CONFIDANTS AND BLASTERS

I’ve been thinking. How come there are so many things I’m not ‘allowed’ to talk about, and also a whole bunch of people who say they ‘don’t care what people think’ and just ‘say what they like’?

How can both of those things circle around each other? I mean, it requires algorithmic tact to pull the first one off. The second requires no discipline whatsoever, but could be considered, well, courageous. Hmm. Courageous or foolish? I’m not sure which, and, I’m not sure those people care anyway.

They do really though. I think there’s a strong human impulse to be liked, to fit in, to belong - offending everyone around you with a forthright I’m-right-you’re-wrong vibe is a quick way to a lonely life if you ask me.

But sometimes being a confidant, a keeper of many secrets, is just as difficult. We tend to gossip with those in the know, and be wary of what we carry when it comes to those outside the circle. We are constantly in danger of letting it slip, and every interaction feels like a puzzle in which our task is to work out who knows what, what chain of questions leads to where, and how safe it is to share an opinion.

I’m trying to be a better listener. It’s tough work sometimes - I think things - and information often gets lodged in my brain. I have opinions. Many of them are strongly held opinions, but I keep finding myself in situations where sharing them precisely is actually going to be detrimental to the group, or person I’m with, and possibly to myself. Listening to people feels like I’m watching an obstacle course being set up for me at the end of each paragraph. Will I make it over the wall, under the net, through the tunnel?

In a way, the blasters have it far easier. They bomb through those obstacles, make it to the other side in record time and don’t stop to think about it. I’ve known many a blaster.

It’s interesting how both of these things can lead to different types of loneliness - one where you know too much, the other where you care too little.

What we all need is safe, impartial friendships - people we trust and love, regardless of how we might accidentally treat and be treated by them. Confidants and blasters we might be, but the deep need for safe human friendship is wired into us all, I reckon.