9. Egos and why they don't listen

We don't realise how much time and effort we put into talking about ourselves until we stop talking about ourselves and really listen to each other. And it's when you stop caring so much about projecting the polished and abridged version of yourself that you want people to see and start becoming genuinely interested and concerned for others that we see a raw and candid display of human egotism.

In a way, our obsession with enhancing our own importance, abilities or, more recently, our need to feel 'special' mocks us. And we're weak because we let it.

It's actually kind of funny to watch. A group of people all talking to each other about one subject but no one is actually listening to each other. We're all just waiting for an opportunity-a free pass, if you will- to jump in and add something about yourself or something you've done or someone you've met and ultimately turn to the attention onto you and not just you but how interesting and clever and wonderful YOU are. And I know I sound pretty cynical about it at the moment but in all honesty it's not such a bad thing. Technically, we're not hurting anyone else (not directly) and it's just natural to want to make yourself feel better while seemingly interacting with others and listening to their stories.

But the problem (and, yes, there always is one) arises when the self-improvement is more than the listening and the thinking. Talking about yourself takes no talent, no intelligence. It's one of the most shallow and most natural abilities of humans. Soon, nobody is really interested in anyone but themselves and a whole conversation can be had where, because everyone had been so enthusiastically how interesting they are and describing their own life, no one has even heard what anyone else has to say and their own words go unheard except in their own ears.

I started listening extra intently just last night and I don't want to go into any specifics in case it becomes personal but basically I was with three of my friends and we were just talking about random things. I stopped talking about myself around the time we started talking about religion. (Don't worry, it wasn't an intense religion debate-we're too open-minded for that.) The first friend was talking about being having shrines in her home because her family was Buddhist and I was just about to comment on how interesting that was and ask more about the shrine when a second friend chimes in to add that her grandparents are Buddhist and so when they're over she has to each vegetarian and I was about to ask about that when my third friend comes in to add that her family is only vegetarian on Easter Sunday though she can eat fish and oh my word you can see where this is going.

Every time some topic comes up that someone can relate back to themselves the jump right in and do that and even though I am genuinely interested in what they have to say and ask about their opinions, someone else will feel the need to talk about their own opinions. It's as if we just can't stand the thought of thirty seconds of conversation that doesn't include our lives or opinions in some form or another. It's insane.

Maybe it comes from whether or not you're a listener or a talker and I'm probably a moody blend of both. Maybe all three friends last night were talkers and it just seemed more noticeable then or maybe it's something we all should work on.

I've decided to start a pledge with myself to talk less about myself and focus more on others. Basically, be more altruistic in my words and my listening, not just my intentions and actions. This will probably be one of the easier challenges I set for myself but an important one nonetheless. Listening opens your world and mind up to new ideas, opinions, and thoughts and is one of the most rewarding things you can do.

8. Paradigms

I'm not the same as I was last year let alone ten years ago when I was a hopeful, bright-eyed, wonder-filled little girl seeing the world through rose-coloured specs. I'm not a different person-just a different version.

I think it's safe to say that I am now a product of society. I guess we all grow out of the haze of childhood innocence and naivety probably around the years on which I travel on now. I contorted and twisted the way I spoke, worked, played, thought and dreamed to fit the paradigms of being socially-acceptable, even highly regarded.

It doesn't take long to realise that in order to avoid becoming a social out-cast who stands out for the wrong reasons, you have to conform. And so we do. Quite unconsciously, actually. That's probably the scariest part. I like to imagine everyone walking down an enormous highway (some people are going sideways and diagonally and all sorts of funky directions but at the end of the day everyone's moving forward) and we begin the walk as soon as we're born. And as we walk, we grow and we change. And part of that change is the gradual shedding and letting go of all the quirks and personalities we naturally developed as a child. They slip unknowingly between our fingers, fall from our back pockets, untangle themselves from our hair and it all falls, on the ground, left behind as we keep moving onward.

It's terribly sad to think of all the goodness and uniqueness and purity that we all leave behind on this road to an easy, 'successful' life.

Awkward interrupting disclaimer: I know it's close-minded and simplistic of me to narrow all the blame towards 'society' but to be honest I'm too tired to go into who is to 'blame' for anything and I think that is it's own separate post.

Over the years I've become more eloquent in my use of language, more diverse in my knowledge of the past and present, more aware of my emotions and the way the world works in general.

But I've also lost the creativity that once came so naturally to me. I've forgotten how simply sit and do without wild fears, uncertainties and emotions distracting me and plaguing my thought process. Even though it is now full of facts and names and dates and explanations, my mind has never felt more unhealthy.

It's also sad to think that people have to change who they are in order to please society's standards and expectations. We don't trust what we don't understand and it has been a reoccurring habit of humans to criticise and condemn and dismiss what is new and unique and strange. There is something frightening to us about a person who speaks and acts and thinks differently to what we've defined as 'normal'. Racism is just one extreme of not being able to see through another person's eyes and only trusting your own view of the world. I think empathy is so important and yet we do nothing to teach our children. Growing up, if I wanted to learn about true compassion and empathy over sympathy, I would have to go out of my way and conduct my own research online and in books and from older, wiser people. I have never been taught compassion in the classroom and that's just one of the many reasons I begin to question the validity and effectiveness of the current school system.

