Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier
It’s taken nearly 40 years, but I finally have a bit of a grasp on some things. Specifically those things that everyone thinks or goes through but nobody talks about! Why does that matter? Because nobody talks about them, you feel like the only one fretting about them and that makes you feel alone.
You’re not alone. It doesn’t mean these things aren’t problems, or not upsetting or can be easily resolved. It just means you have a lot of company and we’re in this together.
Feeling like you annoy or burden or bother people
Lots of people feel like this, including me. It’s easy to read into a silence that the other person is upset with us. It’s equally easy to read that into a terse reply.
In an era of mostly digital communications, we miss a lot of the subtle cues that humans show when we communicate. Even with them, it can sometimes be difficult to know if we’ve subtly offended someone.
It’s also worth a mental note that lots of people don’t know how to communicate well, especially over text. Witness the habit many over-50s have of ending an email with “…” — to me, it reads as a passive-aggressive request for me to better explain myself however what it actually means is “I’m done but don’t want to use a full-stop (period) because that seems tonally harsh”!
In reality, you probably haven’t upset anyone. Additionally, we should have faith in our cronies and associates that if we have irked them, then they are possessed of quality enough to tell us so it can be resolved.
You are not a burden and you’re not a chore that other people take on.
Fearing death and your time running out
How could you not fear death? We don’t know when it will come, other than it is certain it will come, and we don’t know what it will be like.
Is it like going to sleep? Is it like someone has a dial for your senses and they’re turning them all down to zero? Do you go and meet God? Do you return to the non-existence you were before you were conceived?
That’s scary. It’s big. It cannot be resolved. The only way to know about it is to actually die, and that seems to be a one-way trip. Nobody has been able to return and say what it was like… apart from that one guy, and his friend Lazarus. Unfortunately, neither the Big J-Dog nor DJ Lazzy-Jeff left detailed documentation about the experience.
It’s okay to be scared of that. It’d be weird if you weren’t. For what little it matters: we’re all in it together, we’ll all find out when we get there. If something does come after then we’ll see it, and if nothing comes after, then it won’t matter because we won’t be there.
In that latter case it’s important to remember: being dead wouldn’t be the same as being alone. You wouldn’t suffer or cry. It’s not like being banished to a dark corner. There would be no you to feel alone. In fact, it is impossible to even feel the moment of death… because you’re dead! That is a, strangely, encouraging thought I think.
It’s okay to dislike people
Definitely give people a chance to Be Good. Definitely give people a shot at redemption if they fail. Beyond that: you don’t owe them anything. It’s okay for you to conclude ‘so-and-so’s behaviour sucks’.
You’re not obligated to put up with them, to write-off your feelings or to suppress your discomfort when someone else is behaving badly.
Maybe they consistently make you feel stupid, or they judge you, or belittle you. Maybe they’re just cruel. Maybe they’re close company, a relative or even a parent.
It’s okay to say “your behaviour is poor and I don’t want to be around it any more.” Keep the door open if you have the strength, but otherwise it’s fine to cut that nonsense from your life. You’re under no obligations to give of yourself to accommodate another’s personality defects — to take that on is to believe that they matter more than you, and that just isn’t so.
Most people don’t know how to argue
Science is about finding a consensus: most scientists agree that doing X will yield Y. They will consider that True until someone demonstrates it is not. It’s a quest for something that resembles objective truth in a world where we all live inside our own heads and are subject to our own biases, thoughts and ideas.
Taking that as read, it’s fair to say that most people you’ll meet aren’t scientists. When they argue, they’re not looking to collaborate on finding something you can both agree to be True. They’re sharing how they see the world and, if you disagree, then you must be attacking their worldview and, by extension, them.
Either they’re right, in which case, you’re wrong and need to be told so, or you’re right… and that can’t be true because that would make them wrong. Being wrong is bad… it means you’ve erred somewhere and now you’re backing the wrong horse. What a disaster!
Hence most people you’ll meet don’t know how to argue — or to be more specific, they argue in bad faith. They have no real interest in learning about your perspective, because it’s wrong. They don’t intend to change their ideas, because that would admit them to be wrong. The only interest they have in the argument is to be in the right: to learn you a lesson and then slam the door on the conversation so they can carry on.
If the other person isn’t open to hearing salient, demonstrable, repeatable, peer-reviewed facts (such as come from legitimate, reputable studies) then you can’t have an argument: you’re can only have a contradiction of opinion.
Trying to out-opinion someone is when statements like “everyone knows” show up for tea. They nearly always bring their friends: ad hominem, straw man, appeal to tradition, appeal to authority, circular reasoning and more plus, additionally, a whole entourage of obnoxious debating techniques — Gish gallops, sealioning, dragging into the weeds etc. — that are crafted to give the illusion of winning without anyone ever moving closer to the truth.
Most people think they’re average
Or, to be more accurate, above average. Most people don’t think they’re geniuses, but will probably think they’re just a bit smarter than the average bear. They’re not arrogant enough to think that they know everything, but they reckon they do know a little bit more than the next guy.
Everyone basically thinks they’re a little bit special. That’s because we live in our own heads and star in our own personal movies. Everything is always about us because… of course it is! We might be an everyman character, but the everyman still has qualities that set them apart from the rest. That’s how movies work!
