Yesterday, I met with a college classmate from a few years ago. During the course of our conversation, I began to share my usual humorous cynicism regarding people in Los Angeles. This usually entails criticism of people who make me feel that healthy socializing is a thing of the past, whether it's old men at bars wasting my time or young women who speak to me as if I were an eight legged pest. Much of it is tongue and cheek now, as I've only begun to grow out of this negative phase at the dawn of my thirties.
My friend is a young woman in her early twenties living near downtown Los Angeles. This puts her in a position where I knew she would completely understand, as someone who has probably been subject to lecherous men and all around crazy people. I was expecting her to respond with the same affirmation I've come to expect from having this discussion with people my age.
Surprisingly, she countered with her own positive perspective, essentially saying she had come to a place in life where she no longer sees the point in critiquing people so harshly. She wasn't at all oblivious to what I was talking about. It was almost as if she knew exactly where I had been, and she had already found her way out of that negative mindset. To hear a someone relate such a mature, positive attitude at such a young age in a place as manic as L.A. struck me. It also made me consider my own mental journey, as a slightly older male Angeleno.
When I was a child arguably free of life's corrupting influence, I remember being happy in my love for other people. I actually enjoyed being nice and loved it when I would have the chance to exchange niceness with another person. As I grew older, both the world around me and my own emotions became much more complicated. As one might imagine, it's very difficult to retain such a pure core of love for others when you're forced to grow up in a world full of people who are unreasonable, bitter, dishonest and perhaps abusive.
Of course it would be bit narrow-minded to classify people as "bad" or "good" based on those traits. I actually have a theory that many if not most people are born the way I described myself at an early age. I believe we are all much more sweet and sociable than we eventually become in life. I think the very normal exhibitions of bitterness, dishonesty and lack of reason are the results of living in a society in which our tangible gains serve as a measure of our value instead of our true character. This is how we develop and train emotions like envy and the resulting resentment. We are all unknowingly conditioned to strive to be "better" or the "best" in regards to others, thus we are all placed in a competition we never wanted to enter.
I used to pride myself on "hippie"-like ideals and went out of my way to bring together disparate groups of people all throughout high school. I found it unnatural to be unpleasant to anyone, so I wanted to be everyone's friend. I remember inviting the strangest mixes of people to my birthday parties in college only to find three separate groups of people staring at each other and not saying a word. But without knowing it, I was idealistic. I knew everyone on personal level and was convinced they could get along with each other if they each made an equal effort. I was optimistic about this idea and was very much a people person at this time.
Such a personality comes with a few major downsides. For one thing, I spent so much energy on other people to the point where I had unrealistic expectations for being treated in kind. Without knowing it at the time, I had developed an overly critical attitude in evaluating the social habits of others. I became very sensitive to what I perceived as "rudeness" and unfairly measured it up to my own attempts at being friendly. It became exasperating to put out so much positive energy and always feeling like I was being given less than I had initially invested in others.
Perhaps most embarrassingly, I found out all too well about the "nice guys finish last" folk wisdom. While one can write an entire blog or book about the subject, let's just agree for the purpose of this blog that it is at least perceived by many to be a social truth. I have had many close friends of all genders attest to its unfortunate yet indisputable place in society, including women. Most commonly, people will note that by being quick to serve others first, one is demonstrating a lack of confidence or self-respect and is therefore socially unappealing. This has always been the bane of my existence, because I think it's a grand fallacy. I was personally raised in a quasi-Thai culture in which one's character and status is judged by their hospitality. My parents raised me to truly believe that the key to self-respect was learning to treat others well. This is why it felt so good to be nice to others. Of course if I'd have known the American measure of confidence was measured a little differently, I might have preferred a different family (joking).
These two fatal flaws led me to have a variety of unpleasant social interactions over the years and I eventually got the idea in my head that in order to gain any sort of respect, I had to change. I became withdrawn and much less receptive to people. There were even times where I had been ill-convinced that the way to attract women was to tone down the niceties and perhaps even act a bit standoffish. I don't know why I was at all surprised how poorly this was received. I don't know how I even felt like I had the right to criticize people for not wanting to be close to me, but I did. I developed a bad habit of reaching out to people and then cursing or even resenting them if they rejected me in any wa.
I also became highly critical of others, not only if they refused to engage with me but also if they overstepped their boundaries and monopolized my time. On a typical Friday night out with friends, the ladies my age at the bar would turn their heads away before I even had a chance to say hello, and the troubled old men would turn their heads to me before I had a chance to flee their proximity. These unpleasant interactions are magnified in Los Angeles, where they've forced people to remain more socially divided than ever. It's very difficult to make friends in this city unless you are forced together in repeating situations. First impressions and quick judgments have unfortunately become all we have at times.
Thankfully, this awkward period didn't last very long. I soon found out that in a bid to become more "centered", I ended up losing a great deal of self-respect. I suddenly felt like I was a bad actor, betraying my own natural tendencies for a cause that didn't even seem worthy anymore. There isn't a more unsettling feeling in the world and I found myself longing for those lonely, dateless nights when I was at least comfortable with myself. Indeed I eventually reasoned that it's better to be lonely as yourself than surrounded by people as someone else.
Once I accepted the idea of opening up to others again, I had to learn a new way to evaluate my social life. I would keep my core values intact, but strengthened by the wisdom and inescapable truths I had learned during my "cynical" period. I had to accept that even though I would be reaching out and investing love in others, I shouldn't expect to be rewarded in kind. That's a mercenary way at looking at it anyway, which isn't at all in the spirit of my reinvention. At the same time, I've also had to be careful not to put myself in a position where I would be putting myself at a detriment for a truly unworthy cause. Giving a drunk, incoherent stranger thirty minutes of my attention could never be argued as a worthy use of my time.
This is a complex, ongoing process in my life which has yet to fully mature. It's not a unique situation by any means. I'm sure it's normal for people to mellow out emotionally and lose interest in resenting others by a certain age. I still find it astonishing that my friend could see beyond all of the social complications of this sometimes cold city and still seek the best in people. There's more to gain from opening up to others and to see such a young woman understand this gave me a sense of hope. Maybe not for myself, but future generations.
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