A great food-for-thought entry written by the other half’s friend, Gz.
Just twenty minutes ago on the way home, this girl in the bus queue caught my eye. Tall, svelte and with sleek hair, despite her plain uniform and trainers.
Later up on board, I found myself in a seat beside her (not on purpose, that was the only seat left) and as I sat down, her bad body odor shot straight into my brain.
It felt disappointing initially - but then il faut me demande: what did that disappoint? It could not have been a legitimate expectation of her, unlike a close someone who has done something stupid. Secondly, was it something one would really care about? Thirdly, why be disappointed at all?
I just got the headphones out and this construct in my brain just evaporated.
How do people react to new persons in their lives?
Impressions mean a lot to most - I find this difficult to deny. Take the example of the students you see in the library: one looks at what he wears, how he sits and how he looks like and conclude - “hmm, cute”, or whatever. And this not being limited to strangers. The people you see in lectures, for example as well. Whatever one knows of him, or has heard or seen of him — all control one’s invisible hand which paints their sub-conscious mental portraits.
That’s when they become so wonderful to know. Depending on how attractive the picture is, one gets feelings of exhileration to different degrees which arrive when this mental portrait is filled with depth. It’s all good while it lasts.
Well, until it lasts - because as the real person enters our lives displacing the initial constructs, the real value of the person takes over. That is also when impressions stop counting and the art of friendship takes over.
When the real person is more beautiful than the construct, we applaud ourselves on meeting such good people. When the real person is just little different from the construct, we still can handle it.
What happens, I find, is that people rationalise their sub-consciousness. We alter the expectations to a comfortable level. We then deal with this reality and then decide how to proceed from here.
Hopefully ‘one’ and the real person end up being friends.
But how then, if the real thing is not anything like the artificial construct?
Does one feel disappointed? Or lose the exhiliration?
We often hear complaints of how people are disappointing when you really get to know them.
When we hear something that person says which we don’t agree with, we’ll just “know he’d say something like that”.
And then, we don’t give the art of friendship the chance to take over. The disparity between reality and construct shocking one into quasi-consciousness, making one think “Maybe I don’t really want to know him too well.”
But is it their fault that they disappoint you? That when they are compared with your construct you painted in your mind, they are found wanting?
These people don’t piss people off, they just fall short and are found wanting whenever you call upon. How do you deal with them? - them not deserving hate, but as the reasoning seems to show, not deserving much love too.
