Condescending

Let me put my hands up and admit that I do this – a lot!   In fact, a heck of a lot.  But not to just anyone, mind you.  When someone has won my disdain, then I start thinking of them as [sorry, these are strong words] – morally stupid. I mean not intellectually inferior, but lacking in judgement, and common sense.  I then tend to talk to them sarcastically, and treat them as if they are lacking in basic understanding. This is such an ugly habit, I am so embarrassed to have to admit this. This is something that I am consciously working on this year, to remain respectful to everyone, regardless of however impressed I might be, or not be, by their character. Once again it comes down to boundaries, and it is about learning to love people within the limits of the appropriate boundaries to our interaction.  What I mean is this. There are some people that I will only ever interact with at work, or at church. While I am at work, or at church with them, my goal is to learn to be perfectly respectful, also kind, gracious, etc, definitely not condescending. I already know that these friendships would never be escalated beyond church or work, so it is a matter of patience, just being kind to everyone within the context of our interaction. Sometimes I will have to mentally put on the mindset of patience as I am about to go to work, or church, to have to deal with these people if they are particularly difficult. I have to learn not to respond in kind, which has never been a strength of mine, usually I give as good as I get – and then some! But no longer, in striving after Christlikeness, I have to learn how to bite my tongue and unfailingly extend grace and kindness.

So that is one expression of condescension in which I have been undeniably guilty. And yet sometimes people who have not won my disdain still accuse me of being condescending, which fills me with genuine surprise.   I have just been reading examples of condescending behaviour, and wondering how I might have accidentally triggered this.
– Exaggerated excitement at other people’s achievements? You know when people say something like “Well done!!!!” as if they are congratulating small little you for something not that great, that if they achieved it would barely merit a blink of an eyelid? Once again, I have to put my hands up, and admit that I might be guilty of that too.  I am just going to be candid here: personally speaking, I have been blessed with tons of initiative (because I asked God directly for it, actually I claimed it, not joking) and I am extremely prolific and I do stuff all the time. These are the kinds of things I do all the time: I write books, admittedly short ebooks most of the time, but some of these added together add up to full-length books, I write blog posts all the time, I set up new businesses, I set up entirely new websites (then often forget all about them while chasing the next achievement!) By the grace of God I am an extremely productive person, and I simply love being like this. To be candid, I know that other people are often not like this. And I just assume rightly or wrongly, that if someone is not like me then they probably need more encouragement. Which is perhaps why my encouragement may come across as being patronising.

– Sometimes I have paid people genuine compliments, and most of the time it is fine, and people are happy. Recently I saw a lady in the street, wearing a striking neon green beret with a multi-coloured scarf that picked out that same green colour. I told her I loved the combination, and she almost blushed with happiness at the compliment, and I felt so happy that I had told her that I liked it. Other times, my compliments have been equally sincere, yet people somehow interpret them as being “patronising”. Once someone criticised me, completely unfairly, about something. Wanting to keep the peace, I reached into the depths of my soul, and produced the most sincere “sorry” I could find. And yet this person still called my sorry “patronising”. Seriously, the mere memory of that incident just makes me roll my eyes. This particular person seemed determined to find my behaviour patronising, even though there was not the slightest element of condescension or superiority in my thinking regarding her. Knowing that you are better at something than someone else does not mean that you think that you are “superior”. And yet this is what people sometimes parse as being patronising.  Because honestly, there were things in which she excelled over me too, and I would just defer to her greater talent without letting it diminish my sense of self.

You know what? Perhaps there have been times when I have been careless, that is, besides the times when I have given myself over to cold disdain in a completely unChristlike way. However to be perfectly candid the truth is that I know that with my initiative, and my go-getting ways, I intimidate many people. And in my experience such people are more likely to deduce a condescension in my behaviour which is genuinely not there.

• Explaining things to people that they already know:  How do you navigate this minefield? Once again to be candid, I am a reader. I read a heck of a lot. The truth is that my mind needs constant feeding, so I literally read lots of different news media as well as different interesting blog posts every day. If something is general knowledge, then it makes sense to assume that someone would know it. The irony is that I hate being patronised. Especially concerning things that are very general knowledge OR things that a reasonably intelligent person might have been able to work out OR – my pet hate (actually, they are all my pet hates!) – when people try to explain to me the meaning of something that is written down (in English!) Unless we are talking about a highly specialised topic, my reading comprehension in English is excellent, but thank you! (Being the huge reader that I am!) And yet I understand the struggle. If something is a little bit more niche, perhaps, then how do you subtly explain it without making it out that you think the other person does not know it?
• -Invalidating people’s feelings – ie telling people to calm down, not take it so seriously –  this can also be an expression of condescension according to the articles I just read.  OK, well how about this true scenario, which actually happened, (once again, an eye-rolling memory): You interact with someone, and it has always been perfectly fine, perfectly civil, with courtesy and respect for boundaries mutually extended. There have never been any explosive demonstrations of temper or angry arguments. And then this person merely discovers something about you, and then in a discussion which would previously have been perfectly civil and respectful, they start getting angry, upset, accusing you of…things, in a way which is not warranted by the discussion at all, (like literally, not at all!) and they seem determined to create an angry argument out of thin air, just for the sake of it?
  In that case might it be warranted to say “Calm down!”  In that case, are you going to insist that this person is “entitled to their feelings”? As I say this actually happened, and please take my word for it, this is not a case of “two sides to every story”. No, in this particular instance there is just one completely undeniable side to the story, and it was so glaringly transparent to me what had caused that out-of-character behaviour. Or what, is it acceptable to go around calling people “condescending” just because they have achieved things which make you feel threatened?

All that said, all of this is a bit academic because no-one has accused me of being “patronising” or “condescending” for year… – actually no, what prompted this post was the memory of someone calling me “condescending”, just over a year ago.  I have to admit that she had just won my disdain, and I was hovering on the precipice of full-blown sarcasm. However, her accusation came about only when she discovered certain things about me, things which I had deliberately hidden from her as I tend to deliberately hide them from people, because they tend to generate negative reactions. Which once again supports the idea that some of these accusations come from a place of insecurity in other people, and are not always a true reflection of my actual behaviour.  What I am trying to say is this: perhaps it is justified to go around throwing accusations at other people, perhaps that is something that people can on the whole get away with. However, I sincerely work so hard on my heart and so hard on my character, that I am just not available for people to casually throw accusations at. And I also don’t just grant people my disdain for nothing. Anyway, moving forward, my aim is to deal with the disdain altogether, so hopefully soon there will be very little reason for people to ever legitimately call me patronising or condescending.

PS, from reading this post it is probably really obvious that I have no patience for other people’s insecurities, especially when those insecurities get in the way of my own dreams and ambitions. In truth, I don’t have any patience for this, or I have not had any patience thus far. I am realising, not for the first time, that I need to learn to love people even above my dreams and ambitions, and learn to extend patience to everyone even when they are not behaving in a beautiful way.
People are the most precious thing on earth, in the sight of God. I have got to remember that my dreams and ambitions, which I claim to be God-given, are for the sake of serving other people, not the other way around. OK yeah, I can’t really claim it is for other people. It is for myself, my own self-actualisation, but in a non-selfish way, like eating.