Tuesday, March 15, 2011

comforting/distressing

A great feeling: when a friend is chatting about someone (it's better if it's someone you both know as opposed to someone famous) and she notes something annoying/unappealing (aesthetic or otherwise) about the person that is something you sometimes worry people perceive about you. "Oh nice," you think to yourself, "There's no way she would go on for five minutes about Becky's gross acne if my acne was really all that noticeable. She would never be that callous!" I'm sure there's some psych principle about how really people are just looking for affirmation anywhere they can find it, but it still feels reassuring in the moment in a really base way.

The opposite, sort of: when you realize that a friend has blatantly ignored a piece of "counsel" you gave him, the first response is always to see that as a personal reflection on yourself. You notice while scrolling through his iPod that he didn't actually save that album you e-mailed him a few months ago (which he had written back he was "really into") and you get all quiet for a few seconds and contemplate whether you should make a "joke" about it or not.

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