Perceptions and Reality Checks

By Samantha Scholfield

I went to my ten-year high school reunion this last weekend, and had a great time - a fantastic time. I also never expected to write that sentence and mean it. High school had its golden moments, but for the most part, I would wake up everyday praying to a God I don’t believe in to make it go faster so that I could graduate and get to college, where life would be perfect. :-) Ha! My ten-year reunion was not a subject that inspired me to create screenplays of what it would be like; in fact, I rarely thought about it. But I’m really glad I went. It rocked. And as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who prayed for time to go by more quickly between 14 and 18. The most interesting part of the weekend was a conversation I had with a girl I admired then, admired from afar on Facebook in recent years and, after actually catching up in person, very much admire her and the life she’s made now.

She was (and still is) one of the kindest, most likable, great people I’ve ever met, and I never heard anyone say a bad thing about her, ever — which was huge at our rather gossipy school. Everyone loved her — the cool kids, the cooler kids, the jocks, the nerds and everyone in between. And this last weekend, she told me that high school was lonely for her, that she didn’t feel like she had close friends, that she’d always admired me and that she’d always thought I was so popular and cool - as in, cooler than her. This was the exact opposite of how I perceived myself. WTF? We had a good laugh — mostly in relief that those years are behind us and somewhat because it’s so stupid how much time we spent lamenting how we thought we were perceived then, when what we thought was obviously not even close to how others saw us. I find it very interesting how our personal perceptions of ourselves were (are?) so vastly different than how others perceived us.

Clearly, and thank God, we’ve all grown up since then and have a much better handle on who we are. However, going to my high school reunion made me think that it’s worth examining (on a regular basis) our perceptions of ourselves and how we want to be perceived, and making sure that those two match. Sure, we never have complete control over how we’re perceived — everyone else is viewing us through their own filters, made up of experiences they’ve had, what intimidates them, what scares them, and what they like or don’t like. But if we set out to outwardly advertise our personalities (and us) with our actions, how we talk, our choice in appearance (clothes, accessories, make-up, jewelry, hair), we can get a long way towards making sure our outside personas match who we are inside (at least as much as work dress codes and public nudity laws allow us). If we don’t take care to be ourselves and take pride in how we’re being perceived, the chances of us being mis-understood are much higher, and when we don’t express ourselves and hide behind what we think others will want to see, we’re doing everyone a disservice. It’s way better to rock it and be ourselves.

Then, if we don’t get along with someone (i.e. in a dating situation, to tie it back to PickV.com), it’s not because we’re hiding our true selves and they can tell — it’s real; likewise if we really click with someone. In high school, I definitely didn’t match my inside me to my outside me for fear of looking dorky or by being judged. A part of this is a function of my being an immature teenager, a part of it is not knowing fully who I was then, and a big part was wanting to be liked and wanting to “fit in”, whatever that means. My fingers are crossed that another ten years show me that I’m not currently pulling any of the same hiding acts and that I’m now successfully matching my outside and inside me, because that’s what I try to do. But who knows? I thought I had it figured out then too. :-) Yours in reality checks on memory lane, S

(Image by gchorus)

Notes

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