A Well-Examined Life
I was thinking today, as I am prone to do, about certain people in my life, and how their lack of self-awareness has caused tension in our relationships. I will always stand by my conviction that introspection is key to understanding one's life, that a well-examined life is the only one worth living, that spending some time in honest self-exploration is time valuably spent.
Sometimes I have difficulties getting along with other women. I was thinking about two of those women today, one whom is a crucial element of my family and one who is an old friend. I was thinking about certain situations and trying to understand why they acted the way they did in that situation.
I suppose I was thinking about this because my birthday is coming up, and I had mentioned that maybe we would invite this old friend of mine to come celebrate it. I was thinking back on some birthdays I have celebrated with her. She has been a part of my life for over ten years, and at one point was my constant companion. However, the last time that she came out to celebrate my birthday with me, there was this incident. The only way I can see how things unraveled in the way they did is if she was talking about me behind my back when I went to the restroom. I thought about that, and questioned if I would ever do that to one of my friends. There are many things this girl does that I would never do to a friend. I have a little bit more loyalty, or maybe I just try not to ever hurt anyone, which is ironic in a way because later this girl told me that "everything you say and do is designed to hurt people's feelings", which is completely off base.
Anyway, while reflecting on what I know about this friend in an attempt to understand her motivations, I developed this hypothesis. My hypothesis is that when this girl is confronted with something that makes her uncomfortable, instead of internalizing it and trying to understand why it makes her uncomfortable, she immediately rejects it and says there must be something wrong with this thing, this thing that makes her feel bad. She attributes the way she feels to something about that thing (person, object, situation), and not to some inherent condition about herself.
This friend has been extremely competitive with me in the past. She was especially competitive with me for male attention back in the days when we were all single. She would get irritated if I would "win", and that would compell her to behave in ways that were completely obnoxious to me. I think that a little introspection, a little exploration of her feelings, would have led her to the conclusion that the little victory had nothing to do with her or with I, and was really not worth the tension in the house over it. It is like she would be bothered by me, without ever really trying to understand why it was and gain some acceptance of it.
Since I spend so much time with dogs, I try to relate everything back to them. My theory on her behavior reminds me of the warning against using a shock collar to train a dog to stop behaving aggressively. In dog behavior, especially these days, they talk a lot about "arousal levels", and warn that you should not use an aversive training technique (like a shock collar) on a highly aroused dog, or one that has potential for aggression, because it could backfire and make it worse.
As an example, say your dog is barking and lunging at the fenceline, behind which is another dog. Let's say you had a shock collar on him and you zapped him. The dog could erroneously come to the conclusion that the dog behind the fence caused the shock. It kind of makes sense, really...if every time you come close to this thing, you get zapped, then you might start thinking that that thing is what causes you to be zapped, if you are the dog. It would be hard, in fact, to make the leap that your behavior, in fact, caused the zap, and not the thing itself. It might be hard to understand that if you feel bad, that badness is coming from someplace inside of you, is internally motivated, and is not in fact caused by the external stimulus, even if that badness only comes in association with that stimulus.
So I guess I can understand that it could be hard for her to understand that if she feels bad around me, maybe that bad feeling is internally driven. Having known this person for a long time, I know she is more action-driven than thought-driven. She is not one to sit around and explore her feelings. I know that she has "issues" with my complicated romantic situations, that they never seem to fit her idea of what is right in the world, and usually that is the driving force behind her obnoxious behavior towards me. As a mutual friend said once, "she will never understand you, because she thinks only in black and white, and you are so many shades of gray."
I think, though, if she took some time to explore her inner world, it might make our relationship a lot easier. For instance, if she realized that what was bothering her was really these decisions I make with men, but that really it was my life, and it wasn't her decision, so she didn't need to necessarily have an opinion on it and respond to that opinion in a mean-spirited way, then it might really help us to get along.
Maybe that is what it is with the other woman I mentioned, too. If they would both just come to terms with the fact that my decision doesn't have to be their decision, too, and let me live my life without that kind of judgement, then we would all get along much better.
Can't we all just get along?