We all have these gaps in our personalities. The interesting part is when we figure them out, for the most part it takes others to do this for us. During the original carpool back in vegas with Forrest one was pointed out pertaining to the pronunciation of a few words I clearly did not know how to pronounce. Its odd, you spend your entire youth and young adulthood reading books/articles and you say certain words to yourself as you read them and convince yourself that is how they are said. To never have heard them out loud it makes it difficult to actually get them right all of the time.
One of the most notable gaps is how there is always someone that doesn’t realize the volume of their own voice. They carry on these trivial conversations in public when most everyone else is either being silent or pretending to be asleep. The other challenge sometimes is to pretend not to listen to them either. Sometimes its easier said than done. Especially in an airplane when there isn’t anything else going on and the joy of boredom is wearing thin.
A few words that I still have trouble with are latent and queue. Every time I think to say these I have to go back and really think about which way I want to say them.
A huge one that I have to live through almost every day at work is that my coworker somehow never learned that you aren’t supposed to put your dirty ass feet all over the furniture. I could never invision him over to my house because I would be afraid he would treat my furniture like his personal door mat. He wont stop at my chairs. He will occasionally put them on my desk as well. I have even seen him do it in a staff meeting. Someone might say that he had a lot of balls to do that, but that’s not it at all hes just that fucking dumb.
A show that I watched with Blake a few years ago was called Alone. On the finale the winner had somewhat of a revelation about his perception of life and whats important. One of the things that he said was that if you spend an extended period of time all by yourself with nothing but your thoughts – you had better like yourself. I thought about that for quite some time. It is simple to escape the feelings of loneliness back here in civilization because we can always go and get high. I’d like to think that I would be fine with the alone part of it. How much introspection would I gain? I’d like to think a lot.
I often like to think that I do like myself, I am easily my own biggest fan. But what does that really mean? Do I enjoy the things that occupy my day, or is it just the thoughts running through my head. If it is only the people around me then perhaps I would not do well in isolation. If we really only exist through the eyes of another than having no one in your life would be a tragedy.
A common gap is that people seem to give random people or even strangers power over their emotional well-being. To post a thought or idea or picture on social media has no perfect ending. The worst case scenario for these people is that they get negative replies or crickets. With every post comes an expectation of replies or an approval of some sorts from the masses. Therein lies the problem with that process. For the emotionally challenged among us this is a train wreck. The solution to this is simple, don’t give the strangers that power of your emotions. Posting is powerful tool and way to share your life with your friends, use it but don’t put effort into a relationship that cannot actually work for you.
Let us all reduce our gaps. The one problem is that we need people in our lives that care about us to communicate those gaps to us.