On Talking to Oneâs Peers
I have recently found myself falling into fits of anger, directed solely at my peers and those of a similar age to me. I have found myself unable to engage in even the simplest of conversations, instead choosing to sit by the wayside, nodding along, not contributing any units of meaning. I have also recently been making pyrrhic strides towards reaching out and trying to reconnect with past peers, of whom I have been neglectful. Both of these efforts of mine have been met with nothing but apathy.
The conversations are all brief. Within them, there is nothing but feigned interest, and an air of secrecy. You would think that people would be most excited about the opportunity to talk about themselves, to be probed and pressed on to speak at length about their passions and interests. Perhaps it is the age we live in, but that is seemingly no longer the case. My peers have become scared to talk about themselves, their projects, their aspirations. Every detail about them is hidden behind a veil of secrecy and gated by a perceived reputation, reserved only for spouses, significant others, and those they hold closest to them. When asked by anyone else, they will merely cover the facts. They will talk mostly of their education or their profession, as if those institutions are the traits that define them in the minds of others, instead of merely an alma mater and a source of income. Topics concerning internal thoughts, personal passions, interests, and opinions are seen as too revealing, too characterful for the public eye.
People in my life will shrug off questions about themselves, their recreation, their dreams, and try to pivot the conversation into asking me instead, as if somehow my life is naturally more rich with meaning than theirs. After briefly indulging them, and turning the light on them once again, they will continue to hide behind their veil of secrecy and give you nothing. This almost comically turns the conversation into something uncomfortably boastful and single-sided by omission. One party is comfortable with speaking about themselves, while the other is neither interested in them or speaking about themselves. They get to know everything about you â you get nothing. The person beside you remains as much of an enigma as when the conversation started. A compete and total lack of vulnerability and trust.
My own attempts at fostering a social and love life are frankly pathetic, for they all have as their foundation some deep and utter misunderstanding of what people want out of others. Despite spending a sizeable amount of time, mulling over the finer details of conversationalism â an exercise of which this text is not â I still struggle to find a common language with which to alleviate the stress and the inhibitions that people bring to any conversation. Communication is frankly never effortless, and there is unfortunately no way to shoulder both burdens on one side of it.
I attribute this to a kind of snobbishness that comes along with thinking about oneâs words too carefully. Most people speak with a gut feeling, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to put to practice their social skills â something which is completely natural. Yet, most conversations die the instant the last message doesnât end on a question â a known technique, which would almost be insulting if one were to notice its use against them.
My mother once shared with me a quote, which she had read somewhere: âMost people speak of other people, fewer speak of events, and the least of all speak of ideas.â I unfortunately do not know who to attribute it to, but since hearing it, it has become an ever-present and unignorable pattern in my observations on life.
In it laid my greatest failing, in my ability to engage with smaller, more clandestine topics. It is exactly in my ambition to escape mundanity, and to elevate myself â to be of interest, that I become the maker of my own undoing. People say they admire those possessing knowledge, wisdom, and intellect, but ultimately admire them from afar â some distant, unattainable standard, which sets them as better per se, but ultimately outs them as no longer part of the larger group. By attaining this otherwise desirable trait, they forfeit their identity as part of the greater disinterested whole. There is perhaps something to the idea that intelligence is a self-inflicted malady, if not shared with the greater whole. If not shared, increasing the average wealth of knowledge in the group, then it only serves to drive a wedge, increasing the delta between those who posses it and those who do not, inherently leading to divides and conflict.
It strikes me as some gross maladjustment in my own views of what it is to be sociable. Throughout my brief life, I put considerable effort in presenting myself as someone competent, unthreatening, knowledgeable, and jovial â the categories of greatest concern in my own narrow view of what it is to be pleasant around others. However, by being so characterful, I now assume that I appear odd, too open, or too intense. The topics I now find interesting have become too cerebral, too demanding, and too niche to engage with. In striving to always have something to say on any topic, I have ruined my ability to speak to others, who put less effort in their own interests than seemingly I do. There is no sense of surprise and curiosity anymore, as anything they could say I have already heard before tens of times over. The fundamental pillar of being curious and showing interest in a conversation has become impossible for me to execute on, because in their discomfort and secrecy, I am beginning to egotistically suspect that the people around me merely preoccupied with breathing and sustaining a heartbeat, and nothing else is of concern to them.
Has the joie de vivre been ripped away from this generation to such an extent that we must all merely satisfy ourselves with the knowledge that capital is being accrued and that she said, that he said, that she said what?
Frankly, I find it impossible to engage in a conversation discussing people who I do not know, nor will I ever meet. I do not know of them, and the only knowledge I have of them I receive from you. A list of names with prejudices. Is it not common courtesy to not discuss people who are not present? What comment could I offer that isnât an express judgement on their character? How can I jest, if not at their expense? All I can do politely is offer sympathy, and that is simply too pathetic to even be considered engaging in a conversation at all. So, I sit there and say nothing. The topics in my mind, reserved only for explicit mention, and even then not put on full display, as to not centre the conversation around myself and appear too boastful or familiar.
Literature? Philosophy? Politics? Culture? The spice of life? All topics for the utterly deranged.
Do you not have something better to talk about?
The small topics of family, occupation, recreation and aspirations, which ought to usually serve as nothing more than stepping stones into larger conversations have now simultaneously become the whole conversation, despite being paradoxically omitted from it.
I do not deny that in my cloistered life, I have undoubtedly forfeit the ability to discuss people and events, since I often engage with neither on a physical level. It is undeniable that in abstaining from vices, such as drinking, I have drawn too great a divide between myself and what is considered common, and forfeit many opportunities to be sociable with others as a result.
People would have you think they are more open to partaking in group activities, sharing in common interests. But what happens more often that not is that the activity too becomes far more characterful. Different levels of familiarity, along with different levels of interest, resulting in different levels of willingness to put time in and engage with it draw new lines of divide, where one can become too familiar with the activity for the others to be willing to catch up. Yet, even when it is genuinely new and of equal interest to everyone, such a novel activity demands much more willpower to engage with than something trite and familiar. Yet there is this constant urge to action, to adventure, to physicality.
Words hold no value, so I am urged to act - but how can I act, if I cannot get past words?
There is no conceivable way to push others to better themselves, if they are not already open to doing so. It it is their wish to remain mundane and disinterested, then that is their privilege, and you as their peer have to accept that they are lost, both in the effort of self-betterment, but also to you as a person.
The pursuit of camaraderie is at all times under treat by the drive to better oneself, for the acquisition of knowledge is a selfish and irreversible act. We are driven to do so out of vanity, out of ego, with the faint hope that it will lead to more prospects, both in a financial as well as social sense. The truth of the matter, however, is that the perspective given to those, who seek to be well versed in all things earthly, alienates them from all those who do not wish to do so. In its irreversible nature, one must find solace in the fact that they have changed â that they have at once become better by some measure, but have also lost by another.