All social life is tinged by despair
Ok, maybe not all. But lots.
I was having a conversation last night about the right way to meet people, and the wrong way (whatever that is). And it occurred to me that all the most social butterflyish people I know are either very needy or have needy people around them. Their lives don't seem to be about calmly hanging out with people who have shared interests. It's not: I like fishing, you like fishing, let's go down to the stream together. I'm sure some of social life operates on that level, but at root it's about hanging on to some people as though they will save your life, and once you've got them on hand, then you can think in some more casual way about going fishing, or going to the opera with another opera fan; although maybe not even then. Maybe the rings of connection grow more dramatic and soap operalike in ever-increasing concentric circles. Sheila's story reminded me of this as well. When did she meet all those people in cosmic-seeming fashion? When she had just had a devastating breakup, moved to a new place where she hardly knew anyone, and just recovered from a horrible illness.
My social circle seems fairly calm and settled now, but I made most of the core group of friends I have when I was a) having some sort of spiritual crisis my senior year of high school, and b) so lonely and miserable at college I thought I was going to die (or at least transfer).
This struck me earlier this weekend as well, when I went out with a younger friend of mine for brunch. Her circle is the most beautiful, accomplished, interesting group of twentysomething New Yorkers you could imagine, but although they give off an air of glamour and great fun, when I was thinking about the individual people and relationships, they seemed a mess. I had brunch with my younger friend and another male friend of hers, who is severely depressed, and whom she has explicitly taken on as a sort of project. Her roommate (with whom I had lunch on Friday) tried to make a life for herself in the city where she's going to graduate school, and failed, and came back to New York to seek the comfort of old friends. Another guy who has been staying with the two of them moved to the midwest to be with his girlfriend, and has no life there, and came back to the city to party with a vengeance, &c. &c.
So I'm wondering where these people are, who socialize in the right way.
I was having a conversation last night about the right way to meet people, and the wrong way (whatever that is). And it occurred to me that all the most social butterflyish people I know are either very needy or have needy people around them. Their lives don't seem to be about calmly hanging out with people who have shared interests. It's not: I like fishing, you like fishing, let's go down to the stream together. I'm sure some of social life operates on that level, but at root it's about hanging on to some people as though they will save your life, and once you've got them on hand, then you can think in some more casual way about going fishing, or going to the opera with another opera fan; although maybe not even then. Maybe the rings of connection grow more dramatic and soap operalike in ever-increasing concentric circles. Sheila's story reminded me of this as well. When did she meet all those people in cosmic-seeming fashion? When she had just had a devastating breakup, moved to a new place where she hardly knew anyone, and just recovered from a horrible illness.
My social circle seems fairly calm and settled now, but I made most of the core group of friends I have when I was a) having some sort of spiritual crisis my senior year of high school, and b) so lonely and miserable at college I thought I was going to die (or at least transfer).
This struck me earlier this weekend as well, when I went out with a younger friend of mine for brunch. Her circle is the most beautiful, accomplished, interesting group of twentysomething New Yorkers you could imagine, but although they give off an air of glamour and great fun, when I was thinking about the individual people and relationships, they seemed a mess. I had brunch with my younger friend and another male friend of hers, who is severely depressed, and whom she has explicitly taken on as a sort of project. Her roommate (with whom I had lunch on Friday) tried to make a life for herself in the city where she's going to graduate school, and failed, and came back to New York to seek the comfort of old friends. Another guy who has been staying with the two of them moved to the midwest to be with his girlfriend, and has no life there, and came back to the city to party with a vengeance, &c. &c.
So I'm wondering where these people are, who socialize in the right way.
posted by fortuna at 10:40 AM
6 Comments:
I underwent a compulsory sales training seminar a few months ago, in which the trainers were all psychologists and actually very good at what they do. There was a good deal of talk about "Pacing and Leading" and about "calibrating" the interaction with one's partners.
This lead to discussions around how individual social contacts are "lead" by the society in which they take place and that individuals mostly "pace" the society in which they live. This was in the view of one of the coaches the root of much social neurosis in the modern world.
I seems possible that if one combines this with the need to exercise influence in order to project oneself onto the backdrop of the social cirlce against which many people benchmark themselves, then you arrive back at something I think you probably intuitively understand: Having a calm and settled inner relationship with others demands that one be sure of one's identity first. It is the social equivalent of being able to sit in a dark room, alone with a candle for as long as the candle burns and doing nothing.
I understand the last bit, but not so much about the social neurosis. You mean there's a lot of anxiety and miscommunication because people aren't sure what roles they are trying to play with others? Aren't sure what they want?
I was also thinking of it as an impression of activity or happiness on closer inspection turning out to be a series of complicated interactions alternately pleasing and hurtful, in which you're seeking out other people out of loneliness (sometimes in severe forms), and come in with expectations of being appreciated in some way that is fulfilled in pieces but not in the whole--you make x laugh but y turns away from you to talk to someone else and you thought z would be happy to see you but she seems distant but hey there's c who is looking for you particularly to tell you a story. It's a jumble, some of which is very positive, some very anxiety-inducing, none of it all that calm.
I just lost a whole long post: must have copied the verification wrong.
I was responding and it got lost too. Lovely blogger.
It is more a case of reflecting the mayhem around them caused my the need to continuously "develop". We start to reflect that in our own relationships back onto the screen against which we act out our dramas.
It is hard to nail this down, it just occurred to me on reading your post. I think it might also have to do with th e need to be confirmed in ones own identity, even more so if we are not sure of that identity or not comfortable with it, comfortable with ourselves.
Is 'kbmfuct' a word-verificational comment on the state of blogger?
This should not be taken as indicating that I am not thinking about the post etc.
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