Interact, MAN! Be A Part Of Something!

     I've always thought of interacting with people as a hassle.  I'm not sure why I feel like this, so that's why I've decided to dig in this week and do a little self evaluation.  Hopefully, if this works out right, by the end of this narrative foray, I'll at least be a little closer to the answer--and maybe a little closer to understanding myself as an individual.  I think we all suppress personality traits.  We all hide behind a socially acceptable mask of vanilla opinions and predictable responses.  Perhaps we don't want to offend, perhaps we all, deep down, just want people to like and accept us.  I have been at this game for a long time, and it's becoming obvious to me now, that I have lost my identity in the process.  Maybe there never was a time when I just let it loose, full steam ahead, destroying every preconceived notion of me in its wake.  Maybe I never even had an accurate identity to begin with.  After all, we are our outward appearance.  We are perceived by others how we elect to outwardly appear.

     I wonder how many of us really know ourselves.  How do we really feel about things?  Why do we do things we don't enjoy?  I would imagine that the benefit received by doing the joyless act outweighs the misery of doing it.  That's the only reason that I can think of.  But, and at the same time, I don't really ever recall sitting down and deeply considering the nuances of cause and effect.  I have a healthy respect for the human mind and it's ability to subconsciously make many decisions all at once, and maybe we're on auto pilot.  I always fear that we flick that auto pilot switch on a little too often.  We've become complacent with everything, detached, and we're not quite as self aware as we once were.  I'm often haunted by the question:  Am I living life, or is life living me?  How much control do I take in the results of my own life?  Not enough.  I am drifting down the lazy river of life on an inner tube, casually taking in the scenery, but most of the time I'm napping.  Those of you that know me, know that my naps are not only a metaphor for not stopping to smell the roses, but also a reality that I take extremely seriously.  

     Who am I?  Ah, an age-old question, possibly too complex for a simple, multi-million neuron equipped network of synaptic impulses to determine.  Who am I, really?  Maybe that's a better question.  Who I am is relative to the observer.  Who I am really pulls out the relativistic factor and implies that the answer will be a fact, regardless of observer.  Strangely, no one could ever know the answer but me, and even that is questionable.  Does everyone engage in a societal desire to be accepted?  I've heard people say they don't care what others think of them, but I wonder if that's truly the case.  Part of being human is to desire interaction, to feel like you belong to something, to be able to relate to someone about anything.  There are countless groups and organizations you can elect to be a part of.  Most of us belong to more than one.  Republican, PTA, car club, book club, Sam's Club, magazine subscriber, movie goer, dancer, writer, blogger, Facebooker, Twitter--ah...tweeter, Christian, drinker, student...the list could go on forever.  People want to be a part of something, it seems.  But not me.  I don't desire interaction.  People who know me might find that surprising.  People who really know me, know this about me.  I loathe the mere potential for interaction. 

     I find interacting cumbersome.  I find meeting new people awkward.  I have groomed myself into a passably believable(maybe I'm fooling myself here) extrovert.  People often seem surprised when I tell them I could easily be a recluse.  People think I'm joking when I call myself an introvert.  I have fooled them too well, it seems.  I enjoy solitude.  I like quiet time.  I like to have time alone with my own thoughts.  This way, I can get to know myself better.  I don't always have to be doing something.  I can bask in the silence of solitude indefinitely.  But despite that almost depressing fact, I am also pretty charismatic and ridiculously narcissistic.  Can these things really go together or define who I really am?  Only I can be the judge of it and I'm thinking that this evaluation is spot on.

     I think I'm too concerned with how others perceive me.  I'm too concerned with the fact that I might accidentally offend someone.  Please don't misunderstand me.  I have no problem in offending people.  I have a problem with accidentally offending someone.  If I have a goal in mind, i.e. Offending someone and I succeed--total win!  On the other hand if my goal was not to offend, and I still offend--total loss!  If I gave up my concerns about how others percieve me, though, would it be an improvement?  If I just lived my life, and truly didn't care what other people thought of me, and lived an "I am what I am" existence(wasn't that a Popeye quote??), would I feel like less of a fraud?  Because when I'm pandering to people, in the hopes that I can sway a positive opinion from them about me, that's exactly how I feel: Fraudulent.  And perhaps that's the main problem with this whole situation.  It's the fact that I feel like I am selling a fraudulent personality.  And that makes me feel dishonest.

     The tough part to swallow then is the idea that there will never be a truly honest portrayal of my personality.  One reason is because I honestly don't know who I truly am since I've been faking it for so long.  Another reason is because no one would appreciate it to begin with because it would be sinfully self-centered.  And yet another reason is because everyone's in the same boat.  No one truly knows themselves.  People pander to be accepted.  People bend their morals to be accepted and people act out of character so that they can manipulate another person's perception of them.  It's textbook sociopathy.  We are all on that track, I suppose.  And despite my advanced ability to think freely, this is a case where I've decided to follow the rest of the cows to slaughter.  And I'm okay with it.  At least I'm part of something.