Rejection is a Gift

I don't get rejected often, so when it happens it stings a little. One thing I have told others over the years is that they should view rejection as a gift. Lately I have to be swallowing a taste of my own medicine.

Back when I was working for Antioch University Seattle in 2007, a job opened up that I wanted to have in an academic department I admired. I was rejected for the job and it stung. However I had the strange opportunity to observe what happened with the person who DID get the job I wanted: it was one of those positions where you spend a lot of time listening to others complaints and while being a scapegoat simultaneously, it wasn't a position I (or the person who was hired for it) could enjoy. I was very lucky the people who did the job selection understood both me and the job duties to realize I was a poor match!

Keep this in mind for romantic rejection as well. No matter how bad the disappointment, understand that when you are rejected this means that the person rejecting you has information that you do not have. Everyone likes nurses, right? What if you meet a sexy single nurse at church, you get along well, and so you ask her for her phone number. What if she says "you give me yours, just tell it to me and I will remember it," and then of course never calls you? What you have to remember is even if she doesn't know everything that you would like her to know about you, she definitely knows something either about you or more importantly about herself that you do NOT see:

• Maybe there's some detail about your personality that is repugnant to her personally that others don't find as annoying.
• Maybe she is secretly racist against your ethnicity.
• Maybe she is prejudiced against you for some other superficial reason.
• Maybe she has a gambling, sex, drug or alcohol addiction she knows you will not accept.
• Maybe she's having an affair with a doctor at work and knows this will ruin any relationship she would try to have with you.

Maybe, maybe, maybe a thousand other things that would be very painful for you to hear, but a deal breaker for you also if you knew she had that concern. She's doing you the favor of not telling you,  because there's no point in hurting your feelings worse if there is no way it is going to work out.