Outsider

I do not need people. I have never needed anybody and I have rarely wanted to be around others. This is patently different from not caring. I care deeply about others, almost against my will. I want to help people, teach them, comfort them, help them be happy and accomplish everything they want. But I do not hang around people for myself. I am indifferent. I like to be around people because I like to make them happier and I like to be around people to experience new and different ideas and ways of living. But I do not like to be around people for its own sake. Often I will do it purely for reasons of making people more comfortable around me so that they will not worry about me. I do care, somewhat, what people think of me, but only just. I do not care if they think me strange or alien as long as it does not bother them. This is probably difficult to understand so I will dwell on the point a bit.

If people think I am strange, I do not care. Not unless they are a bit afraid of me, or a bit worried for me. Then I care because I do not want to cause them any upset if I can help it. Thus, I will sometimes spend time with people in order that they understand that I am happy and healthy and not angry or volatile or dangerous. (Far from it!) This puts me in the peculiar position of caring so much for other people that these little details matter to me, but otherwise, I really do not care what people's opinions are of me, or indeed if I go weeks without company.

What I do care about are ideas. I love new perspectives and ideas and thoughts. I like to eavesdrop or discover what people think about as many topics as possible. I tire easily of repetitive topics such as small-talk, but I don't care how benign or extreme or bizarre another person's opinion is, as long as it is new to me, I would love to listen and maybe discuss. Politics, Religion, Art, Math, Science, Nature, Pet-Peeves, Sexuality, Drugs, whatever. I don't care if I disagree, it is hard to find things I will outright disagree about, and in fact it is most likely better if I do disagree. I will talk to all kinds of people about all kinds of things and be excited and interested and bend my mind to understand as much as possible. I will feel a more whole person for the opportunity and other people seem to enjoy talking to me about things because I listen and say what I think, but never belittle their position. Not because I am being polite (I am that too) but because I actually believe and am interested and value their thoughts for what they are. Even though they may not be mine.

So, in this way, I love all people much more than the average person. But in this way, I also do not love people. I love their unique ideas, but I cannot care for their whole or their choice in lifestyle unless it is a way of expressing their ideas.

Another thing I have discovered: While over the last several months I have become much more willing to tell people things that are important to me, I think I do not like the change. It is not because people are not accepting or because I feel the deeper fear-of-being-subverted manifesting. It is simply that I am most often disappointed by people more or less ignoring or not understanding the least bit how meaningful things are. They smile and agree and are happy to talk. But they are happy to talk, not happy of the ideas being communicated so much. Or at least that is what it seems like to me. It makes me feel more alone when I try to invite them to play my games, than when I play theirs.

Oh, I know sound as if I am arrogantly making myself out to be the one and only intellectual, but it is mostly because I do not have words for these types of feelings and concepts. I currently have an overabundance of vocabulary for "ideas, thoughts, meaning, newness, experience, philosophy, understanding" even though those merely cover the path I take to the "life-ness" of which I am trying to speak, and not the "grokking" itself so much. I could switch over to more art, religious, spiritual, and feeling words, but that would feel dishonest. It carries those meanings, and those words capture a very important part of it (maybe I ought to use them more than I do) but I am trying to explain and those words suggest that it is inexplicable. At least with these more parred down and dry and scientific words, I am able to approach how I come about the love-of-living that emerges, rather than just describing the joy of it, wholly detached from how I reach it.





Edit: Why do I always end up talking about myself? I am sorry to do this so overwhelmingly much of the time. I don't like it because it feels selfish (even though it (probably?!) isn't) and downright limiting. I do think that it is a sort of movement in life I am going through, so I'm not tempted to avoid it. I will simply let it pass in its own time or something, and try not to let it bother me overmuch. But it is too bad that I can only seem to speak of this topic so thoroughly when there are so many others I care about. I don't know why I don't think/write of them so much.