There was another dimension to my cousin’s house that made the experience particularly meaningful to me.
Years earlier, before my first uncle passed away, he arrived at our home early one morning.
He had been drinking and was still heavily under the influence.
He complained to his mother, my grandmother, that his son had insulted him the previous night while they were drinking.
My grandmother did not give the complaint much attention because he was still intoxicated.
Then he turned towards me.
“And you.”
I looked at him silently.
“Yes, you.”
He told me that his son, my cousin, hated me.
He said he did not know why. According to him, his son often complained that I was my grandmother’s favourite.
My uncle then explained that if I had sometimes observed behaviour from him that made me think he hated me, I should not assume that was how he genuinely felt. He said his son had been influencing him against me.
Then he said something important.
He told me that he had now observed things for himself.
He could see that I did not have a problem with anyone.
Then he told me:
Remain the way you are.
That was the end of the conversation.
Years later, the person whose house I helped build was that same cousin.
It would be easy to reduce this story to:
He hated me, but I helped him anyway.
But looking at it now, I think that would be too simple and perhaps unfair.
Hate is a very strong word.
My uncle used it, but he was describing what he believed was happening inside another person.
Was it really hate?
I do not know.
And perhaps there is a more fundamental question:
What exactly do we mean when we use a word like hate?
Humans use familiar words every day as though their meanings are obvious because everybody knows the words. But knowing a word is not necessarily the same as fully understanding what it describes.
This reminds me of the kind of questioning associated with Socrates. Familiar concepts could appear simple until someone was asked exactly what they meant. Something like courage could appear to be common knowledge until the meaning itself was examined.
Perhaps emotions deserve the same questioning.
What my uncle called hate might have involved resentment around the belief that I was our grandmother’s favourite.
It might have involved jealousy, competition, hurt or something more complicated.
Or perhaps it really was hate.
I cannot know.
Even if my cousin himself had told me that he hated me, another question would still remain:
Does being able to name an emotion necessarily mean that we fully understand what we are feeling?
Perhaps not always.
A person may use the word that seems closest to what they are experiencing at a particular moment. Over time, their actions may complicate what those earlier words appeared to mean.
But actions are not perfect windows into another person either.
Words can be misunderstood.
Actions can be contradictory.
People can change.
And sometimes, perhaps, people themselves do not fully understand everything happening within them.
So I cannot confidently say that my cousin hated me.
I can only say that hate was the word my uncle used to describe what he believed was happening.
But there was something else in that conversation that I now find even more interesting.
My uncle said that he had observed things for himself.
Perhaps there was a lesson in that too.
When people resent you, misunderstand you or mobilise others against you, there can be a strong temptation to defend yourself.
To explain yourself.
To prove that what is being said about you is wrong.
To convince people that they have misunderstood you.
But perhaps not every accusation requires a campaign of defence.
Sometimes there may be another option:
Remain the way you are.
Continue allowing your character to reveal itself through your actions over time.
If people have formed a particular understanding of who you are based on what they have heard from others, some may eventually begin comparing what they were told with what they observe for themselves.
If the two do not agree, questions may begin to emerge.
You may not need to destroy the union that has formed against you.
Perhaps parts of that union may begin to loosen naturally as individuals start reaching their own conclusions.
But there is a difficult part to this philosophy.
Time.
Misunderstandings do not necessarily disappear quickly.
They may survive for years.
Some people may eventually see something differently.
Others may never change their minds.
And that leads to an important distinction.
Remaining true to my character cannot simply become a strategy for eventually proving other people wrong.
If I am only behaving according to my values because I am waiting for the day when everyone finally realises that I was right, then their judgement still has power over me.
I would merely be defending myself in another way.
Perhaps remaining true to your character means remaining true to it even when there is no guarantee that anyone will eventually understand you.
If people eventually see things differently, let them arrive at that conclusion through what they observe for themselves.
If they do not, your character still remains yours.
That brings me back to the person whose house I helped build.
Whatever my cousin might once have felt about me, what should that have meant for the person I chose to be?
Should I respond according to what I had once been told about him?
Or should I respond according to the person I believed myself to be?
That returned me to something my mother had taught me when I was still in primary school:
Do not allow other people’s behaviour to determine your own.
Perhaps character is partly about that.
My character remains mine even when another person behaves badly towards me.
What another person does may influence the boundaries I establish.
It may determine how close I allow that person to come.
It may change the kind of relationship that remains possible.
But it does not have to determine the kind of person I become.
That does not mean accepting abuse.
It does not mean remaining in destructive relationships.
It does not mean living without boundaries.
There is a difference between protecting myself from another person and allowing that person to redefine my character.
If somebody’s cruelty makes me cruel, their cruelty has reproduced itself through me.
If somebody’s resentment causes me to abandon generosity where generosity is still possible, then their behaviour has changed something in me too.
Perhaps that is one of the more difficult forms of personal responsibility.
I am responsible not only for how I treat other people, but also for deciding how much authority their behaviour should have over the person I become.
So perhaps the real question is:
Can I protect myself from what another person does without becoming what their behaviour invites me to become?
All those years earlier, my uncle had told me:
Remain the way you are.
Perhaps he was telling me something larger than either of us realised at the time.
Do not spend your life trying to control what everybody thinks about you.
Do not make every misunderstanding a battle that has to be won.
Do not make another person’s resentment the architect of your character.
Remain true to who you are.
Let people observe.
Let time pass.
Some may eventually see things differently.
Some may not.
But either way, your character remains your responsibility.
Years later, when his son needed safer shelter, I had a choice.
I could respond according to something I had once been told about how he might have felt about me.
Or I could respond according to the values I believed should remain mine regardless of what he felt.
Perhaps helping to build his house was one way of trying to do exactly what my uncle had told me all those years earlier:
Remain the way you are.
Join the conversation
How do we remain true to our character when others misunderstand or mistreat us, without turning that commitment into another attempt to prove them wrong?
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