I recently had to pay an unavoidable visit to the Department of Home Affairs. I dreaded this outing, expecting long queues, system problems, and poor service. I rose early on a freezing winter’s morning to beat the queue.
Long before the first light, people were already ahead of me outside the building. I resolved to observe my surroundings and keep my expectations low.
What transpired was enlightening, and even entertaining. Like a well-oiled machine, people were guided to the office through the shopping centre. At one point, we were queuing in the basement parking. It felt surreal, like being led as prisoners of war to an undisclosed location.
When the doors finally opened, it was fascinating to observe all the different special requests – the registration of a child who was born years ago, finding an illiterate and potentially mentally disabled person’s record on the system, and removing a husband deceased 30 years ago from an elderly lady’s record. The information officer patiently handled all these complex queries in the first few minutes. She appeared competent and knowledgeable. In fact, everyone was friendly and helpful.
Yet, shortly after the opening, people were already impatient. Voices were raised. Tension built. Throw in racist filters and language barriers, and you have a recipe for chaos.
It was clear that many, like me, arrived with preconceived ideas about the department’s ineptness and the staff’s uselessness. Yet, I saw overwhelmed staff doing their best within an overwhelmed system. They had developed systems within systems to move people through the office. It looked like a problem for industrial engineers, not the security guards ushering people along.
I left in a surprisingly short time, document in hand.
The whole experience was a lesson in patience and reflection on human behaviour. Our preconceived ideas and expectations can cloud our interactions at the moment. When provoked, we act from these notions rather than reality. Our reactions often confirm the filter we apply to our world.
We do this with our money too. Most of our money pictures, the mental images we have about money and its value, form in childhood and are further influenced by media or marketing. These pictures can cloud our experience of reality and even determine long-term financial outcomes.
My experience confirmed the importance of observing the world and questioning the lenses through which we view it, especially the people around us.
Of course, I would have preferred not to have spent my time in the dark on a winter morning and for the Department of Home Affairs to function optimally. Yet, my determination to observe with curiosity changed my experience. My choice was not altruistic – it helped me to walk away with a different experience and a story.
The challenge for us all is understanding how our filters impact our lives, relationships, and even our money. It starts with observing ourselves and the world with curiosity.
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Kind regards,
Sunél