First, I am going to indulge in a little l’esprit d’escalier and write what I wish I had said in response to an incident from many years ago.
The scenario : I was thinking of finally joining the millennium and getting a cellphone, so I went to the Telus store to talk to someone about my options.
The snooty lady who was the only one working there (it’s one of the itty bitty Telus stores the size of a walk-in closet) took one look at me and my usual “recently homeless” disheveled look and turned up her nose.
When I started asking her about plans, she cut me off to very snottily say “Look, our plans START at $60/month. ”
And at the time, I couldn’t afford it, so I just slinked (slunk?) away.
But here’s how I wish I’d reacted.
I wish I had given her a detached, clinical look, then in my best dry intellectual tone had said “You do realize you were just quite mean to me, right? Presumably, because you assumed I was poor and therefore you could get away with abusing me because I would be unable to retaliate. I just wanted you to know that you’d done that so you can think about what that means about you, as a person. Goodbye. ”
I came up with that while lying in bed last night, and I freaking love it. As far as I am concerned, it approaches both verbal and moral perfection because all it does is hold up a mirror to someone’s evil and force them to look it in the face.
It hurts exactly as much as the person believes their own action to have been evil. My own anger and hurt isn’t even part of the equation.
Well, except as motive.
I think I might have stumbled on the blueprint for an effective life strategy for dealing with nasty people. Just reflect it back to them with perfect accuracy, adding or subtracting nothing in order to make it crystal clear that this is not about you and refusing to making it anything like a traditional interpersonal conflict.
Nasty people tend to be good at those.
But verbal Zen masters like me don’t play their game. We make others play our game. We change the rules that fools don’t even known exist, and that lets us defeat our opponents in ways they can’t even comprehend.
And that’s really fun.
Now I know my little indulgence here does nothing to change the past and causes no harm to the actual snooty lady who made me feel so bad.
But that’s not the point. I am really getting into correcting my internal narrative and for that purpose, a satisfying revenge way after the fact is almost as good as the real thing.
So what the hell. I’m not going to die. I am going to fight all my medical conditions as hard as I can and win, and emerge all the stronger for having my bullshit repeatedly purged by the flames.
I’m not a loser. I’m a future winner. I have incredible abilities and some day I will use them to rocket to the top on a pillar of light and share all my deferred love with the world like a glorious shining star powerful enough to make the whole world warm.
There. That ought to do the trick,
Joining enigmas anonymous
I am trying to wrap my head around how to stop being enigmatic.
I know where it comes from. It comes from indecision. Often situations which call for personal information to be revealed have an implicit decision buried in them and for a congenitally decision averse person like myself, the solution to this moment of crisis is to further delay decision by giving a vague answer that lies in between and doesn’t really answer the question at all.
I am a whiz at noncommittal answers given under duress.
So when I talk about being a very open person, I really am.
But I am also really, really…. not.
After all, if you want something to stay hidden, you have both hide the thing and then hide the fact that you’re hiding anything.
And I am very, very good at hiding.
Secondarily, it’s about information control. But on a gut emotional level. By default, I prefer to remain unknown to people. It makes me feel safe. If they don’t know you, they can’t predict you and that gives you an inherent strategic advantage. You are free to choose whatever stratagem best fits the scenario at leisure because you have the luxury of knowing you are invisible.
You maintain this illusion by moving out of the way when they attack where they thought you were. You’re a ghost, and they can’t know where you are, only where you’ve been.
Basically I’m a fucking ninja.
The third factor is that I obviously really enjoy being enigmatic and mysterious. To my lesser mind, it just makes me interesting.
And I have a very strong drive to be interesting.
But it’s not that simple. If people can’t know you, they can’t fully trust you. Coming across as way smarter than them doesn’t help either, and I do both.
And without trust there is no intimacy or even true connection. Nobody trusts someone wearing a mask, especially when it’s not always the same mask.
Have you met Intellectual Fru? How about Silly Fru, or Passionate Ideologue Fru, or Sarcastic Joker Fru, or the rarely seen Theatrical Fru?
Collect them all, kids. Trade them with your friends.
My point is, if people can’t know you, they can’t predict you, and if they can’t predict you, they can’t know you won’t hurt them.
And that’s true no matter how much of a sweetie you think you are. Or how charming, or how adorable, or how smart, or how irresistible.
Nobody trusts a trickster, no matter how nice they are.
So go head and be a ninja if it makes you feel safe, but do so knowing that if you ever want the love, affection, and affirmation you crave, you are going to have to slow down, stand still, and let yourself be found,
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.