182 I Can Read You Like a Book
Projection
In the beginning of this book I asked you to suspend the very
thing that makes you human—your overdeveloped mind. Now we
are at the crux of the matter. All of that programming given to you
by your parents, school, religion, media, government, and personal
relationships can cloud your vision to what you are seeing.
Projection means you see what you want to see. This is my
operative definition, not a classical or clinical one.
I’ll start with the elderly and disabled. We project weakness of
all kinds onto a person who has any weakness of body. We refuse
to believe that a frail-looking senior citizen can murder or that some-
one in a wheelchair could commit a terrorist act. And when we
accuse someone like that of a crime, what are we upright, healthy
folks likely to feel? Guilt. That’s a big mistake—normal, but it’s the
same reason why a woman such as Aileen Wuornos could get away
with murder. She was a woman. How dangerous could she be?
When we look at someone who is elderly or disabled, even
someone who is young and sick, or “the weaker sex,” some strong
emotions may run beneath our responses and affect them. We see
our humanity, our fragility, our vulnerability.
Part of it may be that that other person doesn’t have the reper-
toire of body language that makes us feel comfortable. Subcon-
sciously, we conclude that our own communication is curtailed by
her physical limitations.
In writing this book, I wanted to do some people watching with
Maryann on the street, in stores, at a coffee shop, and in bars. We
were visiting with one of her friends whose home town bar scene