I think it's time to put aside this mold that we think everyone should conform into and instead celebrate and embrace and nurture each and every person's individuality. Stop making people leave behind the very essence of who they are to make room for who others think they should be. If we stop following these unwritten rules of bland and boring equaling good and right then maybe, just maybe, we'll see a brighter world full of more honest, more true, more human, humans.

7. Weather talk

As an awkward, socially inept introvert, it's no lie that I'm not a fan of small talk. I don't necessarily hate it and sometimes the shallow, predictable polite banter can be comforting to pass the time or pretend I'm actually socialising. But at the end of the day there comes a time when I just can't stand keeping another person from moving on with life when I can quite clearly see how much they don't want to be a part of this dull conversation.

 But now that I'm 16, in year 11 in high school, small talk is one of the easiest things to do and for people to do with me. Why? Because there is a fail-safe topic that every person falls back onto and that is the future. My future, to be exact. What university I want to go to if I want to go at all, what course I plan to take if I go to uni and my absolute favourite; what I want to do after school and uni. Beautiful.

It's the perfect question for the other person. They get to seem genuinely interested in an acquaintance's life and dreams and goals and my answer is sure to go for a while and fill up the needed awkward stage of the meeting.

The only problem is that when they do ask me what I want to do, no one really expects me to have it all figured out. And that's great-except that, in theory, I do sort of kind of have most things figured out. And is it weird that I feel guilty for that? Like I'm not following the normal procedure of a high school teen who hasn't quite got it figured out yet? I'm not saying I have it figured out, not at all, it's just that I know where I want to go, ultimately in life and the road I want to be travelling along.

And so, because I feel like I shouldn't have a straight answer to the question of what I want to do with my life, I lie. Every time. It's actually become a sort of game. A game that only I know the rules of and only I understand. And, okay, only I'm playing. So it's basically a pretty sad thing is what I'm getting at here.
I wasn't actually consciously doing it at first. And when people first started asking me, I was truly confused about what to say and often I just ended up saying I didn't know. But that was boring. So in the split seconds after they deliver the big question, I'll make up my mind and blurt something like "law" or "international and global studies" or "media communications" at Sydney Uni. And they're not really lies. But even right now I can see just how slim the chances of me actually picking those subjects let alone getting into them.

Sure I would love to study law and I would love it even more to be able to tell people that I'm studying law but I noticed something after every time I chose to say law. I always got the look. And it's not a very well-disguised look. In fact, it's pretty atrociously plain to see. Basically, a person's first impressions of me are along the lines of nice, quiet, friendly, relaxed and maybe funny. The key word here is 'nice'. Once people get to know me even better that word is transformed into 'too nice'. And eventually, 'timid'. It's a bit like an evolution in pokemon. Except no where near as cool and actually a deterioration more than advancement.
What I'm trying to say here is that people show quite clearly on their faces that they don't believe I have the guts, the fight, the determination or the brains to do law, let alone become a lawyer. Which, you know, fair enough and whatever but at the same time..excuse you.

As for careers, I for one, know exactly what I want to dedicate my life to although I don't have a specific job. The strange part is that I've never really told people what I actually want to do. Well, no, I have. In the early days of the cross-examinations. I used to tell people, even acquaintances, what I wanted to spend my life doing and oh my word. Those looks were almost as shocking as the law ones. Maybe worse because it cut deeper into something I actually believe in. I won't get into the details of what I want to do for the sake of not turning this into an essay, but in short, I want to do charity work/humanitarian based thing such as travelling to third world impoverished countries and helping to educate communities, opening/building schools for children, teaching English and other subjects like art and music. And lately I've thought about becoming a primary school teacher (there are looks for this one as well), specifically one who teaches kids with both mental and physical disabilities such as the seeing and hearing impaired.

The looks are reserved mainly for the going to poor countries dream just because people think I've got this idealised, romanticised, glamourised version of aid/humanitarian work and think I'm trying hard to be some super great person by saying I'm going to do all these great things. I remember a friend of my parent said (behind my back), "Oh, that's what all the little girls say. Don't worry, she won't be saying that when she's in the real world trying to make a living." And I swear to the heavens above I was about the go awwww hell no and whip out a massive rant on how any living I make is more life lived than he will ever know. Except that I wasn't actually there when he said it and I don't actually care enough about his opinion to waste my energy on him.

But I know many people have thought that about me saying I want to 'change the world' and 'help the poor' etc and thinking it's not realistic and I'm being fanciful but that's ok because those people don't know me. They don't know how compassionate and passionate I am about this and I'm not passionate about anything as much as I am about dedicating my life to helping other people.

Whew. That was a bit of a tangent. And I don't think I ever got my point across. Oh well, this will have to do because I've wasted almost an entire night laughing to myself on tumblr, listening to The Walking Dead soundtrack and writing this.

It's Monday. I have an athletics carnival tomorrow.

