In an instant...

The world we live in is an instantaneous world. We want everything to be done instantaneously. Technology has allowed us to receive information instantaneously through fascimile and email. Competition has resulted in greater efficiency in the retail sector which results in quicker services in order to give consumers greater satisfaction. We all want instantaneous gratification from the increasing stress which is being burdened onto us by this demanding society.

We apply thise same type of thinking into all our relationships. We tend to judge people extremely quickly. We form a view of people within the first few seconds of meeting them. If we see a stain on a person's shirt, we will jump to the conclusion that the person is a messy person who is not able to take care of themselves. However, maybe in reality, the person is actually a very tidy person and the stain is due to a cumbersome neighbour who bumped into the person and spilled some tea onto the shirt. If we see a guy with his hand up a 6 year old girl's skirt, we will form the view that the guy is a paedophile. But if we know that the reason why his hand was up her skit was that he was trying to remove a deadly spider that crawled up her legs, we will see him as a hero. Unfortuantely for us, we have already formed our judgement of that person striaght away at the instant we laid an eye on that person (eg at the moment when we see the stain or when we see the hand up the skirt), and we will never know the true reasons behind that person's actions.

And why do we continue to do this? Maybe because of the society we live in, we have the capacity to meet so many different people through all sorts of avenues, like work, social clubs or the internet. If we formed an instant bad impression of a person when we first meet them, we will not be bothered to pursue a deeper understanding of that person, as we have the opportunity to meet other people who we can "click" in the first instance. Furthermore, due to the heavy demands that other areas of life have on our time, we will not give priority to forming relationships with people who we don't have a good impression against. Therefore, our view of a person is the view we have formed in the first instance.

The problem does not stop there. If our relationships with others are based on first impressions, we may form a view of a person that is totally different to what that person actually is. And because we are so busy, we will not have time to develop the relationship beyond that initial impression and we will be having this false knowledge of that person throughout our life. However, sometimes this impression will be corrected. For example, when something drastic happens, and we need to rely on a friend who we perceive as helpful and knowlegable, we will then realise that person is not able to help us because that person is not as capable or as willing to help as we first thought. When we realise that all the relationships in our lives are based on false instanteous judgments, we will realise how little we know the people in our lives, and how little they know about us. This is why we are constantly in a state of loneliness and depression as we realise that noone understands us, not even our closest partner, and we don't understand anyone at all.

Should we change the way we form relationships? We may want to exercise more patience on others, and learn to understand them before we dismiss them from our lives. But in reality, we are constrained by this instaneous world. We are constrained by time and by our daily demands. We may want to spend time to get to know a person, but that person may be too busy or may already formed an instanteous impression of us and decided not to spend any time with us. Even if we want to change the way we form relationships, we are faced with so much constraints that we will feel frustrated which will spiral into a state of loneliness and depression as we realise that we are not able to understand others better and that noone is willing to understand us, not even our closest partner.

Is there a way out? Maybe there is an instant button we can press to change everything...