I can be frustrated with people. I get restless with them. Dissatisfied. I start itching for things I can't find in a particular individual, or a particular group. It often feels like I either have to suppress parts of myself to get along with them, or I have to risk being so loud or excessive or just plain weird that I wonder whether I'm being rude to everyone else around me.
I tend to get along with others who feel this way, for the simple reason that I get along well with sharp, driven people with self-confidence and excessive amounts of energy. But this can be a double-edged sword. People like this—like me—sometimes find themselves genuinely looking down on the ones who "can't keep up with them," from their point of view. They spend so much time resenting the company they keep that, in order to keep sane, they have an inner monologue going on and on about how wonderful they are, how impressive, how superior. It can result in a dim view of humanity, and an obnoxious self-obsession.
If I'm not careful, I can fall into this trap too. I find it happens when I start feeling entitled to other people: entitled to what I want from them, and entitled to what I want them to be. But it's a misguided, immature way of thinking, and to my mind, people who cling to that worldview aren't showing off their splendors so much as they're revealing just how stunted they still are.
Here's the fallacy: other people do not exist for you. It is not their responsibility to value what you value. It is not their duty in life to meet whichever arbitrary benchmarks you decide to hold them to. Equality has nothing to do with capability, productivity, intelligence, willpower, strength. On the contrary, equality begins with every individual's right to determine value and meaning for themselves. Each and every one of us gets to choose what matters to us, and we are entitled to shape our lives around those decisions.
Those of us who get restless and resentful, I think, aren't quite as separate from other people as we claim to be. A lot of ambition, a lot of drive, stems from an intense awareness of other people, and from a thirst to understand them, to live up to them, to fill our lives with everything there is to fill a life with. When we meet someone who impresses us, we strive to match them. When we discover something new—some challenge or goal or field of knowledge—we feel a fierce urge to tackle it.
And what drives us crazy, at least to some extent, is how few people respond that way to us. Because the vast majority of people don't work this way. Either they are content with the shape of their lives, or their dreams and cares and worries exist in places that we don't particularly value. We bemoan that our curiosities aren't shared, while dismissing their curiosities as trivial. We regret that they lack our drive, because their drive is of less than no interest to us. Our accomplishments feel lonely, isolating, superior; their accomplishments feel too insignificant to mention.
I don't mean to suggest that there's no value in forming opinions about other people's value systems. I certainly haven't stopped judging people, or at least assessing whether I'm likely to find them interesting. Deciding what does and doesn't seem worth your time is, to my mind, a big part of becoming who you want to be. But my opinions are mine and mine alone. I can't insist that other people ought to hold themselves to my standards; I can't feel entitled to other people wanting to value the things that I value. If I try to force people to be more like me, of course I'll wind up resenting them when my efforts fail. But whose fault is that? Theirs, for not being me? Or mine, for the delusional belief that they'd want to be me, even if they could?
I delight in finding ways to share my enthusiasms—but I delight in it because it can be hard. I love encouraging people's ambitions, but that encouragement requires endless, endless patience. I try to find joy in people on their own terms, not on mine. I'd rather love humanity for all the ways in which it isn't me than despise it for not mirroring me in every way.
And I relish the people I meet who truly do align with me, the ones who make me feel at home being myself. So, too, do I relish my freedom to disengage with people who can't handle me—not scornfully or cruelly, but with a gentle insistence that I'm looking for something I haven't quite found.
When I was young and surly and fancied myself brilliant, I assumed that all brilliant people must feel haughty and superior all the time. How could they not, if they were so smart? Growing up, I slowly realized that true genius was almost always the opposite: the most brilliant minds in any field seem to belong to people who are capable of boundless love for others, people who can look at humanity as it really is and find it in them to call it good, people who would call others their peers without the qualifying statement that those "peers" are lesser in some way. If you're not capable of that, then you are by definition limited—and any truly ambitious person would surely view this as a limit worth overcoming.
Now, I say all this, and I still grumble at the kinds of people I meet. I still feel an angst, at times, that the world around me isn't one more automatically geared toward being all the things that I want it to be. I look at what other people make of their lives, I listen to what's in their heads, and a snotty and bewildered part of me goes: Are you fucking kidding me? You're saying that this is who you are? This is who you want to be?
That's a part of who I am, and to some extent I like that that part is there. I like when other people like that part of me too. But I don't let that voice dictate who I am. I don't trust that voice unhesitatingly. It's as dumb and as arbitrary as everything else about everybody else; it would be hypocritical to let that voice judge other people without judging that voice in turn, and if I love that voice within me, then the least I can do is love those other people too.
You don't have to be a perfect saint. You don't have to suppress all judgment of other people. You don't have to stop yearning for people who genuinely connect with you, people who see life the same way that you do, people who share your ferocities and passions and thrills and pleasures. Just don't let that yearning curdle into scorn. Don't let your love of all the things you're capable of, all the things you long to be, turn into a hatred of those who don't share your exact qualities, who don't "live up to" your standards. You don't have to choose between your soul and theirs. The world is plenty big enough for both.
