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Understanding People

During my trip to Vietnam, my team stayed over at the house of one of my friend's relatives house for s short while. Our neighbour, who happened to be my friend's uncle, had a boy, about 12 years old, who would come over for a kick-about with the soccer ball once in a while.

Everyday, I would see him play the game with my friends. The game was elementary. Pass the ball to the person playing with you and the person passes it back and the game goes on like that. In short, a simple passing game. After a while, I thought, this has gone on for too long. It was time to take the game to the next level, maybe teach the kid to play one on one, perhaps dribble the ball a bit. Otherwise, all the kid would learn was to just pass the ball.

So one night, I told my friend who was playing with him to go take a rest and I took over her. The boy sadly knew little or no English, so I thought the best way to tell him what to do was to well, do it myself. So I took the ball to him, then dribbled past him. He looks confused as what to do. So I did it again and again and again. Then I passed him the ball hoping that he understood what I was trying to do.

Instead of taking me on, he signalled he had to return home and he left.

With me standing there totally dejected.

Maybe I am reading too much into that event, but I had a good thought about it and I came to the conclusion that more often than not we always want to force our ideas, our opinions onto others. Maybe before we expect them to accept those ideas, we should spend some time listening to their first. Because it is only when you listen to people that people will listen to you.

So maybe I should have just played passing with him. Or maybe as I said, I am reading too much into the situation. For all you know, the kid may just have been thinking,

"What is the idiot trying to do with the ball?"

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