISS AGAIN! PART 9 DEFENSIVE REFLECTION vs. OBJECTIVE REFLECTION (182)

One day while musing over the fact that Joseph never spoke to me again, a curtain lifted inside my mind.  And as this next thought arose from wherever forgotten memories lie comatose inside our brains, my fingers froze on the keyboard:

Once Joseph and I left the cloakroom, I never spoke to him, either.

Unfortunately, defensiveness grabs on to certain memories, while blocking others.  Each time fear, fury or devastation consumes the mind, no space is left to consider how the other guy must feel.  As long as Joseph's stony silence consumed my thoughts, the complex nature of his feelings remained on the cutting room floor.  In short:

Every true story has three sides.

My sad side.

Your sad side.

And the whole truth

Which offers up

A factual combination

Of both sides

"All we want are the facts, ma'am."  (No judgmental presumptions)                           Sgt. Joe Friday—Dragnet In retrospect, my devastation ran so deep that I forgot to consider whether Joseph's unhappiness equaled mine.  Though his fury was evident, who's to say that his misery had not been as invisible as my own?  If I'd dismissed Joseph's sense of loss, how likely is it that he'd dismissed mine?  Misperception is a killer.  Public enemy number one.

Defensive thought processes and objective thought processes are opposites.

When next we meet, I'll fill you in on facts, which I'd not understood until one Ah Ha! moment led to more.  And as a bundle of facts, which had not made sense for decades, filed out of my memory bank, one by one, a bigger picture, which I'd never considered, shaped up—suggesting that Joseph's reactions had been as complex as mine ...