PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT

It is 7:30 A.M. Sunday morning in the Johnson household. The family begins its weekly routine of getting ready for church. Each member understands that getting to Sunday school on time requires leaving the house by 9:00 A.M., but how they respond to that information differs a good deal.

Dad hops right out of bed, does his exercises, showers, dresses, and goes directly downstairs, where he sits peacefully, sipping a cup of coffee as he reads the morning paper.

Jack, the teenage son, doesn't stir. He lies in bed, getting that last minute of shut-eye from staying up late on Saturday night. When Dad shouts upstairs for him to get up and get dressed so that the family can leave for church on time, he mumbles that he will be ready when it's time.

His sister, Suzie, is already up. Soon she has her bed made and is busily fixing her hair and putting on the outfit she picked out the night before.

In the master bedroom, Mom is having a tough time deciding what to wear. Add to this the fact that on Saturday she said she would make a nice breakfast for the family—but now she realizes she won't have time for that. She knows, too, that Dad is downstairs expecting her at any minute to come down to prepare the bacon and eggs she promised. She hollers, "I don't think I'm going to be able to fix breakfast. Can you guys get something on your own? Then we can go out for a nice lunch after church. Will that be OK?" Without waiting for an answer, she goes back to the task of trying to look her best.

It is now 9:05 A.M. Dad and Suzie are already in the car and have backed it out of the garage and halfway down the driveway. Jack yells. "Mom, they're in the car. We better go." He pulls on his shoes as he heads out the door. Mom is right behind him. but she has to run back into the house to get her Bible. Now they are on their way. It is 9:09 A.M.

There is a strained silence in the car. Finally the quiet is broken. "Is everything all right?" Mom asks.

After a few moments, Dad says matter-of-factly. "I hate walking into our Sunday school class late every week. Don't you think that just once you could be ready to leave on time?"

Mom responds, "The class doesn't begin on time anyway, so why should we be there early?"

Then Suzie says softly from the backseat, "But my class begins on time and I go in late every Sunday. I would rather not go at all than to have to be late. Everyone looks at me, and I don't like that."

Finally Jack speaks up. "Hey, I like it just the way we're doing it. You only need to be there for the last Fifteen minutes. I don't like hearing that Sunday school teacher go on and on anyway." As he speaks the car pulls into the church parking lot. So begins another worship experience for the Johnson family.

We Are All Different

Maybe you can identify with the Johnsons. Maybe your family, too, gets upset because different individuals in the family fail to meet the expectations of the others or because different individuals fail to respond to a situation the way the others wish they would.

Each member of the Johnson family had his own routine for getting ready to leave for church. No one deliberately set out to upset the others. But the way each person responded to the task made it likely that a tense environment rather than a loving one would develop.

It didn't have to be that way. Yes, people do respond in completely different ways to similar situations. No two people and their reactions are exactly alike. And yes, though we are distinctive, we have predictable ways of responding. Conflicts do indeed develop when the natural preferences of one person clash with the natural preferences of the other. But that does not mean that conflict will necessarily result when individuals with different preferences are together. No, we can improve our awareness and acceptance of differences, and we can learn to respond to others in a positive rather than a negative way. It is the chief message of this book to show how this can be done.

But before we deal with the specifics of learning how to respond to others in a loving way, we need to understand some basic facts about perception, motivation, needs, and values.

Perceptual Differences

Colors. Suppose you were color blind and could only distinguish objects in terms of black or white. On the other hand, your partner had functional eyesight and had no trouble distinguishing colors. Let's imagine the two of you were shopping for a new car, and the salesperson directed you to a bright red sports car. From your color-blind perspective, the car would look black, not red. Your partner, however, would see the car in its true color, bright red. Which of you would be right? In terms of perspective, both of you. You would "see" the car as black. Your partner, whose eyes could distinguish red from black, would "see" it as being red, its actual color. Here the difference in perception would be tied to a difference in physiology. Your eyes would be physically unable to make a distinction your partner's eyes could.

A glass. Some perception-based differences are based on projection, the attributing of one's own ideas, feelings, and attitudes to external sources. Consider figure 1. How would you describe the glass? Give your initial, spontaneous reaction.

Some people see the glass in terms of fullness and some see it in terms of emptiness, but strictly speaking, even though it could be said that they are projecting onto the glass an inner assessment of things, there is no "wrong" response to the question. For what is being asked for in this instance is a person's initial response to the glass. All four responses can be normal within a group. In fact, the danger to the personality lies in denying people the right to an honest, candid reaction to what they see.

Yet because there is such a tremendous pressure in modern American culture to see things in terms of fullness—the presumed "positive" response—when a group of Christian psychologists was asked to give its response to the picture 100 percent chose the "half full" response.

A report card. A similar kind of projection occurs with report cards. How would you assess the report card in figure 2? Give your initial response. When this report card was shown to forty-four middle class high school students and they were asked to give their initial response to it, the results were most interesting. More than 85 percent noticed the B in biology. This response was revealing and...