Indifference Analogy

[J Michael]

if im honest with myself, pretty much all interactions that i have with other people essentially consist of me humouring the other person. i can clearly see that they are interested in whatever they are trying to talk about but im not. and i dont like that im not interested and i dont like putting people in that scenario where theyre excited about this subject but it ends up being that the person they thought to mention it to has zero interest in it. so i humour the person for their sake.

it’s not unlike the relationship between a parent and a child. the child wants to play with their toys and wants the parent to play with them. but, being 38 years old, the parent naturally has no interest in playing with toys and would have never even considered playing with toys had it not been for the child. a full grown adult playing with toys; how ridiculous! but the parent loves the child and does not want the child to be unhappy by refusing to play with them. so the parent goes along with it. so here you have a 38 year old adult making explosion noises, crashing toy cars into lego men and voice acting for inanimate objects.

the parent humours the child because if he didnt, then the parent would feel like an ass for making the child unhappy and furthermore, if the parent continued to refuse to play with the child throughout it’s childhood then inevitably, their bond would gradually dissolve. if only the parent just dealt with it and played with the child in the first place.

and with that, how do you think the parent would feel if all of his friends, co-workers and everyone else in his life were just children who wanted to play with toys? its impossible for him to just voluntarily become interested in something he only enjoyed when he was young and why should he feel it necessary to do so anyway? either he can pretend he enjoys it and make friends with these children as long as he can maintain this ‘pretend’ personality or he can choose to do what he truly wants to do and have no one to share it with.

[Xerosnake90]

The question here is this. What do you like to talk about?

[J Michael]

well thats one of my more prominent issues. obviously, people like to talk about the things that they think about. little things like sports, tv shows, movies, parties, the affairs of other people never come to mind. the stuff that i think about are my fears, theories about my own psychology, the psychology of other individuals, how certain recent events, choices, world affairs, the dumbing down of mainstream society may affect me and the lives of others, and so on. i like talking about big picture things. normally (from experience) people dont want to talk about these things. they dont want to hear any of it. they either get bored, offended, distressed, depressed, etc and it just becomes one big mess if i try to persist. i become a "downer".

my 2 closest friends (probably the only 2 people i really consider to have authentic relationships with) live very far away and i can only see them once every few months. i can talk about anything with them. i can talk for hours on end and completely lose track of time. they understand and can relate to the things i talk about and vice versa and its absolutely beautiful, they make me feel alright.. like my anxiety just lifts off of me whenever theyre around, its tough to describe. total elation. but again theyre rarely around. 98% of the time im around 'regular people'; people i can't understand, relate to or talk to. people i have no desire to be around and who are starting to not want to be around me.

[Xerosnake90]

The world is full of many people. Many whom are simply not on your level of activity. It's hard to relate to others so completely that you can feel at ease. And many people simply are not that intelligent, they don't think of anything outside of themselves.

Understand your role and how you fit in. You'll learn to socialize in the "norm" of others. Your anxiety will fade and you will carry on such a conversation that means little more than what if. Life doesn't always need to be a certainty, it rarely is. Enjoy what ifs, use your imagination. People dream of the stars, they don't want to always face reality of the world. Hope makes them dream of better things.