The best

Ja-no-well-fine.

I was chatting to Candice this weekend about how usually people tend to assume the worst about new people they meet. I know that first hand because of the reactions I get due to my accent here. Because I don't have a North American accent I feel that I am perceived to be less intelligent and less educated than certain folk. I won't name names but this past weekend it almost came to a head when a person, who judging on my accent and where I came from, allowed their arrogance to cloud the conversation to the point of suffocation. I feel the need to vent and be totally human and bitchy before I get to the point, so here goes.

Having been in Canada for 2 months now I am seeing that all people are intrinsically the same.

There are much the same problems here as there are in deepest-darkest africa. Wooooo!
Sure in SA we are troubled by crime and the like but we also struggle to make ends meet, we also tend our relationships and believe it or not we also live a modestly comfortable life as they do here. We also have Universities and education systems, which I have been told by one who attended both, rival those here. And yet with all these similarities I am still seen as the little backward third-worlder who knows nothing about modern civilisation.
I wish I could say worse but I am trying real hard not to be like that.

So here comes the point. They say that people form an opinion within the first 15 seconds of meeting someone and usually that opinion is a negative one which places the person below you in stature.
People are very accommodating beings. We pick up on others views and opinions of us and try our hardest to live up to those views. So the best way to uplift a person is just by holding a positive appreciation for that person which they will try to emulate. And if they don't it doesn't matter as you have lost nothing but offered everything.Now I ask is it so hard to form a positive opinion of a person and hope that they live up to it? If you expect the best from everyone you meet they will be aware of that and will often try their hardest to live up to that expectation. So the idea is to hold an elevated expectation of everyone you meet. If they happen to fall short of it the only person who is disappointed is you. But I feel that most of the time, by holding the utmost respect and admiration for a person, they will tend to show that which you expect in them.