"Hey...I saw the emails. How are you holding up? Are you ok? I can't believe he did that."
Hmm.
What the hell is she talking about?
As I settle across the table from one of my professors to review the plan for an upcoming project, she lobs a sad, heartfelt, empathetic ball of pity my way. I catch it but I have no idea what sport we're playing, so I hesitate while I figure out if I should dribble it, kick it, or pass it back to her.
"Oh yeah, I'm fine. It's not a big deal."
People often say "I'm fine. It's not a big deal" to change the subject and avoid talking about the pain they feel. But sitting at this tiny table in this tiny conference room, there's no pain to speak of. Across from me, however, is the fifth person to broach this topic unprovoked in the last week. So it's starting to sink in I may have been wronged in some way. I had a heated reply-all email conversation with one of the other professors last week about some logistical decisions for a class project. One problem: I didn't know it was heated.
I knew it was somewhat contentious because we were at odds over the decision and I didn't back down right away, but I thought it a reasonable exchange of opinions. Hence my stance of "no big deal". Also, I know how reply-all works. If I noticed either of us stepping over the line, I would have simply taken the conversation out of view of the rest of the class. But I didn't. I didn't, because I didn't feel insulted. According to my peers, I was insulted, but I nevertheless remained unaffected. And looking even further back, this was not new behavior for me.
One Saturday back in middle school, I worked up the courage to call a girl I liked on the phone and ask her if she wanted to hang out. She tells me she's at her grandmother's out of town, so she can't. She doesn't say, "Ewww, no!", or tell me to die in a fire or hang up on me without a word, so I count her polite excuse as a win. The following week in school, there's a buzz about a boy who asked a girl out over the weekend. This happens in tiny rural Catholic schools where the entire 8th grade is only 24 kids. But at the boy's lunch table, I'm confronted with the rumor that she was home the whole time and just didn't want to hang out. It seems I'm the 24th and final 8th-grader to find out. At times, the kids in this school could be vicious, so I hunched my shoulders in preparation for the inevitable ridicule. But even the nastiest boy in the class had nothing but comforting words to say. The next day, the girl and I were waiting to get picked up outside the school. It was the first time we'd interacted since the phone call and we shared a sheepish and kindred "hello". I tactfully broke the ice by joking with her that the boys at the lunch table accused her of lying over the phone just to avoid hanging out with me. Smooth. She reacted with the tried-and-true, "Whaaaaaat?", and called into question their journalistic authenticity. The subject changed and we chatted until her mom arrived to pick her up, leaving me alone to contemplate my new appreciation for the complexity of adolescent courting etiquette.
I should be upset. I used willful gullibility during our conversation to believe her, but I knew she lied. Twice now. I won't say I wasn't hurt by the rejection, but for some reason, the lies didn't bother me. I rationalized them away and even gave her credit for making something up to protect my feelings. I simply refused to accept that I should be upset about what happened.
What these two events have in common is my unwillingness to take others' word for it regarding how I should feel about something that happened to me. I have to make that choice. And make no mistake, once the instinctual emotion of an incident wears off, the feelings that remain are chosen. My obliviousness to how offended I should feel when lied to by a girl or publicly condescended by a professor is an exceptional tool when my goal is to explicitly avoid allowing external forces to influence my mental well-being. It's essentially the opposite of paranoia. The paranoid see, hear, and experience everything as a personal affront, whether they're actually being aggrieved or not. The oblivious adopt a more "they must be talking about someone else" approach.
I'd like to think I'm so evolved and cerebral that I'm a master of my emotions. So much so, that even in middle school I could compartmentalize the brutal deception of a girl I liked and float along as if nothing happened. But I assure you my cerebellum was probably too busy thinking about baseball cards, candy, and Nintendo to even notice. It turns out I simply have a preternatural ability to be completely oblivious to disrespect. Natural or not, however, this is a skill I believe is worth honing.
One detail worth mentioning lies in a small nuance shared by both stories: I was never made to feel wrong or foolish for choosing apathy over outrage. When rejected in middle school, I was consoled and even lauded for putting myself out on a limb. And in college, I received nothing but empathetic gestures of condolence from anyone who spoke to me about what happened. This was a luxury, and a critical piece unlocking the freedom to choose how I reacted. The isolated nature of the events also contributed to the ease with which I exercised my precision-guided cluelessness. If, for example, my professor continued to act unprofessionally toward me, I'd eventually have to snap-to and put a stop to it.
I consider my obliviousness a gift. It's the kind of gift you get from a distant relative who knows you're into cars but doesn't know what kind, so she sends you a set of coasters adorned with the Lamborghini logo on the off-chance you like Lamborghini. But it's a gift, nonetheless. And I still use it whenever I want to keep the coffee rings off the end table.
I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for reading.
Question of the week:
What do you think is the number one reason people choose to be upset?
Try not to be too upset this weekend.
- Tim