Can't Connect With You

I can't make you love me if you don't.

~Bonnie Raitt

Can I be real with you all for a second?  Thanks.

I hear all the time that all of us have, either suddenly or slowly over time, lost the ability to "connect" properly with each other.  People no longer have "meaningful relationships" and they no longer "care about each other".

I'm not necessarily going to disagree.  But I have questions:

First, what exactly is a "meaningful relationship"?  Whenever I've asked people about that, they usually come back with, "Well, you know, it's like sharing personal stuff with people who are close to you."

What do you mean by personal stuff?

"Well, I don't know.  But you know… personal stuff."

Like the Facebook friend of mine who posted a message to her friends with a video of her kid taking first steps?

"Well, that's, like, not what I meant."

How about a discussion with someone about the finer points of their personally held faith or beliefs posted on an article about something relevant to them?

"As an example, yes!  People just debating online about stuff is so impersonal!"

So, if I'm drinking a coffee with someone in a coffee shop or in my living room, and my kid is taking their first steps or we're having a discussion about faith, does that count?

"Well, yeah!"

But Facebook doesn't?

"Right!"

Even if it's about the exact same "personal stuff"?

"Exactly!"

Why?

"Because it's so impersonal through social media!"

And that's how we talk. 

I've also heard the arguments about people sitting right beside each other in a restaurant "ignoring each other" on their phones, texting or on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, What's App, Reddit, or whatever Bazinga Bazoonga social network they happen to use.  Put the phones away and talk to each other, people!

Okaaaaaaaay...

How's the weather outside?

Have you seen the new 2018 Chevy Zigger Zagger with heated leather seats, all-wheel-drive, automatic parallel parking, thirty-seven cupholders for no damn reason, built-in back scratcher, a gourmet chef, and a foot masseuse in the glove box?

Hey, I saw the game of hopscotch on the sports network last night, the Florida Patters beat the Wyoming Pitters 2,345,231 to 1,512,213.  It was an awesome game!

Let me submit two ideas.  First, "real connections" have always been few and far between.  A small, close circle of friends or family develops a bond of trust over time.  The masses we interact with through social media haven't replaced those close bonds.

Second, I don't think the people griping about this problem have a clue what exactly a "real connection" is.  They only know what it isn't.  Hence the griping about what they see, and no encouragement for what should be.  That's why it isn't "do this"; it's "stop doing that".

But why do connections seem so much more distant and meaningless?  In the absence of full-blown agoraphobia, most people still have that small circle that they trust and feel close to, so what is it?

I have two ideas, and neither one of them takes the easy way out of blaming social media.

First, the world is smaller.  A lot smaller.  Fifty years ago, the home telephone was only just starting to become a universal part of everyone's home (and there were those who would make the same complaint about these things preventing meaningful relationships).  Thus our opportunity for "surface interactions" is significantly higher, since our outer circle of friends isn't the 25 people we went to high school with; it's the 175 people we've added on social media.  But these "shallow connections" don't mean that the "real connections" don't exist.

Second, we have been trained by society to care less about others, but anyone who blames social media for that gets a free kick in the face.  You don't lose the skills of empathy and compassion by having a Facebook account.

Now when I blame "society", that's pretty vague.  Let me break it down for you:

In the last ten years, there's been an increasing amount of public demand for compassion based on the wrong things.  In bygone times, the only reason why you were worthy of the human rights you have is because you were – well – human.  Today, we still verbally acknowledge that, of course, but with government sponsorship we've shifted the focus away from your human rights in favor of granting you rights based on what group of humans you fall into.  It was well-intentioned, because typically, discrimination is done against certain groups of people.

Unfortunately, this has led to a gazillion protests over the last couple of decades. It was so much simpler to ask for compassion because we're human.  Now, instead, we want compassion because we're black, or female, or LGBTQ, or Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish, or some other faith, and the list goes on and on.

You see, demands for rights based on what group we're in instead of based on our simple humanity lead first of all to people who don't necessarily fit into the right group, and therefore are passed over for special treatment, but more to the main point, it leads to the general population simply burning out on the whole compassion thing.

Oh, you feel like a victim of micro-aggression because you are part of an underrepresented group of people identified by your fascination with the color purple?  Sorry, I ran out of shits to give quite some time ago.  No, I will not call it indigo and I don't care if you're offended by that.  It's purple.  Fuck off.

Now you take all this and accelerate it on a massive scale because of how quickly information spreads (yes, on social media), and we care less – a lot less – about the people around us.

The solution, then, is not to cut back on social media, because despite all the railing we hear against it, that is not – and never has been – the cause of the problem.

We need to give a damn again.  But in order to give a damn again, we need to stop whining.  If you're discriminated against, I don't care why.  That's not OK.  The reason it's not OK is because you, like me, are a human being.  Even if the discrimination is explicitly racist or homophobic, I still don't care why, because it's not relevant why.

