It’s always enlightening and sometimes a bit confronting to get a glimpse of yourself through other people’s eyes.
A little while back I was at a lunch with a large group people, an assortment of kind-of friends who you kind-of hang out with and they kind-of know you and amongst them are some gems where the friendship may go to the next level but mostly it’s just a mish-mash of people who you’re sharing space with for know.
I was having a conversation with one of the girls there who I’ve actually known for a couple of years, she’d been having a pretty tough time we’d talked at length about it she’d cried on my shoulder. Anyway, in the way of setting the scene to get to my point (and the point is coming) in this group of kind-of friends she was someone who I thought knew me better than most. Then half way through our conversation she says to me “but everything comes so easily for you”.
It was the kind of statement where the fork stops half way to the mouth. The tip of the tongue response was “wow well the last thirty years would have gone a whole lot smoother if someone had sent me that FUCKING MEMO”. Naturally, this is not what I said. I tend to restrain tendencies toward sarcasm. I think it’s a combination of my mother’s voice in my head telling me to stop being facetious and never quite being sure how people will take it. And the friendship certainly hadn’t reached a level where it would survive a sarcastic response taken the wrong way. I think I may have enquired what gave her that impression… she said it was the calm aura I radiated (she’s into that kind of lingo)….
But it made me think… is that the image I project, everything comes easily to me, because I sure as hell know I struggle with lots of things including returning DVD’s and library books on time, swimming more than eight strokes of freestyle without sinking to the bottom of the pool or having to switch back to breast stroke, opening up to people before I’ve well and truly sussed them out, balancing all of the major food groups in a healthy and appropriate manner, purposely waiting around corners to avoid making small talk in corridors and hallways … well you get the point. And I’m pretty okay with all of these things (except maybe the DVD’s those fines really add up) but it interested me that we walk around with our own reality of how our lives are and other people’s versions of that life are so different to our own. Huh!
A little while back I was at a lunch with a large group people, an assortment of kind-of friends who you kind-of hang out with and they kind-of know you and amongst them are some gems where the friendship may go to the next level but mostly it’s just a mish-mash of people who you’re sharing space with for know.
I was having a conversation with one of the girls there who I’ve actually known for a couple of years, she’d been having a pretty tough time we’d talked at length about it she’d cried on my shoulder. Anyway, in the way of setting the scene to get to my point (and the point is coming) in this group of kind-of friends she was someone who I thought knew me better than most. Then half way through our conversation she says to me “but everything comes so easily for you”.
It was the kind of statement where the fork stops half way to the mouth. The tip of the tongue response was “wow well the last thirty years would have gone a whole lot smoother if someone had sent me that FUCKING MEMO”. Naturally, this is not what I said. I tend to restrain tendencies toward sarcasm. I think it’s a combination of my mother’s voice in my head telling me to stop being facetious and never quite being sure how people will take it. And the friendship certainly hadn’t reached a level where it would survive a sarcastic response taken the wrong way. I think I may have enquired what gave her that impression… she said it was the calm aura I radiated (she’s into that kind of lingo)….
But it made me think… is that the image I project, everything comes easily to me, because I sure as hell know I struggle with lots of things including returning DVD’s and library books on time, swimming more than eight strokes of freestyle without sinking to the bottom of the pool or having to switch back to breast stroke, opening up to people before I’ve well and truly sussed them out, balancing all of the major food groups in a healthy and appropriate manner, purposely waiting around corners to avoid making small talk in corridors and hallways … well you get the point. And I’m pretty okay with all of these things (except maybe the DVD’s those fines really add up) but it interested me that we walk around with our own reality of how our lives are and other people’s versions of that life are so different to our own. Huh!
No comments:
Post a Comment