The legacy of rejection

Legacy is a word which is used a lot at the moment: Olympic legacy, social legacy, legacy wills.
I wonder what legacy rejection leaves on someone?

As someone with Epilepsy, I've experience my fair share of rejection, from boyfriends who don't want the baggage, from school because I was different. Even to the Police who told me I had to resign or they wouldn't state on my paperwork why I was dismissed, rather than properly medically dismissing me because the medical legislation was changing.


But rejection isn't unique to people with Epilepsy, or me, it happens to all of us. None of us are perfect, but I wonder if we're not perfect because we've experienced that rejection in our lives. Maybe the legacy of rejection is that we experience a paranoia to do with something about the way we act? It's very hard to shake.

But maybe there is also a legacy to paranoia:
- self awareness.
It's a silver lining that I think, can, not only help improve ourselves as people, but also give us an understanding and context into the way other people are the way they are.
- The people who sail through life, may be the people we aspire to be, but I very much doubt they have the insight that the people who don't sail through life have because they haven't experienced the same rejection.


But how do we come across our self-awareness though?

Well I certainly don't think it all comes to us over-night, but we might actually stumble across something which clicks with us and makes sense throughout a thread of our behaviour. I guess if we are curious about why we behave in the way we do, then we will come across these things, that eventually build a picture up about why people react to us in a certain way.

Although sometimes it just takes us to communicate with someone, especially those close to us.
My brother told me something recently, which actually made complete sense and was a kind of eureka moment. I'm sure I'll have many more of them to come. I'm sure we all will if we are open to them.


The one thing rejection has taught me is never to judge people for the way they come across. You never know how past rejections or experiences could manifest itself. Maybe it could have left them with a legacy, of a lack of self confidence. Maybe that's the reason why they behave in the way they do?

Whatever the reason for it, we all have a legacy left with us, 'our personal baggage', that makes us who we are. I think for the things we can change, that maybe makes others feel uncomfortable, we should.


It's all very well saying "you can take me or leave me", but how then, do you develop as a person?