You see?  Now I'm showing compassion.  Your "Black Lives Matter" movement only makes me sigh and crack open my phone to look at a cat being startled by a cucumber, because there are so many groups you expect me to defend now that I'm just burnt out.  I don't care anymore.  I can't.

So, I get accused of having no meaningful connections.  I don't agree, but I will concede that my interactions with my outer circle have become perhaps less about quality and more about quantity.  But I never did care much for my outer circle.  That's why they were my outer circle.  So I'm not worried about that.

As for society as a whole (which, by the way, is where I believe the complaint about meaningful connections actually is lodged – though the complainers don't know that), I agree that we care less, and don't meaningfully interact with our community.  But again: that's not because I have a smartphone in my pocket, nor because I have a smartphone in front of my face.  If you want to get up in face and tell me that I don't love my wife or my kids because I use social media, then may I respectfully request that you ingest a handful of thumbtacks.

A Muse's Friendship

I have a muse.

Normally, when one talks about a muse, one pictures a creative, lively presence, usually in the form of a beautiful young woman, an angel, or a fairy. 

Mine is also a beautiful young woman, but there are no wings or halos as far as I know.

The interactions with her are profound and insightful, and the way we share our thoughts make me almost feel as though I speak with her lips instead of my own, despite her stubborn insistence that my creativity is a gift from within.

Today, I reflect on my friendship with her.

To me, friendship is best described as the ability to share.  But it's worth noting that, contrary to Hollywood's version of budding relationships, it won't happen in the midst of crisis.  You don't fall in love, platonic or otherwise, with anyone while you're both being shot at and things are exploding right next to you.

No, when two people have just met, the friendship begins over tiny slivers of insight into them, on their own, to be almost irrelevant to their character at large.  I'm not talking about faith, grief, reaction to crises, or profound joy.  I'm talking about finding out that they like the color black, have way more interest than I thought was possible in online make-up tutorials, or have a passionate phobia of germs that arises when someone else sips their coffee.

...for which I remain eternally penitent.

These little moments are what carry friendships through getting shot at or things exploding right next to you.  Love and friendship are carried through crises, not formed in them.

To put it more colorfully: fires may purify silver, but they don't create it.

I Feel Like Not Feeling

The thing about depression that is most crippling is its all-encompassing impression it gives me of myself.  It's likely not accurate, but in the world of mental illness, actual reality scarcely matters.  The impression's "reality" so easily trumps it.

There are countless people who, with the best of intentions, try to arm me with tools and resources to feel better, get better, be better.  Sometimes those tools are useful.  Often, they aren't.  Not because they don't work, but because I lack the strength to wield them.  That's "reality" number one.

What a curious paradox I am.  I am introverted as all hell, but the life of the party.  I'm a bubbly fountain of energy when I'm with my peers, but as soon as I close my door, I collapse into a quagmire of utterly hopeless despair.  I shower those around me with praise, but I can't silence the cold voice that howls judgment like a wintry blast through my soul day in and day out.  I act out love, friendship, joy, and excitement, but feel no warmth of any of it in the echo chamber of my heart. That's "reality" number two.

It's almost like I desperately seek the love and affirmation of others (that I cannot feel) because I am unable to create my own for myself (which is why I can't feel theirs when they give it).

These idiosyncrasies have made me an excellent student of human behaviour.  I am a person who has to act alive while feeling dead, and as such, the living people around me are my only reference point.  That's "reality" number three.

But how good an actor am I?

I think this is why there's a limit to how close people get to me.  I'm a mirage.  I look whole from a distance, but the closer you get, the more scars you see, and the more you understand that my "feelings" for you are imitated.

Not that I don't care at all.  My emotions are dead, but I can still acknowledge the familiarity of someone's presence in my life, and I can appreciate that familiarity, and understand that they do have an actual feeling of friendship (or love) toward me.

I envy that.

But I also understand that eventually, these people can get close enough that the mirage falls away, and they see that all this time, they've loved a loveless creature, capable of nothing more than an intellectual assent to their existence, a mathematical calculation of their value to my life, as well as a similar calculation behind the value I have to them, and therefore, a conscious, vested interest in continuing the relationship.

When you find out that the "love" you've been getting is as cold as that, it's easy to feel deceived or even betrayed.  But most of the time, they never get close enough to see behind that curtain, so I can keep even my closest friends in a place where they know I'm in a form of pain, they know my wounds are incurable, and they accept the hurting person that I am, offering their very real love, without ever knowing that my appreciation for them is only as complete as I am.

That's "reality" number four.

That's just a small part of my "reality".  Everyone else who is depressed has their own "reality".  There'll be a few common threads through it, which is why you see a lot of well-meaning and thoroughly irritating platitudes all over the internet that say things like "depression is the lie that you're not worth it" on a background of birds and rainbows with a flower.  They want me to feel better, get better, be better, remember?  It's fine.  I'm fine.

