OYM: Other Wise

I’m not socially awkward. I just say that I am to watch a stranger’s shoulders drop and their hips shift to a more comfortable position. I don’t normally cut myself down as much as I am right now. I’m just chopping away over here to make you feel better about the shortcomings I know you have (but trust me, I don’t see them, and if I do, I bet I find them charming) that you’re trying to hide right now.  I don’t usually drink this much when I first meet someone, but I am because it pains me to drift between circles of conversation, dancing, dancing, dancing, like a monkey in a masquerade, waiting for the bell to ring and the masks to hit the floor.

I think most people are beautiful in some way or another. And this is even before they open their mouths. I usually fall deeper in love with people once they start talking. What they say doesn’t matter so much to me because after working with humans to help them achieve their goals for the better part of my career, I’ve learned to strip them back, often one ignorant statement at a time, to see where they’re coming from. They don’t really mean that thing they just said, like the thing about the rise of homelessness in their area making them scared. They don’t mean it. They just don’t know. They don’t know how to empathize. But they’re capable…and I think about how I can lead them to know that. I think about how I would probably think similarly if I hadn’t been exposed to the many ways life can happen. And I’ve only been exposed to that because I love stories and have sought them out since I was a child. I did this because I wasn’t interested in my own.

Writing my own stories and reading those of others was an escape I didn’t know I was taking. But looking back, I can see that now. And what I learned is that we are not as individual and unique as we wish we were. We are all painfully similar, really. It’s just a matter of how life happens to you, the people that come in and out of it, the quick decision-making. Especially nowadays. There are algorithms that know you better than you could ever know yourself.  Please, read about it. I’m not making it up. Also, just please read more. Everyone. Myself included.

We walk around each day thinking we’re at least a couple hundred decisions away from complete self-destruction. But in reality, it’s closer to an even 8-10. How did we get so complacent with thinking otherwise? How did we separate ourselves from the “others” so quickly and comfortably? We could be an “other” any day now. And really, what’s so wrong with that?

Stop trying to hide your Other. The Other is who I really want to know. The Other is where the real you spends most of her time.

But in the meantime, I’ll admire her from here.