A Work In Progress

"I think the important thing is caring about someone.  It's being by themselves that does people in, makes them old and bitter."  Thomas Tryon

I make a distinction between solitude and isolation.  I'm a quiet person who doesn't like people as a general rule.  People are idiots and they don't approach my level of perfection; thusly, they aren't worth my time.  They should go away from me.  They should quickly move somewhere else.

OK, even for me, Mr. Sarcastic, that sounds pretty grim.  I love everyone, I like most people, and some of you I can't stand.  I'm good with that characterization because I'm not under any illusion that I'm all that and a bag of chips to everyone who walks this earth.  Frankly, this wisdom, slowly acquired, has been important to my serenity.  I do my best to be a Nice Person and then allow everyone else to come to their own conclusions.  Like the dude who called me out about a perceived slight in the meeting a few days ago - if he hadn't approached me and heard my explanation he would likely have left thinking I was an asshole or at least more of an asshole than I already am.

"Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a conductor refused to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the ground that his audience may have heard it before."  A.P. Herbert

As a man with introverted tendencies I enjoy my own company.  I talk to myself instead of to real, live people who are right in front of me all the time.  I'm very interesting.  Usually, I'm talking to someone I know who isn't actually with me or I speak in front of groups that I'm not in front of, in reality.  SuperK doesn't cut me any slack on this justification, rightly pointing out that if no one is around then you're talking to yourself, that imagining in your own head that someone is there when no one is there doesn't mean that you're not losing it.

"I can hear you in there!  Who are you talking to?  There's no one in there!" she'll occasionally shout when she hears me mumbling and declaiming and preaching by myself in the bathroom.  There are people there - she just can't see them.  I don't do what they tell me to do, ordinarily.  They're pretty good listeners, recognizing my brilliance and insight, and decline to give me instructions.

When we hear the same things, we can tune in instead of tuning out.  We can listen to each word as if it were the first time, feeling all the feelings and leaving our minds open to new insights.  I'm not good at this.  I hate the same old stories; I hate people who have a simple thing to say but stretch it out forever by providing tons of useless details - the "I said this and then they said that and then . . . " etc. etc. etc. kinds of stories; and I hate it when other people are talking to me when in reality they're just talking to themselves.  Just because you think it's interesting doesn't mean I think it's interesting.  Read the room, for chrissake.  

A work in progress.