Eye Opener

Please bear with me with these postings. I hope to get the hang of it eventually.

It has come to my attention that I am not nearly as smart as I once believed. I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but after review of the last year I can come to no other conclusion. The fact is that I took pride in being able to read people by making assumptions based on their actions and other various factors. Upon these assumptions I formed beliefs about people that are not even close to being accurate. Sure I could pick out the small unimportant details that most people would label as random, but the assumptions I made on larger issues were way off the mark. Now me being the stubborn guy that I am tries to fix all the problems I have with what I believe is right. Most of my problems dealt with relationships regarding my faith, family, and friends. In allll of my wisdom, I began to set things right in my eyes. I was bold because I thought I knew the truth. I thought I understood the people around me completely and that they understood me. Now looking back on what I have done I can only see how wrong I was. I never fully expressed myself to them, but more importantly I didn't take the time to really understand them. I was blinded by pride and arrogance. I became confused when my "fool proof" plan didn't work out. I laugh at myself now because of how much I had overlooked. How in any "relationship" can one make choices for both parities involved? Relationship is defined as a state involving mutual dealings between people. I went with what I knew because I was right, instead of coming to an understanding based on what we felt was best. The best intentions can be easily side track, but I think that's why we have relationships to keep those intentions in check. I bulldozed my way through the people I cared about destroying what we had. Now I have tried to back off, taking the foot off the gas. It is about the we, us, and our instead of the I, me, and mine. Sounds so simple, but I get distracted so easily.