I’m increasingly aware of how often I’m in a state of “total empathy,” so to speak, about two seemingly opposing views. As logically as one imagines you can be, I can take in the details, agree with the facts, and find myself in the “center.” To be sure, I hate the language we use to describe differences. Left, right, and center pretend like something sensible or mathematical is concerned with your ideals. Unfortunately, to the extent that you try and express your “mathematical” or “impartial” or “who gives a fuck?” viewpoint, you’ll be inevitably driven back into the more ignorant and incomplete language.
Let’s take the concept of having a conversation. One of the hippiest and peace-loving ideas is that we can always talk and work it out. If we want to couch things under a giant umbrella named “conversation,” it’s hard to say I don’t think that working through the details in your own mind is helpful at the top of a blog. I’m conversing with myself, probing for the words that have come and gone over the last few days. That “side” of my mind clearly agrees with the hippies. Talk, get specific, provide examples, and bolster your point of view with the ideas of those who’ve caught your attention.
And yet, I have zero faith in conversation. It’s getting increasingly frustrating when I attempt to speak to people. It’s not what you might lazily suspect about a forceful and insecure desire to foist “negativity” into something. It’s merely the persistent pattern of people with nothing to say having no capacity to recognize how little what they’re attempting to amounts to. This happens after they become emotionally invested in a particular facet of their identity. The feminist can’t talk to you unless it’s through the domineering rape glasses of her male oppressors. The parent figure can’t help but condescend to youth. It’s the person who reflexively claims to hear every ounce of your subtext or “real” conversation, but then wants to nitpick your specific word choice in service to derailing the conversation.
This happens at high “academic” levels, most notably for me when you watch atheists “debate” the faithful or two competing economists where one likes to pretend some version of the “trickle down” system works. This happens in the stupid drunk trash talk outside of the bar. This happens between exes picking every past grievance they can remember. None of us can be “perfect” explicit speakers, perhaps like someone on the spectrum, but the moment we shift into insisting “you’re just not listening!” or “you’re completely missing my point!” the less we’re working to actually form that point better or willing to give any credit that someone has actually heard us.
Perhaps we look at death. Here again, I’m of two minds. I think a considerable amount about death. I put myself at all of my relatives’ funerals. I imagine the fiery crash on the highway. I can see me purple and bloated hanging from an extension cord regretting not thinking more about the outfit I wanted to shit myself in. I don’t find death particularly fascinating or interesting, but by virtue of it being so “secret” or taboo, my mind reflexively likes to play with ideas about it. I don’t necessarily want to die, but I also don’t know that I care as much as people want to assume “we all do” about staying alive.
The other side of my death mind uses it to fuel all the shit I want to create. It makes me unduly excited to meet someone I don’t hate. It has me yearning for “truth” as best as it can be approximated. I want real relationships. I want honesty. I know I can weather stupid financial storms or the inherent frustrations and indignities of dealing with “the masses” at large. How else do you decide to move quickly if you aren’t counting the grey in your beard? How do you achieve obtaining “the world” if you put off working to do so until tomorrow? Against my will I’m racing to the finish anyway, might as well pursue the heights of your potential happiness or achievement, because the lowest of the lows are coming no matter what.
Let’s move onto relationships. How many words have I dedicated to completely shitting on and then completely showering praise on my friends? That’s also mostly how I conceive of relationships. I don’t actually think there’s much difference between the “best” friendship statuses and just your willingness to accept and work with the people you have in your life. We’re extremely good at romanticising those connections when it’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other. It’s better than using words like “convenience” and “acquaintance” which doesn’t seem to adequately capture the love-slung drunken professions and outings. Your happiness, well-being, and until recently survival, is predicated on your ability to form these connections, right? You live longer. You get more Instagram pictures.
A natural extension of my relative indifference to myself I’m sure speaks to how and why my relationships break down. Well, some of my relationships. Unless I’m drunk, I’m not the feeler, and that constantly registers as “negative” in the minds of the feelers. I merely describe something I see or attempt to relate as much, oh no but wait, what I was actually doing was trying to bring down the vibe...or something. I don’t heap your emotional burdens onto myself, which prevents me from dancing around and using language you’d prefer, which has me looking cold and indifferent and impossible to talk to when neither of us is willing to define my horribleness beyond your choice epithet.
Here it might help to explain an interaction that happened last night. Again, I find myself hanging out with someone I don’t particularly enjoy because they’re actually the old guy who enjoys being constantly out at the bars or drunk and the one time I go out this month or over the last 3, of course I see him. He insists that my disposition is bred from a deep insecurity. He thinks he only hears me negatively describe things, and condescend, and deflect, but it’s a familiar story. When I ask him what I’m insecure about, first, he doesn’t know. When I ask him to expand on a definition, he says I’m deflecting. When I explain to him how I would attempt to answer that question based on observations about him, he takes a comment I made about looking younger if I shaved as evidence I’m insecure about my age.
