Monday, August 16, 2010
You are you and can only be you
I live in New York and work in Jersey City. This means that my commute is very much against the flow of traffic, as very large numbers of New Jerseyans (New Jerseyites?) work in my home town. So in the morning, after climbing the stairs at Pavonia Newport, I must try to find a turnstile to exit which isn’t backed up with people wishing to enter through it. It can certainly be of more than minor irritation that nobody ever yields to us reverse commuters. We must sometimes forge a path through hostile on rushers so that our fellow New Yorkers may follow.
One morning last week, while 3 of the 4 turnstiles to the left of the station were unavailable to me, I saw that the leftmost turnstile offered a free path. I stepped towards it. A split second before the side of my hip hit the turnstile (I am of that certain height where I dare not exit facing forward, at least without protection, for fear of extreme temporary incapacitation of the instantly eye-watering variety), a woman appeared on the other side.
I continued unabated, as to do anything else would have meant a very sudden change of trajectory – and anyway, the other 3 turnstiles in the bank were still taken by people heading to and not from the Big Apple. As I passed her, I caught her mumbling “asshole”. I didn’t dignify this comment with so much as a stutter in my step or a sideways glance. She had perhaps thought that I arrived after her and should have let her pass before me. Maybe she thought that as a man, I should always let her go first. And maybe, in the spirit of camaraderie between our two great States, she thinks that all New Yorkers are assholes. I will jump to no conclusions as to what prompted her comment, other than that she herself jumped to a conclusion strong enough that she felt justified in calling me a name.
It brought back a moment some years earlier, from the days when I lived in New Jersey and commuted from Newark Penn Station, that had long been buried in my memory, of a failed clairvoyant who knew me better than I knew myself. As I walked towards the turnstiles, I was hedging my bets as to which of the two on either side of me I would enter through. As other commuters will recognise, my decision would be last moment, depending upon which one presented itself as open.
I stepped to the right and a man walked into me quite hard. One of the perils of commuting, and not to be fretted? I excused myself but he yelled: “you were headed for the other turnstile and changed your mind at the last moment.” Again, I did not rise to the bait. It would have achieved nothing other than a pointless, heated exchange. In his mind, I had apparently decided upon a path, so he decided, using this certain knowledge of his, to aim for the turnstile I supposedly changed my tack for at the last moment. His reality was forged with such conviction, that he felt justified in telling me what I had been thinking.
The morals of these stories? Even those of us who rarely give much credence to even our own musings regarding the minds of others, still occasionally jump, or at the minimum pigeon step to conclusions. We know that 90% of these conclusions are 90% wrong (and that 76.3% of all statistics are made up), but our untethered minds still sometimes get the better of our varying levels of common sense. I’m not looking to preach about the lessons to be learned apart from suggesting that nobody should leap to (re)action based strictly upon our version of another’s reality, or waste too much time on these ponderings. Indeed, while we may paint detailed impressions of the workings of another’s mind, the event or thoughts we have so painstakingly (or perhaps instantly) crafted, supposedly from the other’s viewpoint, may have registered with them minimally or not at all.
Ultimately, we can’t help but think from our own viewpoint. Even if we are trying to think from that of someone else who we know very well, the closest we can manage is to come from our understanding of who that person is, from our angle of view and through our viewing filters. So whereas people might presume that they know someone well enough to predict how that person will react, sometimes going so far as to state that they know a certain person better than that person knows themselves, this is at best, really only a form of self-flattery. You are you and can only be you. Admit that you are confined to your own mind and don’t spend any great amount of energy presuming you have successfully got into someone else’s while constructing scenarios that are, at the bottom line, all yours and nothing to do with the person you attribute them to. And sure as hell don’t lose sleep, lose friends, call anyone names or yell at anyone based upon a personal construct that you have labeled as belonging to another.
Viagra Online
One morning last week, while 3 of the 4 turnstiles to the left of the station were unavailable to me, I saw that the leftmost turnstile offered a free path. I stepped towards it. A split second before the side of my hip hit the turnstile (I am of that certain height where I dare not exit facing forward, at least without protection, for fear of extreme temporary incapacitation of the instantly eye-watering variety), a woman appeared on the other side.
I continued unabated, as to do anything else would have meant a very sudden change of trajectory – and anyway, the other 3 turnstiles in the bank were still taken by people heading to and not from the Big Apple. As I passed her, I caught her mumbling “asshole”. I didn’t dignify this comment with so much as a stutter in my step or a sideways glance. She had perhaps thought that I arrived after her and should have let her pass before me. Maybe she thought that as a man, I should always let her go first. And maybe, in the spirit of camaraderie between our two great States, she thinks that all New Yorkers are assholes. I will jump to no conclusions as to what prompted her comment, other than that she herself jumped to a conclusion strong enough that she felt justified in calling me a name.
It brought back a moment some years earlier, from the days when I lived in New Jersey and commuted from Newark Penn Station, that had long been buried in my memory, of a failed clairvoyant who knew me better than I knew myself. As I walked towards the turnstiles, I was hedging my bets as to which of the two on either side of me I would enter through. As other commuters will recognise, my decision would be last moment, depending upon which one presented itself as open.
I stepped to the right and a man walked into me quite hard. One of the perils of commuting, and not to be fretted? I excused myself but he yelled: “you were headed for the other turnstile and changed your mind at the last moment.” Again, I did not rise to the bait. It would have achieved nothing other than a pointless, heated exchange. In his mind, I had apparently decided upon a path, so he decided, using this certain knowledge of his, to aim for the turnstile I supposedly changed my tack for at the last moment. His reality was forged with such conviction, that he felt justified in telling me what I had been thinking.
The morals of these stories? Even those of us who rarely give much credence to even our own musings regarding the minds of others, still occasionally jump, or at the minimum pigeon step to conclusions. We know that 90% of these conclusions are 90% wrong (and that 76.3% of all statistics are made up), but our untethered minds still sometimes get the better of our varying levels of common sense. I’m not looking to preach about the lessons to be learned apart from suggesting that nobody should leap to (re)action based strictly upon our version of another’s reality, or waste too much time on these ponderings. Indeed, while we may paint detailed impressions of the workings of another’s mind, the event or thoughts we have so painstakingly (or perhaps instantly) crafted, supposedly from the other’s viewpoint, may have registered with them minimally or not at all.
Ultimately, we can’t help but think from our own viewpoint. Even if we are trying to think from that of someone else who we know very well, the closest we can manage is to come from our understanding of who that person is, from our angle of view and through our viewing filters. So whereas people might presume that they know someone well enough to predict how that person will react, sometimes going so far as to state that they know a certain person better than that person knows themselves, this is at best, really only a form of self-flattery. You are you and can only be you. Admit that you are confined to your own mind and don’t spend any great amount of energy presuming you have successfully got into someone else’s while constructing scenarios that are, at the bottom line, all yours and nothing to do with the person you attribute them to. And sure as hell don’t lose sleep, lose friends, call anyone names or yell at anyone based upon a personal construct that you have labeled as belonging to another.
