Return to apathy

A recent discussion made me dig deeper into a part of myself that I am unaware of.

It didn’t start out as a discussion about conflict. It started out as a discussion about handling criticism. I stated the fact that I can only handle one per day without feeling precarious emotionaly. The example used to present my case was one where I discovered that I feel condenscending while trying to help a person. It showed that I wasn’t sure which was the dominant motivation. The foregone conclusion was that I haven’t decided which way I want to be yet. This conclusion was as a quick fix and since I am in that rut of having to decide everything about my life. I agreed.

Then it occurred to me that the origin is from something else. I don’t really know how to explain this, so I will attempt to show through incidents that happened.

I remember looking out the window of my highschool classroom, awestruck by how calm and serene the trees are when they sway lazyly to the gentle caresses of the wind. I was gazing at the scene, admiring the moment which mother nature presents to its residents when the girl sitting underneath the window bursted my dream bubble with :”Qu’est-ce que tu regards là?”. Challenging me with a hint of disgust.

I was quickly dragged back to earth to notice that I’ve been staring over the top of her head in order to look out the window. Realizing the implication of such prolongued staring mean, I immediately felt ashamed and looked down in silence. Instead of telling her the truth, that I was enjoying the scenary, I felt ashamed because she put me in the position which she imagined me to be. In my own words, her reality was stronger than my reality.

As for the condenscending accusation? I am very direct and oblivious of consequences most of the time. For me, it’s nothing to fuss over because I expect everyone to want to improve like I do. What I constantly fail to do, is understanding the type of impact that it’ll have on the recipient.

For the condescending scenario, it was a trigged by a short email to someone saying: “The resume looks disorganised, please redo it and I will print it out to give in tomorrow. GTG” At which point the person promptly tells me that this sounded very condenscending and doesn’t make her feel good. I replied by apologizing, which would not have been my reply today. It was a simple truth and I wavered accepting her reality. My reality was that I really wanted to help get her a job and the resume was crap which won’t even get looked at. I am surprised that this came from her and was pissed off that she didn’t take this seriously.

Should I care? Perhaps, but I’d rather not. In the end, it shows what type of thoughts the person tend to linger on. It’ll be a great way to filter out those who lack that confidence as I surround myself more and more with people who can look at the situation and laugh at it instead.
This moment, this short span of few seconds where I find myself completely in tune with a part of myself that the society shun upon. I call this moment my return to apathy.