When I first came home from the hospital, I thought about my experience all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, literally, but it was always in the back of my mind. I would muse about what happened, but rarely about why it happened. I marveled that I survived pretty much intact, but as I told the hospital chaplain, why shouldn’t it happen to me?
I’ve always found it strange when people were floored when bad things happened to them. For example, when 9/11 happened, there were so many people saying, “I can’t believe this happened in America.” I get it on an intellectual level. In my lifetime up to that point, there hadn’t been any attacks on American soil. We have been lulled to believe that we are untouchable.
But, anyone who was following the situation to any degree could see something of the sort happening. I’m not pretending that I was precog and predicted an attack in NY. I wasn’t and I didn’t. But I am also not going to pretend that I was shocked that it happened. Grieved, yes. Appalled, yes. But shocked? Nope.
What I was shocked about and then disheartened was the jingoistic reaction by our government after the initial attack. We had the goodwill of the entire world–and we squandered it.
I’m a weirdo, though. I used to call myself a pessimist and/or a cynic because I was always seeing the dark side of things. Or rather, I was always pointing out something that other people hadn’t seen in a situation.
That’s right. I’m the ‘well, actually’ person in the flesh.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I was telling a friend of mine that I was a cynic/pessimist. He took a long look at me and said, “Minna. You’re an optimist.” Cue the outrage and the sputtering. Me , an optimist?!? How dare he! I was so pissed off, I wanted to tell him off. But, I decided to ask him what he meant by that. I was no Pollyanna who only saw the bright side to everything. How very DARE he????
“Minna, you expect the best out of people and then are disappointed when they don’t live up to your expectations,” he explained. “That makes you an optimist.”
I opened my mouth to dispute with him; then I shut it again. I hated to say it, but he was right. I did expect people to do the right thing (or the prudent thing or the logical thing) and when they didn’t, it bothered me. A lot. In fact, that’s probably why I wsa cynical–because people didn’t live up to my expectations.
It’s this weird mishmash of me expecting the worst out of people and expecting the best. Like, I know what I want from a situation, and I know it probably won’t happen, but I can’t help but be disappointed when things roll out the way I predicted they would (but secretely hoped they wouldn’t).
This all boils down to I can read people exceedingly well, but that doesn’t mean I can always comprehend why they do what they do. My brother has been hitting the dating apps and he’s been running conversations by me. He is on the spectrum and acknowldges that he doesn’t do emotions. He feels them, yes, but hey’re…muted. Plus, they’re painted in broad strokes. He can feel happy, but if I try to describe him happiness laced with sorrow, that’s beyond him. So when I’m trying to explain why a woman might have responded the way she did, it’s not always easy to get my point across.
It’s interesting, really, how different my brother and I are when it comes to–well, everything. He is logical, rational (though suspectible to persuasion if done correctly), high-energy, and he wants to do a million things a day. He thinks nothing of driving for hours, and his main issue is the environment. He does not have a high EQ; he has some internalized racism against Asians (sigh), and he’s a fanstastic cook.
Me, on the other hand, can read people and the nuances in emotion without trying. I ‘get’ people in o cellular level that I rarely share.
People really, really, REALLY do not like being told about themselves. Except my brother. He’s always happy to learn about himself (well, mostly).
I operate more on emotion than logic. I am very low energy and do not want to do two things in one day, let alone ten. I hate driving and am not good at it. I do not want to go kayaking or play pickleball or climb rocks. I want to sit on my couch with my cat (as I’m doing now) and write or play a video game.
My brother has become more extroverted over the time; I am more introverted. We are both cat people, I will give us that. And, because of my work on him, we’re both, ah, lefties now. He won’t call himself a Democrat, but he has thoroughly denounced Republicans. I take some justifiable pride in turning him around.
He lent me his small camera so I can make test videos and see how I like it. Have I done it yet? Nope. Am I going to do it? Yes….at some point. he has offered to do it with me, but I don’t want that because he is very definite about How To Do Things. He’s a great photographer, but that doesn’t mean I want to do what he tells me. Plus, I feel awkward filming in front of him when I just want to putter around and figure things out in a hit-or-miss way.
How the hell did I get on this track? This was not waht I was going to write about, but oh well. It’s good enough for today. I am very tired (the health scare with Shadow took a lot out of me), and I don’t feel like pushing myself. I will get to my thoughts on my future and my past in another post. But for today, this will have to do.