Someone told me the other night that I there for them, that I was a good listener. Oddly enough, this made me want to punch something. Yeah...
I seem to be the same person to a lot of people, and I'm trying to figure out what this means, if it means anything. This ties in somehow with my idea that most of the things that happen to a person aren't really about the person, they're about persona. We meet people, we don't have the time or inclination to really get to know them, so we decide on their most salient characteristics and use that as shorthand. Everything else we assume based on who we are and what we think about the world. I often find this very comforting because it means that when someone does something asinine in your general direction, really, it's probably not about you.
However, the consequence of this is one of occasional loneliness because if you're "blunt", people assume they know you. They assume they do, but they really don't. They know one or two things about you. They know that you're candid about the things you choose to share and if you're a good listener on top of that, they assume they don't need to ask questions. You start to become a reflection of them. I think I'm fine with this usually because to me, that's their way of demonstrating that I don't need to reveal more of myself. But sometimes you get a little tired of being the human prop in other peoples' drama.
Sometimes people do ask questions and offer something that resembles reciprocal friendship, and those are the ones you keep, the ones who realize that people exist as entities outside their own heads. Please note at that this point, there are some people that I am missing with a sharp little pain in my heart because I am lucky enough to know a lot of people like this, but I can't be with most of them right now.
I was pretty much finished venting about this, when last night, someone called me a catalyst. In case you don't remember your high school biology, a catalyst lowers the reaction energy of a reaction so that the molecules involved can do their thing more easily. This means that they make things happen faster, and sometimes they let reactions happen that wouldn't be able to take place otherwise. They are not used up in the reaction, and they can facilitate many iterations of the same reaction before they get sick of the bullshit and stop working. For the visually minded, I provide a diagram:
I don't buy into this idea at all because of course, people do change me, and I'd like to think that sometimes I matter to them and change them back. It was just an interesting thing to hear, that someone thinks my life looks like this. This idea that in some way I'm there to make things happen for other people. Maybe we all think that about each other in some sense? I find that a little depressing.
But there's another interpretation of this, I think, which is that I am, perhaps, largely unaffected by other peoples' drama and constant changing craziness. I can buy into this idea, but I can't manage to turn the metaphor around completely because no matter how you spin it, the catalyst only exists because the other people already do.
Still thinkin.
I seem to be the same person to a lot of people, and I'm trying to figure out what this means, if it means anything. This ties in somehow with my idea that most of the things that happen to a person aren't really about the person, they're about persona. We meet people, we don't have the time or inclination to really get to know them, so we decide on their most salient characteristics and use that as shorthand. Everything else we assume based on who we are and what we think about the world. I often find this very comforting because it means that when someone does something asinine in your general direction, really, it's probably not about you.
However, the consequence of this is one of occasional loneliness because if you're "blunt", people assume they know you. They assume they do, but they really don't. They know one or two things about you. They know that you're candid about the things you choose to share and if you're a good listener on top of that, they assume they don't need to ask questions. You start to become a reflection of them. I think I'm fine with this usually because to me, that's their way of demonstrating that I don't need to reveal more of myself. But sometimes you get a little tired of being the human prop in other peoples' drama.
Sometimes people do ask questions and offer something that resembles reciprocal friendship, and those are the ones you keep, the ones who realize that people exist as entities outside their own heads. Please note at that this point, there are some people that I am missing with a sharp little pain in my heart because I am lucky enough to know a lot of people like this, but I can't be with most of them right now.
I was pretty much finished venting about this, when last night, someone called me a catalyst. In case you don't remember your high school biology, a catalyst lowers the reaction energy of a reaction so that the molecules involved can do their thing more easily. This means that they make things happen faster, and sometimes they let reactions happen that wouldn't be able to take place otherwise. They are not used up in the reaction, and they can facilitate many iterations of the same reaction before they get sick of the bullshit and stop working. For the visually minded, I provide a diagram:
I don't buy into this idea at all because of course, people do change me, and I'd like to think that sometimes I matter to them and change them back. It was just an interesting thing to hear, that someone thinks my life looks like this. This idea that in some way I'm there to make things happen for other people. Maybe we all think that about each other in some sense? I find that a little depressing.
But there's another interpretation of this, I think, which is that I am, perhaps, largely unaffected by other peoples' drama and constant changing craziness. I can buy into this idea, but I can't manage to turn the metaphor around completely because no matter how you spin it, the catalyst only exists because the other people already do.
Still thinkin.
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