It seems to me if you’re going to try and point out someone’s insecurities, they need to account for something that they feel genuinely guilty about or negatively affects their lives in ways they don't want or couldn't anticipate. You hate your hair, so you spend more money than you really should or have to keep it straightened or done up in a way that will keep your mother’s comments at bay. You think you’re too fat so you wear clothing that pretends you aren’t or does a lot of work in trying to mask how you present yourself to the world in photographs. I honestly have a hard time trying to work in the language of insecurity because the strongest times I’ve ever felt it was when I was a child. I used to hate my hair because of the constant compliments and people wanting to play with it. My mom made me feel insecure about my smile with “Gumbalina” comments when it was too big. It’s why I dreaded picture day.
If anything, my current personality is a complete rejection of the concept “insecure.” If I think I’m getting too fat, I say so, then I stick to salads and hit the gym. If I cared too harshly how I looked, I wouldn’t be wearing a “vote for Pedro” neon shirt referencing a movie I don’t like and high school class president campaign from my brother’s year. My “problem” is a marked lack of shame and insecurity. I’m not willing to pretend I don’t stink if I’ve worked too long or haven’t showered like some hippies I’ve met who’ve insisted on hugs, but I’m not nervously sweating it out in my interactions with people hoping they don’t comment.
At this moment you can sense the failure point. You see, offering explanations or honest tellings of the goings on of your mind are PRECISELY THE EVIDENCE of your insecurity! Duh! Can’t you feel the after school special, “We all have things we’re insecure about! Don’t worry kids!” Just like if you explain you’re not a “feminist” you’ve tacitly endorsed the subjugation of women or if you reference police shootings you don’t respect the danger cops put themselves through. It doesn’t matter the topic, if you don’t conform to how people need you to be, every single word, the act of bothering to look for them, becomes a shovel full.
The most pervasive level of my two-minded problem is about that overall general disposition. The drunk or high person walks next to me with their hand up for a high five, my instinct is at once, “fuck that guy” and “I’ve been that guy, here’s a high five.” I gave it, he was pleased. The guy today who yelled from his car that he loved me, I decided to ignore. I’m at once that open and gregarious bucket of fun and acceptance and the harshest critic even of the things I like. This is something that is proving impossible for most anyone to understand. I’m not “negative” anymore than I’m “positive.” I’m both. I’m happy to be both. I suspect we’re all both, but I’m not scared to flow fluidly between the two without emotionally leveraging or needing to encapsulate your being with my nicest or meanest comments.
Being everything and nothing is confusing. Seeing yourself as the author of your own story while acknowledging the forces that have shaped you is not a pretty picture. I see the wisdom in generalized peaceful approaches to things, and I’ve never been more invigorated at a handful of times where I was in position to be violent. I can understand the need for border security while endlessly shitting on a wall. I can desire a passionate and deeply connected relationship while acknowledging no flame burns the brightest at all times and changes in dynamics are inevitable. I can see myself withering away in a hospital bed the moment my heart is racing at the prospect of building out my house or an entrepreneurial idea.
If anything, I want more direction. I want more accurate judgment. Find and exploit what you think to be my insecurities. Make me feel anything, let alone bad lol. It’s precisely why I manage to get myself in “trouble” with people I don’t really care for on nights I didn’t really want to be drunk. In my view, I’m killing it, and the things that go wrong are either me pressing my luck, like with my car today, or me introducing a semi-controlled chaos, because otherwise I’d just be making money or completing my goals...too early? That’s a vastly different thing about me over the “average.” I put my feet to the floor. I take the responsibility. I already know everything is my fault and nothing will change if I don’t do it. It’s impossible to be “insecure” when that’s your default setting. I’m too old to care what you think, just fat enough to have had “too many” hook ups, smile so big you wonder how my teeth don’t get swallowed up, drive such a stunner car it’s met with all the biggest tow trucks in town, and am so fancy I’m pimping out a garage to live in. I don’t put my inherent value at the dollar amount in the bank and I don’t let my “negative judgmental attitude” get in the way of working with or pursuing people who aren’t shit.
The irony is in something needing you to be insecure. It’s not just in bad taste, but impossible you don’t have something that’s crippling you or holding you back. These people who need you to be negative that it wouldn’t matter if you raised your voice once a year, game over. These people who look at their own fat bodies or terrible relationships or unmet goals and say, “You’re human, just like me!” No. I’m not. I’m Nick P. I’m the point and the abstract. I’m my best and worst blog and all of them combined. I’m my shitty childhood and incalculable wealth. I’m my relationship to you, and the faux-resentment of incidental accusations when you aren’t helping me or talking back. I’m the thief who’s been stolen from, the murderer who’s so far stuck to insects, and Romeo Casanova. And who are you? Nothing to me? Everything to me? Certainly never more or less than you, doubtfully, “choose” to be when we interact.