I don't think any one (not even future me) will be able to understanding the misery encapsulated in those two sentences.

6. Keep your feet on the ground when your head's in the clouds

Sometimes I wish I could just disappear into the background. It’ll happen in the middle of some kind of social event, maybe a dinner or a party where everyone is talking to each other and having fun. It’ll suddenly strike me how much I am lying to myself. How much I am pretending just so no one asks me questions or worse, asks if I'm OK 

I would feel so alone in a room full of people and so tired with so much energy around me. Something pulls at my heart. Well, it’s more like some dark pit in the depths of my stomach. I feel this intense longing to just fade in with the shadows, melt into the walls and pretend I’m not really there. But I am.

 So I’ve perfected the facade of acting like I’m present when really my mind’s in a completely different world. It’s quite easy once you know how. You watch and look even if you’re not truly seeing. When someone says something witty and everyone laughs, you crack a smile and laugh along even if you have absolutely no idea what just happened. When their faces are serious, you give the occasional nod towards the speaker or look like you're concentrating. If half the people are laughing but the other half aren’t, just smile.

 And when they ask you questions, give them the answer they want to hear, short, sweet, and subtly add in a new topic for them to become distracted on. They'll probably end up concluding that you're a bland, dull, slow-witted person, and, well, maybe I am.

The trick is bringing yourself back. You have to know how to reconnect yourself so that you don't completely lose touch with reality. Because once you do, there's no pretending anymore, it becomes real. And you don't want it to be real.

4. Settle petal

I'm quite a settled soul. I’m not sure if it’s my soul exactly-maybe it’s my spirit, but I know that there is a very big part of me that possesses the ability and the desire to simply be alone and think and look and be calm. It might have something to do with the chaotic, never-ending mess that is my mind. I’m constantly thinking about a thousand things at once and if I don’t take time out to step back and just think, I start to get very panicked and even just doing everyday things suddenly becomes unbearable. It probably comes with being an introvert.

I think this is why I’m never really bored. And how awkward silences don’t actually bother me as much as I pretend they do. Because even though on the outside, not much may be happening and to someone else it might look dull and unexciting, the inside of my mind is constantly spinning and buzzing and I get never ending entertainment within my own thoughts.

And I like watching. I like sitting and observing things around me. Especially people. If I could sit on a train all day and just watch the strangers who come on and off, I would. I would find out their quirks, the little things they do that they've become so used to that they themselves don't even notice. But this is the first time I've ever seen them in my whole life and I get to see them with brand new eyes, with no preconceptions or expectations. The way they check their watches twice because they weren't paying attention the first time or how they run their fingers along the pages of the books they’re reading or if they walk with their shoulders back or their head low. Then I would start trying to work them out without ever having spoken to them. I would look at them as more than strangers. I realise that they’re just like me. Minds alive.

I wonder about  where they’re going, if they're angry at someone, hurting over lost love. Then I start to think about how they’re feeling and if they’re regretful or relieved or anxious or angry. And then, after watching all these strangers, I feel sad because I realised I’ll never get to meet these people however fascinating or lovely or just like me they are. 

3. seven billion

"She could imagine herself hurrying down now to her bedroom, to a clean block of lined paper and her marbled, Bakelite fountain pen. She could see the simple sentences, the accumulating telepathic symbols, unfurling at the nib’s end. She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view; her excitement was in the prospect of freedom, of being delivered from the cumbrous struggle between good and bad, heroes and villains. None of these three was bad, nor were they particularly good. She need not judge. There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.

- Atonement, Ian McEwan"

My brain can't comprehend that there are more than 7 billion minds in the world today, much less that there are 7 billion minds who are as real and alive as mine is to me. It's incredibly difficult to put into perspective the thought that these people have minds that work in wondrous ways that I will never know of just because they are not mine. I'm an intuitive person and it's quite easy for me to empathise with others. But feelings and emotions are so different to the actual workings of a mind just because it's impossible to ever think in way that wasn't purposely thought of by yourself. I'm not making sense.

I started thinking about how there are so many unique and creative and special minds and yet we don't make the effort to know as much as we can. We are all so stuck in our own worlds, so determined to figure things out in our own way and we're convinced we know best. But we don't. It frightens me just how much knowledge and wisdom other people have and how amazingly rich my own thoughts would be if only I could learn a little bit from every person I meet.

This is not just the writer in me dribbling on, or even the idealist. This is the human speaking, shouting, I want to learn! I want to be inspired by their stories, I want to learn from their mistakes and admire their achievements. I want to hear them spoken from their own lips or written in their own handwriting and I want them to share it with the world.

Because what is a world with 7 billion people and everyone keeping what they know to themselves? How can we even sit here, in a classroom, in an office, going through slow, dull routine, learning the same things, being tested the same way when we are quite clearly not the same people.

There is a whole world out there full of exciting, different minds who know things you don't and don't know things you know very well.

While it may take a bit more time for my little brain to really wrap around the notion that there are other brains just as alive as mine (thanks Ian), I do know now that I want to learn and I want to do so through the amazing people I share this crazy world with.