TLDR?
Everyone becomes the person they are as a result of a huge combination of factors. Everything that happens in life changes who you are a little. You start out with your genes and childhood influences and as you grow, the way people relate to you and the way you relate to people begin to affect each other. Your personality changes with these things and you can become strong-willed, weak-willed or anywhere in between. You can become someone who gets along well with everyone or someone who has a hard time making a conversation. You can become someone with the confidence to change yourself for the better or someone who just can't seem to believe in himself. You can find stability and happiness or you can find despair and frustration. You can be loved or alone. Every decision you make or don't make, everything you say or don't say, everything you do or don't do is influenced by how you feel or how you rationalize things at the time and those things are in turn grounded on your personality as influenced by your whole experience of life up to that point and on how those around you choose to interact with you.
Maybe I believe in fate. Every person is just such a sum of personality, emotion and knowledge and all fit together like puzzle pieces, influencing each other and being influenced like gears of a machine grinding toward inevitability. When something happens, it couldn't have happened any other way. What proof? That it happened just the way it did is proof.
The events of some people's lives drive them further and further into the ground, hurting them at each turn or pushing them away from the social norm. Some of these people may do terrible things and be condemned as awful people by those fortunate enough to have been guided by the hands of fate to a better situation in life. Those who condemn may be right to lock them away from the rest so that fewer hurts and wrongdoings scar others and so the world may be made a better place. However, I pity those people. Whatever kind of life it was that led them to that point, I truly believe it deserves pity.
After all, we're all humans and we can't choose who we are or what influences will change us or how we will change. You may say "But we can change who we are... we can make a decision to change an aspect of ourselves and by working toward that improve." I would say this is not entirely true... that for those who can and do find it in themselves to change, that change was not fighting against fate but rather just another part of them, a strength that somehow grew in them through the influences in their lives.
The best thing anyone can be is a positive influence on another's life. The cruelty of life is the fact that conflicts of interest will always turn up as people relate to other people and one person's life may end up rubbing the wrong way against another person's and cause pain and negative influences.
I wish it were easier for people to appreciate and care for each other as people and not only as the combinations of emotions, personality and communication that are visible on the surface. But I guess there's no way that could happen, huh? We can't see or understand how a person became who he is today. We can't recognize the good that is in him if he can't make it clearly visible. Communication and action are necessary to be understood and trusted.
This is all really what it looks like... rambling thoughts with no particular point and more than a bit disjointed. The way I think about people is probably something to the effect of the above mess. I actually didn't originally intend to say quite all that but as I started writing one thought led to another, etc.
What I was writing to say is this: I'm not very good at communicating with people. I'm sure my friends are all well aware of this. I find it difficult to have a simple conversation with someone. I find myself honestly unable to come up with something to say. It really hurts the way I relate with people. For instance, being a fairly non-communicative person I'm more likely than a less conversationally-challenged person to consider myself friends with someone just because I'm around them fairly often, even if we don't talk a whole lot. Sophomore year in the J-house, I was fairly reclusive for a while at least. That was a kind of spillover from freshman year where I didn't do much with my hallmates because their interests did not coincide with mine and I was fairly antisocial to begin with. I was antisocial since middle school where I somehow became the target for a lot of picking on (which continued for a while because it was upsetting to me and they got reactions out of me) and a bit of bullying. In high school I played sports and had friends, but I always had a feeling of not quite being accepted, a feeling which only increased over those years. Anyway, back to sophomore year. I eventually started hanging out in the lounges and such more, perhaps dragged out there by certain people at times. I hung out, listened to everyone talk, and occasionally said something. To me, I became friends with them all and there was nothing strange about it. To the others, perhaps I was a friend but a bit different... hard to really consider a friend since ordinarily friends talk more. I don't know. At any rate, in that situation I got so I talked a bit more as time went on, but I remained and still remain soft-spoken and someone who has a hard time getting a word in edgewise when multiple people are speaking. Most difficult of all for me, though, is having a one-on-one conversation with someone. In a group, it's possible to go along with a conversation others are having, adding whatever bit I have to say, but when talking to someone it's necessary to supply much of the conversation myself and come up with things to talk about. This is, for whatever reason, very difficult for me. One of the main things I need to do, I suppose, is to get a life that I can feel is worth talking about. For quite a while now I've mostly avoided talking with people as much as I could because I was ashamed of the way my life is going right now. If I have a life and am getting out of the house more than I have been and doing a greater variety of things, I should be able to find something to talk about.
