Wednesday, August 03, 2005
(8:58 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
General Hypothetical Question
Let's say I have a friend. Every time I see her, I feel somehow inadequate, like I am disappointing her. I don't know what I think she wants from me, but whatever it is, I'm certainly not providing it -- I don't feel fun enough, I don't feel spontaneous enough, I don't feel funny enough, I feel too serious, too regimented, too "in my head." In fact, those very traits that people normally find most attractive in me seem to be called radically into question in the encounter with this particular other (though not with every other).Certainly one could say: "But Adam, you're projecting! The obvious solution to this is not that you are somehow 'made to feel inadequate' by this friend, but rather that this friend continually disappoints you." So then I need to resolve to accept her as she is. Next time, I won't passive-aggressively let my own selfish feelings of inadequacy spoil things!
Oh, wait -- that's actually just going to continue to feed into the problem. The whole thing is that I can't change the way I feel about things! I just can't. Sorry, Mr. Motivational Poster Guy, but no, we really don't necessarily have that much control over our fucking "attitude." Our lives usually continue to go on much as before, whether or not we muster enough willpower to feel smugly superior to our circumstances or not. In fact, maybe we'd be better off if we focused on actually changing our circumstances, rather than doing all this "meta" work of trying to police our attitudes, trying to muster up certain levels of "motivation," etc.
I always found, even at a very young age, that I had a finite amount of energy. So let's say I had decided I liked this girl. Not much deliberation was required in order to decide if I really did or not -- the next question is what to do about it. Now certainly, there were times when I tried the strategy of working up sufficient "motivation" or "courage" or whatever sentiment was supposed to lead to the desired action. In all of those cases, I was usually too distracted by the motivational process to actually follow through on the action. Sometimes it was quite comical, just like you'd see on TV: the skinny, brainy kid sits there strategizing and fantasizing about how this encounter is going to work perfectly, and meanwhile the girl leaves. I found that things worked best when I didn't take time to think, or at least when I didn't think along certain lines -- for instance, detailed plans, high hopes, whatever.
Perhaps this is just a luxury of being so ultra-reflective all the time, but when I do decide to cut the Gordian knot of thinking about thinking about thinking about myself thinking, I often trust my decisions -- but this is only when I experience my decision as being free, that is, when I bracket the question of who's going to be disappointed, who's going to think less of me, what the socially required or normal thing to do in this situation is, etc., etc. That is, when I stop trying to please that amorphous "someone else," then I'm much more likely to feel good about the decision -- because I'm the only one I'm counting on to feel good about the situation.
So if I could just be like that the next time I see this friend, maybe she wouldn't be so disappointed in me!
