Someone once paid me an innocent compliment that made me re-examine my life and the lives of everyone else. Not counting sociopaths and narcissists, though there are plenty to go around, most adults I meet are fairly self-deprecating, measured, and humble. Sometimes I have the privilege of spending enough time with someone to push beyond simple cocktail party small talk. This small talk, by the way, can last indefinitely depending on the level of affinity and chemistry between people. I've had neighbors I talked to nearly every day for a year and never got beyond yesterday's football scores. This kind of social limbo can be excruciating when I'm not a fan of the other person. I didn't dislike them, per se, but I'd sooner let those dead skin-eating fish1 loose on my face than have dinner with the guy. But I digress. If we hit it off, we might exchange info about our hobbies, number of children, favorite vacation spots, and so on. After that, though, my brain fills in the blanks of the rest of their life story with a series of defaults based on my experience, not theirs. This is perfectly understandable since that's how the brain negotiates the complexity of living, assigning placeholder data based on our assumptions and biases. Twenty years ago, however, I spoke with a classmate who, with one comment, snapped a new perspective into my consciousness.
When I learn new things about people, the transaction is fairly straightforward. They tell me something. I remember it. I use it to fill in some detail like a sculptor peels a curve from a flat block of clay. Learning about myself is a bit more of a mystery. My brain is shifty, using all kinds of tricks, compensations, and justifications as a damper to shield my sense of self from the harshness of Being. To avoid the creeping specter of nihilism and without my explicit consent, my ego claims victories I don't deserve and abstracts blame for mistakes. Consciousness is a constant chess match between two equally-skilled opponents. White plays first, telling me I'm not generous enough and I could stand to be a lot more humble. Black counters with a long, vivid daydream about the time I fully stretched out on my backhand for a ground ball up the middle, popping up in time to throw the guy out at first. White, quite cruelly, reminds me we still lost the game.
Bill Watterson spoke to this struggle when he described his depiction of Calvin using his Duplicator™ to create a clone and pawn his homework and chores off on his other self: "I Think most of us would be horrified to meet ourselves and discover what everyone else already knows about us."
While we were in the darkroom making prints back in college, I told an innocuous story to break the monotony after which a quiet remark floated into my ear from a nearby corner: "Wow, it sounds like you've led a full life." As a reflex, I replied, "Huh. Thanks!" The moment passed and we all kept working, but I couldn't reconcile what I'd just heard. I spent most of my adolescence saying no to the adventures most kids yearn for. I aggressively avoided parties, never experimented with drugs or alcohol, and turned down invitations for nearly everything else. I'm riddled with whatever DNA formulation is responsible for making someone a homebody. From where I stood that afternoon in the darkroom, I'd done everything in my power to avoid living a full life.
My mind pored over the comment and settled on the following assumption: we had experiences with enough contrast that the sheer novelty contained in my anecdote was enough to portray me as someone other than the guy who spent most nights watching Mystery Science Theater with pretzel crumbs on my shirt. What else could it be? We never even shared small talk, let alone a full conversation, so all we had were assumptions about each other. Our tiny two-comment exchange was the first time we'd ever spoken. Also, the mere fact that I remember this conversation is objective proof that I had not, in fact, led a full life. Which raises an obvious question...why do I remember this?
This tiny remark has had such a lasting impact because it misaligned so severely with my self-image at the time. I was locked up in a years-long battle between what I perceived as being responsible vs. the doubt and regret that I was letting life pass me by. So when another person's perspective contradicted what I saw in the mirror, my first thought was, "Oh, they just don't know I'm a lazy uninteresting piece of shit yet." However, over time I realized that maybe I shouldn't take my experiences for granted, limited though they may be. My imagination always runs amok with all the ways other people's lives are more exciting than mine, but the inverse is also true. Not everyone is as lucky to have the opportunities I've had or even the freedom to choose their own path.
It's wild to consider how one sentence spoken in passing could matter this much to me. It lives on as a god-tier example of cherry-picking data. This one person this one time said I was good; ergo, I am good. I could easily use it nefariously as a counterpoint to all manner of amoral activity, but instead, I keep it in my back pocket as a reminder. A reminder that things are rarely what they seem. A reminder that I'm never as bad as I think, nor as good. And a reminder that I can do things my own way without worrying about how others would do them. My assumptions about others are never accurate, anyway, so it would be a shame to bend to the will of a non-existent reality in the hopes of living up to it.
Garra rufa. Yes, I Googled "fish that eat dead skin". Buyer beware, apparently.
If I could give you a thousand heart emojis, I would. It was fantastic! Thank you.