Never Seen Before

It’s fascinating to me how often I hear the words, or some variation of, “We’ve never seen this before.” As it’s almost always said with shock, eliciting fear and a call to action, I’ve realized we don’t often say the complete opposite, “Oh I’ve seen this before.” Guaranteed many, many, many situations, events, or challenges have been seen before. Maybe it’s the generalization that bothers me most. I’m opposed to words like always or never because it’s rarely true. No one always does something, there will be times when they don’t. No one never says the right thing, surely this is a lie. The human behavior side of me rests on believing people do the right things. A cynic I am not.

As a generational statement, the phrase is incredibly subjective. Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t. The start of WWI was thousands of people going “We’ve never seen this before”. Do you think by WWII people were suddenly saying “Oh, it’s fine, we’ve seen this before “. Eye roll.

On a slightly different note, family drama – at least in mine – is the result of unsupported mental health, trauma, and lack of adequate coping/communication skills. Basically everything. To protect the innocent and guilty, I won’t be slandering anyone on here – even if the truth does need to be told. Perhaps it’s not my story to tell, yet I will say one thing: when someone speaks up for themselves and emphatically stands behind their decision, I believe that’s the epitome of strength and healing. And it’s something we don’t often see or congratulate in the way it deserves. So despite the snarky last word and the passive aggressiveness of future interactions, I’m here for it. And I’ve seen all that before.

I know I’m super geeky about human behavior stuff, but this is interesting to me! The innate versus learned, nature vs. nature – whatever you want to call it. We’re all products of multiple pieces of our lives we have zero control over. It’s what we do with the pieces defined as choices that make us human.

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I ask you –

How often do you state “I’ve never seen this before!”?

Do you have family drama, too?

Tell me about a time when a choice impacted your life in an unexpected way!

(The post Never Seen Before first appeared here at Running on Fumes.)

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