This Post Makes No Sense

As a person, the most difficult thing to work with, the most complex thing to understand, the most mysterious riddle to spend one's life hopelessly trying to solve… is another person.

I've also found that the closer I get to another person, the more difficult I find the experience, but it's not because the person I'm close to becomes somehow more difficult to work with due to some kind of "familiarity breeds contempt" principle, but more because the necessity to accomplish the impossible with that person becomes ever more pressing the closer we become.

But this closeness breeds a great deal of frustration as we misunderstand and are misunderstood over and over again.  We're offended, insulted, disrespected, and forgotten about over and over again, and all of it is because of this incredible drive to fully work with, understand, and solve the riddle for, each other.  This is an impossible task, which, as a result of its constant failure, causes no end of heartache, frustration, misdirected anger, and the fog of loneliness.

And yet: friendships happen.  Romance happens.  Marriages happen.  People do crazy things – like fall in love – and get hurt, sometimes deeply, by the very same people we've made ourselves vulnerable to.

Why?

I'd rather be abused by a warm body than be locked inside my frozen loneliness.  That's why.

But opening my soul to a person who is so easily frustrated and offended by my inability to understand him is terrifying.  What if he finds me to be inadequate?  What if I don't measure up to whatever I'm supposed to be according to all the commercials on TV filled with gorgeous, happy people with perfect lives thanks to that miracle shampoo that doesn't seem to give me the same shine they have?

But as terrifying as it might be to show my actual soul to him, with its broken, scared-to-death, and desperate need to be loved, it is just as scary to imagine my life so intimately tied to another person.

You see, there are things about my life right now that I love.  I can spend my money the way I want.  I can go out on the town if I want.  I can seek out casual companionship to fulfill needs without having to try to understand someone deeply.

But there are things about my life right now that I hate.  The night is dark and long, and my bed feels so empty when I curl up under the covers.  When I cry, I cry alone.  When the world is big and I am small, I can only bury my face in my arms and crouch down behind my door to pretend it's all going to be OK.

I want unconditional love.  But I want my freedom.  There doesn't seem to be a way to have both.

I'll get a dog.

Musings from Work

#FrankHerfort

Thankfully, there are no open stairs in my workplace.  All the stairs in the building are tucked snugly behind doors, in narrow hallways, or otherwise concealed away from the main area where I, and my myriad coworkers, labour in order to produce wealth.  Not our own wealth, mind you.  No, we are neither emperors nor gods.  Wealth, it seems, belongs to the wealthy, and thus, it is they for whom we toil, receiving with thanks the price they pay for the priceless hours of our lives.

As I say, I'm grateful that there are no open staircases.  If there were, it would be possible to look from on high down onto this place.  From such a vantage point, one would see all the more clearly the drudgery that makes all too real the damnable phrase "day in; day out".  Here we sit, attention fixed to a lifeless machine before us, displaying information on a dimly lit screen about men and women who remain relevant to us only for the few moments we interact with them through the telephone.  From above, one would see us leashed by headsets to our desks, hearing the demands of people who never see our faces, and whose faces we never see.  Row on row, we would seem as drones, with faces blurring together, obscuring our individual identity even more than the faceless servitude we give those who demand our service.

 

A curious thing, these call centers are.  On the one hand, those who deal with large corporations demand the ability to interact with humans rather than machines.  But when they do, they seldom behave as if they are speaking with human beings.  Separating the face and the voice creates a void through which nothing passes but electrical impulses racing at the speed of light through wires – or even the air itself – into our ears, and back from our mouths through the same void back into their ears.

Yet they say, "I don't want to talk to a machine!"

You are talking to a machine, sir or ma'am.  Your telephone, be it a device on your desk or a device in your pocket has neither flesh nor blood, to say nothing of the lacking soul or moral judgment.  That device – that machine – in turn is speaking to a computer server – another machine – which is firing an electrical version of your voice to a machine here in this place of toil, which sends it to the machine currently perched on my head.

You only think you're speaking to a human being.  You aren't.  If you were, you'd likely speak very differently than you do.  You would speak as to a human being.  Instead, you speak as to a lifeless, soulless, utterly impotent machine.

And if there were open staircases here, one would see us all, toiling here as if we were machines, being treated as machines, faithfully producing wealth as machines, and slowly – oh so slowly – becoming that very thing which the people whose voices we electrically hear demand not to talk to.

Of course, I don't wish to seem ungrateful.  I am neither poverty-stricken nor tied to this place as a form of self-identification.  I merely recognize that, though this is my source of income – a mere pittance compared to the untold riches I bring to my employer – I maintain my own humanity outside this place.  I do not live here.  I work here.  I live out there, where people see my face.  I live where people see more than a disembodied voice, where smiles can be contagious, hands can be held, arms can embrace, and the intricacies of a flick of fingers, a wink in the eye, or a nod of the head communicate so much more, and where love is expressed in a far truer way.

I live where I am not a machine.  I am human.