First Impressions

You will find it difficult to undo the damage of a bad first impression. One must realize that too many people base lasting judgments on them. This is folly of course, but it may be even worse folly to attempt to disembarrass  them of their folly. The world runs on appearances, a fact made worse by the pseudo-authority of first appearances. One eventually learns that this world of seeming not only really is a world of seeming but is necessarily one. One learns to deal with it and abandons the attempt to find plenary reality where it can exist only fitfully and in fragments.

There are the bad first impressions that one makes, and there are those that others make for one. The latter class divides into two subclasses.

The first subclass consists of those bad impressions that people have of us, not having met us, but having heard unfavorable reports from our enemies. Meeting a person who has heard one of these bad reports, one immediately senses that the new acquaintance is subsuming or forcing one's words and behavior under a template of negative expectation. One detects a lack of openness in the other and senses that one will have to fight long and perhaps fruitlessly against the weight of preconception.

The second subclass consists of those bad impressions that arise when, their expectations having been elevated by the enthusiastic reports of our friends, our new acquaintances display disappointment at one's falling short of their unduly positive expectations.

And of course there are also good first impressions. Some of them we make for ourselves, some of them others make for us. The latter class divides into two subclasses.

The first subclass consists of those good first impressions that people have of us, not having met us, but having heard good reports from our friends. Somehow we manage not to disappoint their expectations.

The second subclass consists of those good impressions that arise when, no expectations having been raised by the reports of our friends, or only faintly good ones, we manage to exceed their expectations.