Some people have this black hole effect unconsciously. Are you one of them?

For the purposes of this article, we are going to use this particular definition of a black hole – which refers to a place where things are lost never to be seen again.

Which, in human terms means – are you one of those who commit and forget all about it. Or anything that comes to you can be forgotten since one cannot expect you to remember and return (in case of an object), or reply/respond appropriately (in case of communication), or realize (in terms of feedback). And all of this, not because you didn’t want to. You have the best of intentions always. But you may not be paying attention to some things in a manner that matters to people.

1. This means – if you borrow something, you are very less likely to remember to return it. Not that you intend to keep it, but just that it doesn’t occur to you to return it unless asked. And sometimes, not return it even upon asking since you may have misplaced it or damaged it.

2. In terms of phone calls, emails, messages are you one of those who follow one-way traffic rules? Where you can get in touch with people whenever you want, but it doesn’t hold true the other way? Again, not that you intended it that way. But you have unconsciously become one of those who only communicate when you are open for it and might miss calls from friends and family and forget to call back too. Another way is, regardless of what they say, you mostly have the same expression/response. So, they may find you unreadable and hence be led to assume that you don’t really care or understand.

3. In terms of feedback, any feedback that comes to you – it doesn’t affect you in any way. Your shell has become too thick over the years for various reasons. So, you continue to be the same despite several reminders and feedbacks from people. So, people may get frustrated trying to communicate with you. That’s because they do not know if there’s any point to it at all since there’s no response or reaction from you at a deeper level. Every time they talk to you about it, you give the same/similar response like the previous time and continue to repeat the same thing again in the future.

The next step in either of these cases is quite self-explanatory at one level – that you lose credibility. But that’s something we all are aware of, aren’t we? There’s more to this though.

The other repercussions are,

• You may miss out on important people you love.
• You might end up being alone, not because you don’t care. But because you never explicitly communicated and showed that you truly cared.
• You may either be over-confident of yourself as you don’t remember any of the things that matter to others. So, you may not even realize you are unconsciously hurting others.
• Or, you may lose confidence in yourself since you repeatedly keep hearing from people that they don’t trust you at some level. Whenever you commit, people might laugh it off and say, “As if that will ever happen. It’s okay! I know you!”
• You may feel bad that people find it difficult to trust you. Or people misunderstand you often despite your best intentions.

Hence, it is so important to not be a black hole – which means people should never feel communication with you is a lost cause or a pointless affair. It’s necessary to be more transparent, open, communicative, and expressive. It is not others’ responsibility to understand us. It is our responsibility to make ourselves understood. Secondly, if you think you have a chance of forgetting either keep reminders or ask to be reminded by the concerned person. Give importance to what matters to others. Only if it matters to you, will you keep your word at it. And the only way you can make it matter to you is respecting and valuing what people value – especially the ones who you care about. No matter what intentions we have, if we make it painful for others, we will be left with much pain eventually!