On the Strangeness of People

How do you approach someone?

This is something that, at least in my conception of it, some of us (or at least those not into the sociopath or even psychopath grey areas) struggle with everyday.

Whether it is someone at work that you think would greatly benefit from your inputs, but you are somewhat unease to start a conversation out of fear of bashing the other person’s feelings, simply because you do not want to be misinterpreted, or that other person who is wearing a half-open backpack and you are unsure if it is due to lack of attention or social affirmation through a fashion statement. 

I am also pretty sure that the average type-A jock does not pay much attention to this and simply uses his blunt personality to interpolate whomever on the multiple vicissitudes of everyday life, but then again this is not my target audience, and I am almost certain that you, the reader, do not fit into that category – after all this is not a sports column on Guns & Ammo.

When we dream about others, everything is so much simpler. We tend to skip whichever step would trigger our insecurity alarms, and because of that all of the pseudo-social-dreamlike interaction tends to run smoothly, or at the very least in a way that the oneiric immersive fantasy is not shattered. Because of that, I cannot stop myself from thinking what could have been the steps we skip that bring us to those fruitful dreamy moments of bliss, where communication is often fluid, truthful and engaging.

And then we are swept back to reality.

Should, could, ought, would, are just words that tend to stick around, often carried by our insecurities and fears into our hearts and minds, like solvent molecules through permeable membranes.

Buildings burn, people die, yet words seem to stay forever imprinted in humanity’s social matrix. But hey, we are only human after all.