One of my favorite moments in "America: the Book: the Audio Book" is when Stephen Colbert reads a blurb about himself and ends it with, "He is personally unpleasant." I mean, I shift uncomfortably, but I love it.
My social interactions feel off to me. Promising friendships seem to evaporate because of the signals I send, I think, and I'm not sure what signals I'm sending exactly. Some days I don't have "social energy" and I'm mostly matter-of-fact with people. But it doesn't mean I don't like them, it means I don't have the energy to throw up a friendly smile and engage the chit-chat subroutines about how their day is going. I don't know if that' undiagnosed autism or insufficient finishing school training on basic politeness coupled with a disciplined "polite is what are you are even when you don't feel friendly," kind of thing. In other words, maybe I'm just poorly socialized and my skills are rusty.
I don't know, maybe I'm just personally unpleasant.
The way I see it, relationships (any type of relationship) is an investment, not unlike any other. I feel like I've said this before recently, so pardon me if you've heard it from me. To me relationships are like investments. As you put more into them you can hope to get more out. That's not a guarantee, but it is the promise (the potential). What is certain is that it's not valid to be unwilling to invest and then if the stock or whatever goes up, decide to get in at that point without paying a premium (and the same if not more risk as there was in the first place). Also, solid investments pay out over the long term, despite ups and downs owing to the uncertainties of the market (where "the market" is any uncertain reality). You have to stay in to make the gains in the end. It doesn't work to get in and out and in and out as the situation dictates. That's a losing proposition. People fail at relationships for the same reason they fail at investing (fail financially more generally) because they prioritize now over the future. Many millions of people could retire with millions if they just committed to investing day in and day out over the long term. Instead of investing we buy. What we're buying are the sorts of distractions that cause us to short-change our investments, and neglect our friends. Over the course of my life I've seen first the gradual and then with social tech the abrupt, abandonment of promising relationships not because of any irresolvable differences but lack of care and attention leading to self-justification which often takes the appearance of differences.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean every relationship is a good one that we should stick with no matter what? Is every investment a good one, no certainly not. It takes experience, skill, and luck to know the good investments from the bad ones. That's one issue. Another is having the resolve to stick with the good ones, despite the lure of get rich quick schemes. There are few things more sickening (as in gut wrenching) to me than watching people ignore friends and family for their phones. I won't be apart of that anymore. When someone does something with me they get to choose their phone or me. It's their choice but they have to make one.
Something that can make up for "signals" is transparency. What's that old Mark Twain quote,
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Well the same is true for things other than foolishness. You can keep your mouth closed and leave people to guess what you think of them and your relationship or open it and remove all doubt. I've started to do this more. What I've found is that the reason I have trouble with many of my relationships is because the people I know don't care about me all that much. Does that make me happy, no. But it makes sense, and because they didn't care about me in the first place, that's the best I can hope for.
A good relationship is hard to come by. We should value it. If gold were like friends we'd treasure it at first, and then eventually we'd just get rid of it out of boredom. It's nonsense really.
I realize this isn't quite what your post is about. Consider it inspired by your post. I'll add that fitting in is only something to aspire to if the thing we're trying to fit into is just and good. Otherwise fitting in means warping the better parts of who you are to be more compatible with others. That kind of corruption doesn't lead to anything good.