I tend to get along with others who feel this way, for the simple reason that I get along well with sharp, driven people with self-confidence and excessive amounts of energy. But this can be a double-edged sword. People like this—like me—sometimes find themselves genuinely looking down on the ones who "can't keep up with them," from their point of view. They spend so much time resenting the company they keep that, in order to keep sane, they have an inner monologue going on and on about how wonderful they are, how impressive, how superior. It can result in a dim view of humanity, and an obnoxious self-obsession.
If I'm not careful, I can fall into this trap too. I find it happens when I start feeling entitled to other people: entitled to what I want from them, and entitled to what I want them to be. But it's a misguided, immature way of thinking, and to my mind, people who cling to that worldview aren't showing off their splendors so much as they're revealing just how stunted they still are.
Here's the fallacy: other people do not exist for you. It is not their responsibility to value what you value. It is not their duty in life to meet whichever arbitrary benchmarks you decide to hold them to. Equality has nothing to do with capability, productivity, intelligence, willpower, strength. On the contrary, equality begins with every individual's right to determine value and meaning for themselves. Each and every one of us gets to choose what matters to us, and we are entitled to shape our lives around those decisions.
Those of us who get restless and resentful, I think, aren't quite as separate from other people as we claim to be. A lot of ambition, a lot of drive, stems from an intense awareness of other people, and from a thirst to understand them, to live up to them, to fill our lives with everything there is to fill a life with. When we meet someone who impresses us, we strive to match them. When we discover something new—some challenge or goal or field of knowledge—we feel a fierce urge to tackle it.
And what drives us crazy, at least to some extent, is how few people respond that way to us. Because the vast majority of people don't work this way. Either they are content with the shape of their lives, or their dreams and cares and worries exist in places that we don't particularly value. We bemoan that our curiosities aren't shared, while dismissing their curiosities as trivial. We regret that they lack our drive, because their drive is of less than no interest to us. Our accomplishments feel lonely, isolating, superior; their accomplishments feel too insignificant to mention.
I don't mean to suggest that there's no value in forming opinions about other people's value systems. I certainly haven't stopped judging people, or at least assessing whether I'm likely to find them interesting. Deciding what does and doesn't seem worth your time is, to my mind, a big part of becoming who you want to be. But my opinions are mine and mine alone. I can't insist that other people ought to hold themselves to my standards; I can't feel entitled to other people wanting to value the things that I value. If I try to force people to be more like me, of course I'll wind up resenting them when my efforts fail. But whose fault is that? Theirs, for not being me? Or mine, for the delusional belief that they'd want to be me, even if they could?
I delight in finding ways to share my enthusiasms—but I delight in it because it can be hard. I love encouraging people's ambitions, but that encouragement requires endless, endless patience. I try to find joy in people on their own terms, not on mine. I'd rather love humanity for all the ways in which it isn't me than despise it for not mirroring me in every way.
And I relish the people I meet who truly do align with me, the ones who make me feel at home being myself. So, too, do I relish my freedom to disengage with people who can't handle me—not scornfully or cruelly, but with a gentle insistence that I'm looking for something I haven't quite found.
When I was young and surly and fancied myself brilliant, I assumed that all brilliant people must feel haughty and superior all the time. How could they not, if they were so smart? Growing up, I slowly realized that true genius was almost always the opposite: the most brilliant minds in any field seem to belong to people who are capable of boundless love for others, people who can look at humanity as it really is and find it in them to call it good, people who would call others their peers without the qualifying statement that those "peers" are lesser in some way. If you're not capable of that, then you are by definition limited—and any truly ambitious person would surely view this as a limit worth overcoming.
Now, I say all this, and I still grumble at the kinds of people I meet. I still feel an angst, at times, that the world around me isn't one more automatically geared toward being all the things that I want it to be. I look at what other people make of their lives, I listen to what's in their heads, and a snotty and bewildered part of me goes: Are you fucking kidding me? You're saying that this is who you are? This is who you want to be?
That's a part of who I am, and to some extent I like that that part is there. I like when other people like that part of me too. But I don't let that voice dictate who I am. I don't trust that voice unhesitatingly. It's as dumb and as arbitrary as everything else about everybody else; it would be hypocritical to let that voice judge other people without judging that voice in turn, and if I love that voice within me, then the least I can do is love those other people too.
You don't have to be a perfect saint. You don't have to suppress all judgment of other people. You don't have to stop yearning for people who genuinely connect with you, people who see life the same way that you do, people who share your ferocities and passions and thrills and pleasures. Just don't let that yearning curdle into scorn. Don't let your love of all the things you're capable of, all the things you long to be, turn into a hatred of those who don't share your exact qualities, who don't "live up to" your standards. You don't have to choose between your soul and theirs. The world is plenty big enough for both.