Like many kids, I always considered Christmas the best time of the year. And also like many kids, I always wanted to meet Santa Claus.

Not the Santa you see at the mall. I mean the real Santa. Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, whatever you call him – but the real guy, not one of his helpers.

I knew exactly where and when he was coming (down the chimney on Christmas), so it should have been easy to meet him. But there was a problem. Santa won’t come unless you’re asleep. So if I stayed up to see him, he wouldn’t come (apparently, this derives from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).

Fortunately, I had a solution. One year, in addition to the usual milk and cookies, I left out a Polaroid camera, with a note instructing Santa to take a picture of himself. It wouldn’t be quite the same as meeting him in person, but an authentic picture was certainly nothing to sneeze at. Best of all, it circumvented the “Santa won’t come unless you’re asleep” rule.

Christmas morning, I came running down to see my picture of the real Santa. Only there wasn’t one. Santa had neglected to do it. As I stood there wondering why he hadn’t grasped the concept, I could only think that I must not have been clear enough with my wording. Maybe his native language was Dutch or Polish or something.

So the next year, I left out the camera along with a foolproof, airtight note that left absolutely no possibility for ambiguity. I had him now! But the next day, there was no picture to be found. I couldn’t understand why that idiot Santa had difficulty following such simple instructions.

But time went on and I became a little wiser. Eventually I realized that we can only understand people when we put ourselves in their shoes, and a simple change in perspective sometimes makes all the difference.

Photo by kevindooley

Photo by chispita_666

Last week I came across erica.biz, a very interesting blog by Erica Douglass about investing, setting goals, and entrepreneurship. She shares some great advice and the story of how she became a millionaire at 26, but something that really stood out for me was actually a comment someone left regarding peak experiences and drudge experiences, which said:

Most people find washing dishes annoying, but they’ll do it…Me on the other side, I grew up with a dish washer and spent my first 7 years out of home without one. These are 7 wasted years of my life and it was not just a ‘oh I hate it but I do it’ thing, but really hating. Doing it never was easy.

I’ve never before come across someone who hated washing dishes so much that they considered it to have wasted 7 years of their life. I couldn’t help laughing hysterically before eventually deciding that it wasn’t really funny.

There might not be another person on the planet who shares such an intense hatred of washing dishes, but many of us despise things that might seem perfectly fine to someone else.

I left one job because I got sick of working until 10:00 every night, and sometimes until 4:00 in the morning. People were honestly surprised that I hated that.

I’d hate not having a car, even though millions of people (including Brip Blap) argue that public transportation is better for a number of reasons.

I hate any event that doesn’t allow jeans. I can put up with it for weddings and other things that are necessarily formal, but not for restaurants where the food isn’t even that good. It’s dumb and elitist and I hate it.

Many people might not be able to imagine why things like this bother me at all, the same way I don’t understand what’s so bad about washing dishes (though I’ve always had a dishwasher). Let’s try to be a little more understanding of people who seem to overreact to things we don’t think are that bad. One person’s peak experience is another person’s drudgery.