I'm getting tired and I'm afraid this would get even less coherent than it already is if I kept writing much longer. I guess I want to tell all my friends that I really care for them a lot and I hope we'll get to spend more time together in the future. I need to get better at communicating, and try to keep up with what's going on with everyone and try to talk more often so that we all stay a part of each other's lives. I hope everyone else wants the same.
P.S. Still going to do a life update or at least a Christmas/New Years update soon as a first step back into communication with people. Want to take a few pictures first I think.
Maybe I believe in fate. Every person is just such a sum of personality, emotion and knowledge and all fit together like puzzle pieces, influencing each other and being influenced like gears of a machine grinding toward inevitability. When something happens, it couldn't have happened any other way. What proof? That it happened just the way it did is proof.
The events of some people's lives drive them further and further into the ground, hurting them at each turn or pushing them away from the social norm. Some of these people may do terrible things and be condemned as awful people by those fortunate enough to have been guided by the hands of fate to a better situation in life. Those who condemn may be right to lock them away from the rest so that fewer hurts and wrongdoings scar others and so the world may be made a better place. However, I pity those people. Whatever kind of life it was that led them to that point, I truly believe it deserves pity.
After all, we're all humans and we can't choose who we are or what influences will change us or how we will change. You may say "But we can change who we are... we can make a decision to change an aspect of ourselves and by working toward that improve." I would say this is not entirely true... that for those who can and do find it in themselves to change, that change was not fighting against fate but rather just another part of them, a strength that somehow grew in them through the influences in their lives.
The best thing anyone can be is a positive influence on another's life. The cruelty of life is the fact that conflicts of interest will always turn up as people relate to other people and one person's life may end up rubbing the wrong way against another person's and cause pain and negative influences.
I wish it were easier for people to appreciate and care for each other as people and not only as the combinations of emotions, personality and communication that are visible on the surface. But I guess there's no way that could happen, huh? We can't see or understand how a person became who he is today. We can't recognize the good that is in him if he can't make it clearly visible. Communication and action are necessary to be understood and trusted.
This is all really what it looks like... rambling thoughts with no particular point and more than a bit disjointed. The way I think about people is probably something to the effect of the above mess. I actually didn't originally intend to say quite all that but as I started writing one thought led to another, etc.
What I was writing to say is this: I'm not very good at communicating with people. I'm sure my friends are all well aware of this. I find it difficult to have a simple conversation with someone. I find myself honestly unable to come up with something to say. It really hurts the way I relate with people. For instance, being a fairly non-communicative person I'm more likely than a less conversationally-challenged person to consider myself friends with someone just because I'm around them fairly often, even if we don't talk a whole lot. Sophomore year in the J-house, I was fairly reclusive for a while at least. That was a kind of spillover from freshman year where I didn't do much with my hallmates because their interests did not coincide with mine and I was fairly antisocial to begin with. I was antisocial since middle school where I somehow became the target for a lot of picking on (which continued for a while because it was upsetting to me and they got reactions out of me) and a bit of bullying. In high school I played sports and had friends, but I always had a feeling of not quite being accepted, a feeling which only increased over those years. Anyway, back to sophomore year. I eventually started hanging out in the lounges and such more, perhaps dragged out there by certain people at times. I hung out, listened to everyone talk, and occasionally said something. To me, I became friends with them all and there was nothing strange about it. To the others, perhaps I was a friend but a bit different... hard to really consider a friend since ordinarily friends talk more. I don't know. At any rate, in that situation I got so I talked a bit more as time went on, but I remained and still remain soft-spoken and someone who has a hard time getting a word in edgewise when multiple people are speaking. Most difficult of all for me, though, is having a one-on-one conversation with someone. In a group, it's possible to go along with a conversation others are having, adding whatever bit I have to say, but when talking to someone it's necessary to supply much of the conversation myself and come up with things to talk about. This is, for whatever reason, very difficult for me. One of the main things I need to do, I suppose, is to get a life that I can feel is worth talking about. For quite a while now I've mostly avoided talking with people as much as I could because I was ashamed of the way my life is going right now. If I have a life and am getting out of the house more than I have been and doing a greater variety of things, I should be able to find something to talk about.
I'm getting tired and I'm afraid this would get even less coherent than it already is if I kept writing much longer. I guess I want to tell all my friends that I really care for them a lot and I hope we'll get to spend more time together in the future. I need to get better at communicating, and try to keep up with what's going on with everyone and try to talk more often so that we all stay a part of each other's lives. I hope everyone else wants the same.
P.S. Still going to do a life update or at least a Christmas/New Years update soon as a first step back into communication with people. Want to take a few pictures first I think.