she's crazy

Disclaimer: Lots of assumptions and generalizations in this post, it's just a few quick thoughts I wanted to get down before break.

When I first started dating my fiancé, I called him on the phone. A lot. I also emailed him. A lot. And IM'd him. A lot. I tried to get in touch with him every time I thought about him, and sometimes just because it seemed like it had been awhile since we talked. I would get on the phone and have nothing much more to say than, "Hi! I was thinking about you! How are you? I loooooooove you!"

Sometimes, he seemed less than thrilled about receiving my phone calls, and he rarely replied to my (multiple) emails a day. Looking back, it's probably because I was creepily obsessive, but at the time, I didn't really understand. That was how I wanted to be communicated with. Constantly. With fervor. I loved hearing every time someone thought about me. (As I said, creepy.) And if that was what I wanted, why didn't he work the same way?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot, the differences between people and situations, and how one person, who thinks they're making total sense looks like a nutcase to someone else. We saw it with Felicity and Rebecca, I've seen it in my own relationship... in fact, I see it everywhere.

I think there's a lot of "me-centric" thinking in the world, and assumptions that everybody acts the same way. I think one of the greatest benefits of the "systems perspective" that we've talked about is that it forces us a little more outside of our own personal view and into a wider world view, where maybe it becomes easier to start thinking about the sorts of factors that make us seem "crazy" to everyone else.

There is, always, a wider perspective. And yes, sometimes we need to drill down and concentrate on the details. But sometimes forcing ourselves to think broader also helps us recognize that what we want likely isn't what everyone else wants. And maybe shouldn't be what they want. Because maybe sometimes our motivations and values and backgrounds are so different, that when we can't understand why another person wants something different, it's not because they're wrong. It's because we all have different versions of right.