Who Can It Be Now?

Season 3, #3: Assessing other people through the lens of your own judgment

“There's nothing wrong with my state of mental health
I like it here with my childhood friend
Here they come, those feelings again!”

—Men at Work, “Who Can It Be Now?”

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THERE IS A QUESTION that’s been niggling me for some time now: “Who are other people—really? Why do I like some people and not others? And why does that change over time?”

Relationships puzzle a lot of people, even those who “succeed” at it. I’ve been a serial failure at it, so asking why is a good question during this third newsletter of Stargazing (aka my personal “curiosity” triad) season three.

There are some offhanded easy answers, but those never lead to change and barely scratch the surface of what might really be going on. I’m up for change and scratching the hell out of any remaining surfaces.

Here’s hoping you’re willing to ride along.

Over the past December holidays I had a memory hit I hadn’t had in a while. It was not a pleasant one. The more psychologically astute among us will immediately recognize it: family-of-origin related.

The things most pressing in our lives can be the ones that are “easiest” for us to forget. “Trauma,” I think, is a heavy-handed word, best used in describing situations that truly warrant it (filed under domestic violence, constant verbal abuse, torture, or life-altering automobile accidents). “Lingering distress,” however, is probably closer to my own mark. After all, family is where I learned everything I know now, the good and the bad and everything in between. Part of what I might have learned was unintended strife from one parent’s upbringing or a sibling’s own condition within the family structure.

So, it’s complicated.

Relationships, of course, are a combo of things: your culture and upbringing, your own personality, the environment—and how all those things also bear on the person you’re in a relationship with. Thinking about this concerns me: it’s gonna take a shitload of honesty if I’m going to get to the core of my “problem.”

Q: So what is that problem?

A: Poor relationships exacerbated by a post-pandemic new epidemic of loneliness and a really, really strange and alienating social climate.

Hey, I get that it’s probably not just me going through this. To varying degrees we’re all getting whacked by changes. While I can’t single-handedly “make the world more sociable,” there are qualities in myself along with personal values worth examining that might at least assist in a sort of “inside-out” renovation of the problem.

(Deep sigh.)

Okay, let’s give it a shot.

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But first let’s return to that phrase “lingering distress.”

I know how it began. Over the past holidays, in a rush to get to a party my brother’s new family were throwing, I felt it again: anxiety. It made me angry and upset and I had to calm myself down and try deep breathing. In my family, Dad ruled the roost. He had set expectations and if they weren’t met, he got loud—very loud. My brother was pretty good at complying; my mother and I, not so much. I was often told I was “lazy.” (Yes, it’s true. I was lazy then and still am. I enjoy it. I actually get more “work done” when I’m “lazy.” Funny thing that.)

As a child, I loved nothing more than to daydream. To loll about and ruminate.

“Portrait of the Author as a Young Daydreamer.” (Photo by StoryShed Media.)

The family dynamics were something I desperately wanted to extricate myself from—for many years and especially into my teens. Easier said than done, so I found ways to calm my anxiety, some unhealthier than others.

Into my 30s, I got better at self-care, realizing I couldn’t do for others if I couldn’t take care of myself first. It wasn’t easy, and I tried meditation, changes in diet, exercise—anything to move the needle in a more positive direction.

Now, in later life, I’m realizing I probably overcompensated. I needed to take more risks. The thing is, I had few mentors there—particularly in my family of origin.

Which is interesting because that’s the world’s job: introducing you to new people. People who can become your “new family.” People who glide into mentorship and assist you in becoming your best self.

But visitors always leave souvenirs. And you get to keep those forever.

— Sam Lansky

In a recent email newsletter from author Jason Feifer, he asks: “What if everyone we know is just a visitor, and your job is to lower their barrier to entry?”

Now this is fascinating and ostensibly a way forward. Feifer reveals he got the concept of “other people as visitors” from Sam Lansky, who wrote:

All relationships are transient. Friends who stab you in the back. People you network with at a fancy party. Relatives who die. The love of your life. Everything is temporary. People come into your life for a limited amount of time, and then they go away. So you welcome their arrival, and you surrender to their departure. Because they are all visitors. And when the visitors go home, they might take something from you. Something that you can’t ever get back. And that part sucks. But visitors always leave souvenirs. And you get to keep those forever.

Maybe this post-pandemic world is a new stage in all of our lives. I’ve grown fond of my Substack community of readers and fellow creators because it seems we’re all on a similar path—and that’s wonderful.

It’s easy to fall into cynicism and dismay with the world. But that’s maybe being too judgmental in some respects and not critical enough about the story you’re being told by others’ worldviews. It’s why I like being curious. I like to learn about motivations. But I’m wary of snap judgments—by me or people I’m in a relationship with. In the past it was a source of contention. Nowadays I note it and make a point of circling back to find out what’s behind either my own or others’ snap judgments.

You see, what something looks like might not bear any relation to what it really is—its essence.

Pairing up (photo by StoryShed Media).

In my parents world (born in the early 20th century), appearances were important—used of course to recognize similarities and organize one’s relationships. As in the photo above, Mom and Dad were paired together like their Noritake china I was left with after they died.

My world is different. And frankly I love that. I love the diversity and differences. I don’t feel particularly threatened by change or modification. I’m curious about experimenting and testing.

All these things deeply upset my family.

Still, questions remain.

How will I move forward with the “inside-out” renovation needed to add value to my life as well as those “visitors” I meet until my days end? How will I make new friends after losing ones from my past? There are new skills to learn and old habits to break.

Old habits:

• Being judgmental (learned from family of origin). New tack: Curiosity is a superpower.

• Self-protection over safe risks. New tack: Nothing lost, nothing gained.

• ?

New skills:

• Volunteering; helping others. New tack: Learning from them.

• Risking romance and dating again. New tack: Lowering the bar of entry.

• ?

Alain de Botton wrote about risking love and connection in this way:

The answer can only be found by looking back in time. Though we all crave love in theory, our capacity to accept it in practice is critically dependent on the quality of our early emotional experiences. To abbreviate sharply, we can only willingly tolerate being loved if—as children—the process of loving and being loved felt sufficiently reliable, safe and kind. Some of us were not so blessed; some of us were stymied in our search for love in ways we have not yet recovered from or indeed fully understood. Perhaps the person we wanted to love fell ill or grew depressed.

As much as I loved my mother, I think she failed me. It pains me to write this because she had issues the extent to which I barely understood. My father didn’t make it easy for her. Or me. It was an extension of expectations—of everyone involved.

As I got closer to the end of writing this, the smaller and weaker I felt. This morning I felt close to breaking—I still feel that way. I’m slowly crawling away from that feeling. Slowly.

The loneliness and isolation becomes too much to bear. I have to return to what I wrote to even begin to think about what might have changed in me. Could my judgment be faulty? How would I even go about repairing it?

For now, I’ll take it slow. Go for a walk and get out of my head.

One day at a time. Tomorrow is another day to try again.

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“To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all … that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost…”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

References

Jason Feifer: “What if everyone we know is just a visitor, and your job is to lower their barrier to entry?”

Sam Lansky: Human Parts, “The Theory of Visitors”

NPR “Life Kit”: “You’re Probably Not as Open-Minded as You Think You Are. Here’s How to Practice”

Alain de Botton: “The Lengths We Go to Avoid Love”

Addendum

Happy to share this Proust Questionnaire I did with filmmaker Remy Bazerque this past month. Enjoy!

The Proust Questionnaire: Michael Maupin