Rejection Is Not a Verdict

Life offers an almost unlimited supply of chances to be rejected, and it is easy to take each one personally. Picture a young man who works up the nerve to cross a room, tell a woman he finds her beautiful, and ask for her number. She says no, and he walks away believing she looked him over, weighed what she saw, and found it lacking. That may not be what happened at all. She may have slept badly, or been running late, or just ended a relationship, or be seeing someone already. He may have reminded her of someone she can’t stand. She may simply not have wanted to meet anyone that afternoon. If he approached the same woman a year later and said nearly the same words, he might get a very different answer, and nothing about him would need to change for that to happen. The timing would be different, and so would her circumstances and priorities. A rejection arrives as a yes or a no, which makes it feel like a clean judgment. The decision behind it is anything but clean. It is an equation…