Compassionless

I’ve become more aware in my passing years of the reality of people and their portrayal to the world. Many starving for notice, others becoming more self-centered, many less compassionate, and certainly more people revealing a grumpy side. I mostly fall into the later as my tolerance for people has become less and my reaction more pointed that people can be very frustrating and I’m grumpy about it. My compassion for others has always been tempered by the fact that I feel most get what they deserve and that it isn’t my responsibility to look out for them, with an exception, my family. I seem to have a huge patience for family members, but even they can really bug the shit out of me. I do try to allow room for them though, but people I don’t know or people that have put themselves in the spotlight intentionally, why should I give them any benefit of the doubt?

Sometimes I’m strongly driven by my pet peeves. One huge one is when people stop being themselves and resort to trying to fake everyone out. Be someone they aren’t and then try to sell it with everything they got, not understanding that the more they try to convince me, the more they reveal how incapable they really are. I’m sure we are all guilty of the Smith and Jones thing, desiring something that someone else has. The problem is that so many people don’t understand how much it took to get where they are and instead want the quick self-gratification.

Some are adept at name dropping and thinking this is a form of gratification that you surely must be impressed by. The problem is that I don’t think most people care about whom you know or how well. They might if they see a need from the association like who’s your plumber or electrician. Then we generally care if you felt they did a good job and whether they were fair in their pricing. But even that can be moot if the timing is off in the need, such as, I recently injured my eye. I went to my normal eye doctor who referred me to a retinal specialist. I relied on them, getting me into the first available as my doctor felt any one of the specialist were qualified to help me out. Several days later I get a phone call from my sister about not being notified and then went into one of her infamous first name dropping and how wonderful they are and so on for the next fifteen minutes. I never asked, so you can imagine where my mind was. My sister often reminds me of the progressive insurance commercials about people becoming their parents when buying a home. She can’t help herself and it has become habit to offer her opinion unsolicited. My mother was the same to the point that my dad and I have conversations about them losing friends over their life because of my mom’s need to butt her opinion into a conversation and sometimes it was the whole point of her call. My sister lived around my mom most of her life, in fact in their house for most of her adulthood, so I try to be more allowing in my annoyance. Unsolicited advice or opinion has always sat at the top of my non-tolerance and is probably due to being around it all my life. Both my mom and sister drop names like they are badges of measure. One thing for me is that I’ve never been one to elevate people either because of station in life or especially for some imaginary since of look at me-ism, I know this person. We all put our pants on the same and having met many notable people, I generally have been less than impressed by most of them. I generally have found there is nothing to gain in knowing anyone if your favorite subject is to talk about yourself and a question directing at me is merely the opening to do so.

Listening is an art form. But then again, listening because I want to and generally am interested versus the mindless doldrum of someone going on and on about things I could give a shit about it. I really can’t think of anyone during my life that I would want to hear how they did it. However, there are a litany of people I’d give my right arm to have a conversation with, so many questions I would ask and give them all the time to respond. I learned many years ago that to be a manager, I had to first be a good steward of listening. I always wanted to know more about the people that worked for me and those I worked under. The first thing I learned was to NEVER provide my own history of events in a comparison that I have done that too. I wanted to always leave people feeling good about themselves and not regretting a conversation with me because I didn’t really listen and made them to feel the whole conversation was to tell them who and how much I know and how great I am. I usually felt horrible for hours and would fixate on how bad I communicated with them. Telling someone how much they depend on me is just an open door for them to show me how much they aren’t. But I really am curious about other people and especially if they worked for me.

So many people, when in a conversation, are formulating what they are going to say next instead of listening what is being said and letting that guide to the next point in the conversation. It takes practice and many hours of preparing yourself going into a meeting and knowing what it is you want to gain. Especially in group meetings, I took side notes while I wasn’t speaking, and sometimes, like when I was teaching, you are the focused speaker. When I was presenting something to a group, I had to be able to complete my agenda but also allow for conversations and set up sidebar conversations. Without the curiosity of knowing everyone brings something different and that there is no way I can have had the same experiences, I never would have succeeded in my role.

Expectations is another pet peeve and a downside to a suitable outcome. When you aren’t coming from the same place on something, having an expectation that the way you are seeing the situation is the only outcome possible is a disaster waiting to happen. This happens between my wife and I sometimes. It usually is when she is frustrated that something is not going her way. I have become pretty decent about choosing my battles, but the ones that seem to get in the way is when I have the feeling she is trying to make me invoke some action because she doesn’t want to be the bad guy. Many times, this is due to us not being on the same page and frankly not even in the same book. Family and certainly our kids are the majority of these disputes. Walls build because of the Brady Bunch environment we have. First things first, we both protect our kids and neither of us agreeingly confront our own kids because the one with the beef won’t be the bad guy. It was worse when we were early in our relationship and rarely sticks its head above water these days, but sometimes it does. To our credit, mostly we are just getting something off our chest without really expecting anything. So, being quiet, listening and voicing an opinion back usually suffices in knowing where we sit on the subject. We don’t have to agree about everything.

Compassion seems to lessen as we get older and I see it in my wife and myself. It just is more evident when she does because she has always been such a caring person that when some selfish opinion arises, it is off putting and more noticeable. Maybe it is that we have more time to sit around and stew about things since retiring, I’m not sure, but we aren’t the only guilty ones, our friends of the same age do the same thing. It becomes more apparent to us when we are conversing with older or certainly younger friends.

Tolerance, compassion, grumpiness, opinions, etc. all seem to be more evident these days. Maybe things going on around us nationally that seem so childish and inappropriate are having an effect on us all. Maybe it’s normal and we all go though it in phase three of life. It bothers me though that it is more prevalent to me, I don’t want it to be, but then someone does something and my first instinct is to think they’re an idiot. Maybe the lesson is not to be consumed by it. Let it roll off my sleeveless shirt and leave it where it should reside, in the puddle of mud I’m avoiding.