We Can't Control How Others Choose to See Us
Or, how the World card reminds us that self-perception is paramount
Rather listen to this newsletter than read it? Scroll to the end for the audio! This special feature is available to paid subscribers only. Thank you for your support!
I once had a student who actually tried to bribe me into giving him a passing grade in English 101.
It was several years ago, I was less confident and commanding as a professor, and I basically let him do whatever he wanted because, to be perfectly frank, I was afraid of him. He was rude, disrespectful, physically bigger than me and taking English 101 because his parole officer said he had to enroll at the community college to stay out of prison. So this guy sauntered into class every other week or so as he pleased, never bringing anything remotely resembling a school supply with him, sat in the back, distracted everybody around him who, much to my annoyance, thought he was so cool, and then left class when he got a phone call. Or bored. Whichever came first.
(Before you lose all respect for me as an educator, a couple albeit less scary versions of this student have walked through my doors since and I’ve laid down the law and ultimately dropped them from my course for failing to show up and do the work.)
So anyway, a literal week before the end of that school semester, this delinquent shows up to my faculty office and asks what he can do to pass the class.
“Well, George” (let’s call him George), I say, “there are 6 days left in the semester and you haven’t turned in a single assignment other than the in-class midterm you showed up to by accident. That means you’re at about 20% right now. Since you need 70% to pass and there are, again, only 6 days left in the semester, there’s really nothing we can do at this point.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to change your mind about my grade?”
“Positive.”
“Like, maybe if there’s something you need, you know, I can help you out and in return, you know, you could help me out?”
I furrowed my brow in a mixture of confusion and disgust. I didn’t think stuff like this happened outside of movies.
“I can’t think of anything I could possibly need from a student…I suggest you look into summer school if you don’t want to wait months to retake this course.”
He finally left my office and I spent the rest of that week looking over my shoulder and waiting to show up to a vandalized office, or worse. Luckily, I never saw him again.
But believe it or not, my most annoying misstep in this episode wasn’t failing to drop him according to college policy, or letting him detract from the education my other students were there to receive.
You know what it was?
Telling this story at a family dinner.
I thought I was simply regaling my family with another mildly entertaining but ultimately unmemorable installment of “You’ll never guess what my bonehead students tried to pull this week.” But when I finished my story, my uncle asked if he could come to campus.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “For what?”
“Can I come to your class with you? Just for your safety.”
I was mortified. That’s not why I told them the story. That’s all he got from it?
Here I was, a thirty-something-year-old adult, a full-time professor, a former attorney, a married woman, old enough to have mothered several children, and my uncle was still treating me like a child. He thought I was completely incapable.
(Now, I know what you’re thinking. He was just concerned for my wellbeing. It was sweet! And I agree with you to some extent. I did eventually convince myself that there was some kind of an expression of love in there somewhere.)
But the thing is, my family members do stuff like this all the time.
They tell me how to respond to entitled students, negligent landlords, rude strangers, customer service representatives. They tell me whether or not my doctor’s advice is medically sound or whether or not the way my stylist has been cutting my hair for years is optimal. They even give me directions to my new apartment that they haven’t even been to yet that’s in a neighborhood they don’t even know!
After each of these instances, I’d fume to my husband:
“What is it about me that oozes incompetence!? Am I a moron and just don’t know it? Why does everybody think I’m incapable of doing my job, or anything for that matter? What do I need to do to convince people I know what I’m doing!?”
After a party last year, at which a family friend started giving me unsolicited financial advice (or was it tax advice? I forget) and stated that I’m not investing my money properly if I don’t own a house yet, I started to realize what was happening.
That family friend has no real idea of who I currently am. She only knows me as the shy, wimpy eight-year-old she teased for being super book smart but neither assertive nor athletic enough for her taste. Of course that kid needs to be told what to do in her eyes!
To these people - my uncle, my parents, family friends and relatives who knew me as a child - I will always be the non-confrontational, timid little girl who would get teased and then come home and cry about it because she had spent all her energy hiding her hurt at school. The fascinating (and maddening!) part is that these iconic moments of childhood still remain our identities in the minds of many family members even though they have seen us grow into different people.
I don’t know how or why this happens. Why do some people tend to freeze their perception of us at any given moment of time and continue to see us in that way no matter how we grow or evolve?
This idea of a frozen tableau of identity reminds me of the World card in tarot. I often think of this tarot card as the “all eyes on me” card since the animals in the corners all seem to be focusing on the central woman, captured in a moment in time. Considering the World card from this particular angle, the laurel wreath that envelops the woman seems less like a victory wreath or even a healthy boundary she has erected herself and more like a container that freezes her in time to her observers.
The people around us perceive us through whatever filter they possess and make meaning around our identities in whatever way serves them in that moment. And what was driving me crazy about my uncle thinking I don’t know how to handle students, or my family friend thinking I don’t know how to handle money, was that the image these people have of me in their minds is not aligned with my own perception of me. And I was obsessed with making them see me correctly!
After a more recent episode of How Baby Annie Is Still the Most Incompetent Person We Know, I read in A Course in Miracles about how “discomfort is aroused…to bring the need for correction into awareness.” I thought back to the World card. What wisdom does this tarot card hold to help me move through my discomfort to the correction that will set me free?
Up to now, I thought the correction that needed to happen was in others’ perception of me. But the only corrections we can actually make are in ourselves. And what I needed to do was to let go of trying to control how others saw me.
We can’t control how people choose to see us.
Others’ perceptions of us may be grounded in reality, based on solid evidence, and in line with how we wish to be seen or even how we see ourselves. On the other hand, they may not be. And that’s just something we need to accept.
World leaders, celebrities, and CEOs have entire PR teams - professional spin doctors - on retainer to try to shift and shape the public’s perception of them, and even they can’t control whether people will choose to perceive them in their desired way or not.
The Roman philosopher Seneca once said:
What you think of yourself is more important than what others think of you.
The World tarot card, in the way it separates the central figure on that card from her onlookers, similarly reminds us that self-perception is paramount. Just as others can choose how they see us, we can choose which people’s opinions we put stock in and which we can simply disregard as unfortunately inaccurate, outdated, or not serving our best interests.
Here is a simple two-card tarot spread I use to help me focus on my self-perception. You can use it as a daily tarot spread for as long as you need, or just occasionally when some self-reflection is necessary.