Shallow People

I read this quote on the internet and felt captured by it, because I just recently made a experience concerning this subject. What I don't like about this quote is, that it has a judgmental side on it. I don't mean to point out how bad shallow people are. I am sure, every single one has its reasons for it and a history or story behind it. If we make a painful experience with or get disappointed by a shallow person, it tells us more about ourselves than this person. I don't believe that those ppl change drastically during the time we get to know them. It's more our perception and our expectations, that make us see things differently to how they really are, until we realize it.

A while ago I met someone and I knew from the start, I didn't want to get involved with this person, because he seemed to superficial to me. So I managed to stay away successfully. But then the person came up to me to talk and I thought, I might have been mislead by his looks and his behavior, because the talk was about profound things and quite interesting. I stayed in contact with this person and we were always talking about in depth things, but never really about personal things. In the end I had to accept, that this person is not ready to open up and let anybody in. First, I thought it just takes some time and trust, but that wasn't the case. What I learnt for myself is, that this person was the way he was all along. I just didn't want to see it and I did put my own expectations on it. I think we all bend the reality sometimes to make things look the way we want them to look like. But this makes us acting shallow too, I guess. I also wonder, why we can sometimes be attracted by shallow ppl. Maybe because they make things look perfect, at least on the surface. But if you are not a shallow person yourself, a friendship like that is not gonna last, because there is a lack of depth, trust and honesty and it will feel empty or one-sided in the end. And we don't have the right to expect an other person to change. They must have their reasons to be like that. Maybe it's just a protection mechanism and if they are not ready to let go of it, they are not. It has to be their wish to change and not forced by somebody from the outside. So maybe we have to look at the things as how they are and not how we want them to be. And at the same time, I think we have to be careful not to put the negative feelings we've got from not getting out what we wanted from it, on that person. That would be like going into a sport equipment shop and being disappointed that they don't sell fresh bread :-P