November 17, 2008
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Life and Friends
Walking in the hallway I heard Viva La Vida playing and thought “Some people say they don’t like this Coldplay CD because it is like the whole album is the same song.” I like it that way, because then it’s all the same mood and if I want to be in that mood I play that CD. And since the songs are at least slightly different, there is variation within that mood to still make it a dynamic experience. It is like life with Jesus—all one contantly present theme and mood throughout life since we know Jesus, though the song changes as life goes along. And we ought to understand that some other Christians might be at a different song in life than we are.
At the debate tournament I started wondering in the large awards room of people about the idea of interacting with people at just one point in their life. Every person’s life is a long evolution of their mind as they go through different experiences and phases in life. So in any given social situation, I am really interacting with just a sliver of someone’s total life? How weird! In a room full of people, we are all colliding at the present, though our lives will continue on in many different directions. It’s like everyone’s life is them watching the movie of their life, and you end up in just this scene, and they do likewise for you. How many movies I’ve been a part of, and in the end many people have been a part of mine. But in the end I’m the only one who was there for my whole life, to see every single scene, and to know how it all connects.
And because of this, what we say and what we do in certain scenes is what people must use to figure out who we are. While my life constantly continues and I am there for all of it, a friend comes in and out intermittently, and thus their graph of me has many very large gaps. But using the parts of the graph they have, they figure out my “equation” and that is how people know what to expect from you. And since we must decide who people are so we know how to act toward them, I think people decide almost indelibly who you are based on knowing you for the first few months of your relationship, and it is very hard to change their perception of you after that.
Comments (4)
the truth is we know very little to nothing about someone by only meeting them for a few moments.Our perceptions of them are most likely wrong.
I see the whole Viva La Vida cd as first creation, all the way to Jesus’s death, resurrection, and second coming
Only a interacting with a sliver of a person’s life? Hm… Rather wouldn’t you be interacting with their entire past as well? The memories and experiences of people often shaped who they at present. So, you are not simply interacting with a sliver, but a sliver through which the beams of all things previous shine through. You’re interacting with the result of their every loss, every victory, every hurt, and every joy. That’s why, sometimes, a person reacts to you in an unexpected way, because it’s not so much your action they’re responding to but an action that’s been and gone.
It’s very true about acting out small parts in the lives of people. It also makes the consequences of even the smallest actions seem more profound. You never know when you’re going to be a side character, simply passing through, but completely changing the main character’s life. The smallest act of kindness may influence their ending.
Or, on other days, you might just be an extra passing through the background. You never know.
That is a very strange phenomenon, isn’t it? People seem to form these perceptions about you and weigh you’re every action against that perception. What’s worse is that people weight your actions against a stereotype — the way they think most people in your group/gender/race act. It tends to annoy me at times, because people accuse me of having motives when I don’t or treat according to their stereotype, instead of treating me as the person I am. It’s very unfortunate, if you think about it. People end up being friends of their own perceptions instead of being friends to the true person…
@Yume_Shii -
That is certainly another way to look at it.
This is pretty weird. I almost included my next thought, but I truncated it for the sake of brevity (which I realize is vitally important in the blogosphere, given people’s need to check things and move on. The blogosphere is about hunting, not settling.) The next thought was about how we influence people’s lives, and however slight our impact, it may trigger a domino of thoughts in their minds that land them somewhere good, or it could fit exactly where they needed it, etc. You totally completed it! *high five*
What can you do? In order to understand the world the human mind puts things in groups. Then when they encounter something that falls within that group, they know how to act based on what they think of that group. It’s just convenient. It’s more convenient, anyways, than figuring out the individual complexity of each every human’s personality. (Which would just be far too much to ask…*rolls eyes* .. really, that’s what the fun of life is.)
I am like Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray when he is talking to the duchess near the end of the book (the duchess starts):
“What of art?” she asked.
“It is a malady.”
“Love?”
“An illusion.”
“Religion?”
“The fashionable substitute for belief.”
“You are a sceptic.”
“Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith.”
“What are you?”
“To define is to limit.”
“Give me a clue.”
“Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth.”
How true. This phenomenon of the sometimes unfortunate side-effects of words is the theme of the first sermon on my sidebar, and it has helped me think a lot.
I just read a quote yesterday the puts your last point perfectly: “Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” – William James
@StrokeofThought -
Intriguing dialog. In all honestly, I’ve never read/seen that book/movie. (Alas, I seem to miss all the good ones… This must be remedied!)
Aha! All the more proof that the world is attempting to make itself as insensible and boring as possible! The little weirdnesses and complexities are the best part of people. It’s more than worth the extra energy to draw a person out of his/her shell if only to see who they really are — good and bad qualities alike.
Although groupings and classifications are vital to understanding, a stereotype doesn’t have to override the characteristics of an individual. And that’s what I don’t understand society’s near-universal perception. In my mind, stereotypes should just be a starting point, and everything learned about that person/object afterwards is used to craft a unique, distinct group. Which, as different as people/objects are, it usually becomes a group of one.
Oh my! I love that quote. Consider it snitched! So… it must get very crowded in say a meeting of 5, because there would really be 15.
Oh, there was a question I forgot to ask in the earlier comment. Please be so kind as to suffer an ignorant and tell me, what is a debate tournament exactly? Is it as its name implies – teams of people who gather together to argue with each other?