Of course, this simply cannot be true. It isn’t possible for so many people to think they’re above average without the average changing… that’s what averages are, after all.
Fiction muddles up reality
W e learn a lot about the world from our fiction. Back in the day it was books and plays, now it is Netflix and YouTube. Fiction is ubiquitous: we immerse ourselves in it when we play video games and we settle down to binge-watch entire series of made-up events.
The problem is that, for a lot of us, that leads to internalised messages that just aren’t true in reality, but that are taken as fact in fiction. For example: in a movie the protagonist is Special and destined for Great Things and True Love means constant, passionate kissing and smouldering, heart-stopping desire.
Neither of those things is true, but we internalise them. We are all the protagonists of our own lives and our world is our own personal movie.
We might not be Special and destined for Great Things. Maybe we’ll just be normal, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some incredible experiences. We can still sample the most delicious food, we can listen to incredible music, we can climb to the top of a high hill and look out: for a moment, masters of all we survey. In truth: we’re still Special — just not in the ‘chosen one saving the universe’ sort of way — and that is OK. That’s something to be quite proud of!
If you should look out from that hill, also remember that the odds of your being there in that moment are astronomically small. Not only did everything in your thousands of years of biological history have to turn out how it did — for example your great-great-great-grandmother having kids and having them with who she did — but every organism in your genetic heritage had to do what it did, all the way from the first amœba to your mum. On top of all of that, it all had to happen on a planet with temperate weather and plentiful water. Just by existing, we have all of us won the ultimate lottery of statistical improbability!
Furthermore, the water that comprises us is from stellar nebulæ and the heavier elements in our bodies, like the iron in our blood, was formed in the heart of ancient stars billions of years ago. We are made of star dust. We are special, just not in the movie way.
Similarly love takes time and love takes work. Fiction rarely shows true love, it shows lust. It shows passion. True love isn’t about pining away to death because your Juliet belongs to the family of our mortal enemies and oh, my stars, how can we ever be together..?
True love is about sharing your inner-most self with another person and trusting them with it, and they you. It’s about wanting to be with that person even when neither of you are doing anything particular… you just want to do nothing in particular together.
True love is about working through problems and understanding the other person’s Inner Movie, and they yours, so you work together to make a movie that stars the both of you.
Everyone is scared
This is another big one that doesn’t have an answer. Everyone is scared most of the time.
Death can come for us or anyone else at any time. We’re aware that there are huge problems in the world that are simply not being addressed: climate change, famine and war. We know it’s a crap-shoot whether we’ll get cancer or heart disease or live long enough to get Alzheimer’s. We know that our governments are fallible and likely to fail us. We know we share this world with lots of natural wonders that would happily kill us: the oceans, the deserts, the lions and the bears. We know germs are constantly evolving to evade our medicines. We know this world is a tiny little speck in an enormous Universe, with no indication that there’s anyone else out there to save us if we screw up. We know the universe is full of neutron stars, black holes and cosmic rays which could annihilate every living thing on our world in a heart beat.
If that doesn’t scare you, it should... but only enough to keep you conscientious. I’m not advocating for you to stay up at night, fretting about something we can’t change, but that you and I need to recognise that fear and engage with it. We must do this not only to best use the time that we have, but also because otherwise that subconscious realisation of our lack of power can be appealed to by bad actors — we can be led into retribution against other groups no punish them for our own powerlessness.
Some people are just ‘bad’
An individual bad actor might be saved. Maybe the error of their racist ways can be shown to them. Maybe they’ll recant their violence. Maybe they can be turned around.
The problem is that there will always be probably 20%-ish of people who are just bad. Individuals may change and become Good, and Good people might become Bad. The proportion is still more-or-less the same.
Consider this: during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, countless lives were held in horrendous conditions whilst being cargoed to a new life of indentured slavery. Did the crew on those ships not know it was bad? Didn’t they feel anything for the poor people who were dying below decks?
Those crew members were us. Not another species, not some forgotten relic of human evolution. They were, literally, identical to us. Just like the British forces who brutally put down rebellions in Kenya and India. Just like the Americans who tried to systematically exterminate the Native American peoples. 9/11, Hiroshima, Unit 731, Tuskegee syphilis experiments and the Holocaust: all us. All Homosapiens. You and me, just in another time and place.
How did those people get to those horrendous ends? What pride, or fear, or nationalistic fervour or intense racial hatred led erstwhile ordinary people to become crew on slave trader ships?
Whatever the reason, those people didn’t go away. They’re still with us, in every country all the time. Good people can become Bad People and, thankfully, it is possible for a Bad person to become Good. But there will always be Bad People: they don’t just live over there, they’re not confined to history and we don’t all ‘know better now’.
There is always a proportion who don’t see the problem with mob lynchings against black people. Who think we should “just nuke” wherever. Who think captives should be experimented on. Who have no hangups about recommending lethal force against perceived slights by minorities against majorities.
That’s why some groups need extra protection. It’s why we enforce anti hate-crime laws. It’s why there’s a Black History Month and a Pride Month. We can’t ever forget what people have done, still do now and will do in the future.
Some people will always be bad and, thus, we must have a system of kindness to try and change them whilst also protecting the vulnerable whom they would demonise and attack.
