Hi, I’m Sam,
Are you scared to
be the villain in a story?
Even when we
don't consciously think about it, everything we do or say can be seen, heard,
or interpreted from a particular POV and the powerless thing is that we often
don't decide or instruct what POV to look at them from. It is not within our
power to dictate what angle people should look at things. And as a result of
that, we may not appear as spotless as we'd wish to be in every situation with
our involvement. All you can do is explain yourself if you want to but the fact
that you're not explaining yourself to a robot means that the individual still
has the right to decide what POV to understand your explanation.
I've been seeing
the phrase "2 truths can exist" often lately and I don't think I want to
entirely agree or disagree with it. In a situation, you may end up hurting
someone but that wasn't your intention, it doesn't disregard the fact that the
other person was hurt as a result of what you did or didn't do. I don't think
we can completely put ourselves in someone else's shoes and this is not me presenting
disregard towards Empathy. I also think being in someone's shoes is very
different from seeing things from that person's perspective. Someone
understanding, reacting, or saying something from a particular perspective is a
result of years of experiences with different things in their lives which you
may not completely understand by "trying" to momentarily put yourself
in their shoes. When you momentarily try to put yourself in someone else's
shoes, you might get an idea why someone is the way they are but you can never
completely understand why they are the way they are because you haven't lived
their life.
A few months
back, an acquaintance reached out to me to ask if I had the contact of any
house agent and that the situation was urgent - he needed to move out of his
current place ASAP. I told him I had deleted the numbers of the ones I had
before I got my place but just to be helpful, I suggested that I'd ask my
landlord if he could help out because this was the first time this person was
asking me for something and I just wanted to be helpful. I reached out to my
landlord and he said he would send pictures and videos of the apartments
available to me so I could forward them to the person who needed them. When I
got the pictures and videos of the apartment, I didn't like the place because
it looked small and still under construction, so I asked my landlord for more
options. This person reached out again asking me for updates and I told him my
landlord sent some pictures but it looked small and still under construction,
he requested to see the pictures and video and I sent them to him. He wasn’t
exactly thrilled but he didn’t hate it either so he begged me to go see the
place in person because he wasn’t in town at the time and just maybe the apartment
might look better in person and they could give a definite timeframe for the
apartment to be completed.
I went to see the
apartment for him after work the next day and it looked exactly as it did in
the pictures, small. I took better pictures and videos myself and sent them to
him but he still wanted the apartment and my landlord was not lucky finding
other available places. He wanted the apartment to be kept for him until he
returned in a few days but someone else was interested in the same apartment and
was ready to pay immediately. He was told they couldn’t keep the apartment for
him, if he wanted the apartment he would either pay for it in full or part
payment. At this point there was no point for me to still be in the mix because
there was a lot of back and forth, so gave him my landlord’s contact so they
could speak directly and decide on what to do. They were still giving me
updates anyway.
The next day he
called me and told me he sent half payment for the apartment so they could keep
it for him, he would come and see the place immediately after he got into town.
The next time he got in contact with me was to tell me he saw the place that it
was too small for him and his properties, and he will not be taking the
apartment anymore. I sympathized with him and asked him if he had asked for a
refund of the part payment he made and he said yes. Two days later he sent me
an angry voice message telling me he hadn’t gotten his refund and that my
landlord told him that the owner of the house had used his money so they would
only be able to refund him after they found another person to take the house
and make payment and if he doesn’t get his money the next day or so he would
get the police involved. I couldn’t respond to the message because I didn’t
know exactly what to say or do. He didn’t sound like he needed me to sympathize
with him and frankly, he sounded like he was blaming me as well for the current
situation and like I am supposed to make everything right and I definitely
wasn’t going to threaten my landlord on my behalf of someone who probably
doesn’t see me as a friend.
That angry voice
message was the last communication I had with him. One day his thought crossed
my mind and I realized he had removed me from his IG, I couldn’t see his online
status on WhatsApp, so I figured he might have cut digital ties with me and I’m
sure he probably has every right to because of how the whole thing went down. I
only have power over my actions and words and not over how someone sees or
understands them.
Sometimes being
the villain in someone’s story does not mean you did something bad or that
you’re a terrible person; it may simply be that there was something you did or
didn’t do that would’ve made the whole situation a lot different and in the
whole thing, you still have your right to see things from your own POV while
the other person or persons have their right to their own POV.