I’ve never met a person I didn’t like

For some, this may just be a saying, but for me, it’s true. I’ve never met anyone I didn’t like. Granted, I have grown to feel hatred toward some, and I continue to dislike a few. My current philosophy about liking someone or hating them is both of these emotions stem from the same place, which is from within. The things we do not like about others are things we actually don’t like about ourselves. The conflicts we experience and the drama we rile up, is all directly related to our own problems and self-doubt.

The more I think of relationships this way, they more peaceful I am, albeit with waaaay less friends. I mean, what is a friend anyway? In my song Wednesday Again I got the line, “Hanging out with new strangers I call friends.” Before music, and before any idea of an art scene, just about everyone I met, I liked and befriended. In the service industry, I was a glue that held the distinct members of our team together. My whole life I have always been able to traverse different groups of people, and in turn, communicate between the groups. I think this aids in creating a more self-aware collective whole. Just knowing some one else different exists changes the way we view our selves.

My first conflicts with people were in school. There was this kid Cameron who, in retrospect, felt like he saw something in me the other people didn’t. We were in the 5th grade and he seemed to say to the others, “I can see through this guy. He’s a phony.” And part of me believed it. Even then as a 10 year old, gas-lighting was a tactic used by some to gain access to the attention another is receiving. Now, that I have a couple nieces, one who just started kindergarten this year, I can see the girls are gas-lighting each other even at the early age of 5 or 6. When I have kids, I’ll likely learn people do this to each other even as infants. It’s wild. As a 10 year old, I had committed no egregious offenses. and Cameron couldn’t be further from the truth, but it nagged at me. He continued to rile me up and in turn get me in trouble while pretending he wasn’t doing anything. We’d go to recess and he’d brag about how he got me in trouble. I’d get worked up again.

The other students and teachers started to notice a change in my behavior. I did, indeed, have a mean side, the side Cameron was trying to warn everyone about. The side he basically created, as up to that point any outburst I’d had fell within the loose social constructs of us toddlers. I had nightmares about this kid, and in my waking thoughts I couldn’t believe he’d gone from being a nobody to just as popular and good with the teachers and girls as me, and even going after my girl! I woke up one night punching the wall in a fit of rage seeping out from my dream of dealing with Cameron. He totally took over my world and I couldn’t focus, and he won. I was a bad kid. He was right and saw it and alerted everyone. My rage and anger toward him was somehow not tolerated by anyone else, and any explaining I did about the situation fell on deaf ears. I became the target for punishment and was observed with a ferocity not even known to the prisoners of the panopticon. I was labeled a threat.

This exact scenario has repeated itself for me 10s of times throughout my life in jobs, school and the music scene. When left alone, I focus and get really far, experiencing so much success and eventual notoriety I have a hard time believing it sometimes. But when going out and seeking companionship, there is really a huge chance you are going to encounter someone else’s problems and drama. And then become their problem and drama and the thing they talk shit about for the next few months of their bar time. No amount of great conversation over whiskey will cement a solid relationship. Check out Malcom Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers and maybe How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The over all take away from these books is people are self-centered. We all care more about ourselves than we could ever care for another. And thus, Jesus’s teaching comes in again with the most holy of orders, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

It is almost impossible to do this. One must override their own nature, their own coding, their own basic mechanisms of survival in order to even muster up the most insincere attempt at loving someone else more than self. It’s difficult to get out of ones own head long enough to even have a conversation. People see realty though this lens of self-absorption, and I must admit, so do I. It hurts to think that I am as selfish and unaware of others as my egotistical mind points out others are of me, but it’s true. I don’t care about other people except after my basic needs are met. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs points out Self Actualization is a need. Esteem is a need. One cannot begin to care for others until these needs are met. Furthermore, if the physiological needs are not met, you can never expect a person to even be rational. This is why an addict cannot begin treatment until they have been given their fix, a place to live, and a job to make money.

If there is no feeling of being able to self-actualize, if there is an overwhelming sense of being trapped, every other person in the reality becomes a mark whose only use is fulfilling one or more of the needs on Maslow’s chart. Empathy cannot truly be achieved in this state. To empathize before needs are met is to envy, to desire and long for what you need. In our modern distopian world, you cannot even sit and rest anywhere for an extended amount of time. In all my travels during my 20s, living in my car and seekin out free campsites, the only thing that made those travels possible is not staying anywhere for more than a night or two. If you want to live in this country and not work, you must mosey like a vagrant from the dust bowl working their way to California only to turn right back around.

I think this is where most conflict comes from. An actual struggle for resources and survival. Just to find a place to sleep is not guaranteed. Food is not given. Without these things people go mad. A human will do anything to have a warm place to shit. Living on planet Earth today is not easy. It’s a daily monotonous grind that seems to serve everyone else around us while our basic needs go unmet. Our obligations to the state, the social scene, our jobs, families and kids are almost too much to bare for anyone. The lack of money and resources prevent social mobility and cement a fate of perpetual enslavement to a life ironically chosen by the self, in what seems like the next biggest David Blain trick. How did it come to this? Am I really born into the richest country on the planet, a christian nation, and I have no where to live and nothing to eat and no money to spend? Yes. that is correct.

I’m closer now, than ever before, from inability to self-actualize. If I can amass enough wealth over the next few years, I will be a property owner, although of the smallest parcel one can by, an 1/8 of an acre. Still having a place to sit and be left alone is a load off my mind. My guitar, and my persistence to learn it and how to sing, have provided me with the freedom I sought though education. I am back to liking everyone I meet, because I’m currently meeting all of my needs, even the self-actualization part, which for me has always been more important even than the most basic physical needs.

I can’t stand conflict and so I’ve begun to ‘limit my exposure’. I try to mend any broken fences or wrong ways, and I’m quick to apologize. Although I haven’t always been this way, it is proving to solve more things than not. By apologizing and really searching where I’ve done wrong, I can make a genuine attempt at mending any misunderstandings and wrong doing. I genuinely strive to do this, but I have a quick and daggar like tongue when I’m projecting. In attempting to be “slow to speak and quick to listen” while seeking earnestly for a solution to any conflict, a person who is prone to gas-lighting is easy to spot. Compromise is a sharing of the blame and a give and take when it comes to the solution. Anyone who is feeling good about their life can readily see the other’s perspective and so deploy the necessary empathy skills used to reach a solution quelling the conflict or distinguishing it all together. Anyone not working toward this goal is projecting. If one of the people in a conflict offers up a sincere apology, a recognition of where they misstopped and a viable solution taking the feelings of the other in to account, this is all I need to move on. This is also what I attempt. If the other person isn’t receptive, then unfortunately a non-reaction is the best thing.

This hurts the worst, but only at first. It is the final move from any gas lighting S.O.B, to force your hand for the final showdown; i.e. the big blow up or the complete write off. Try not to write anything though. The goal would be to ignore and completely forget that person, their misdeed and any feelings you have toward it. There is a buddisht parable about two monks walking together, not allowed to psycally touch women, they come up a woman who is struggling to cross a river. She is nearly drowning. In a panic one of the monks freezes and contemplates if he should break his creed and help the woman, while the other monk quickly takes action and aids the woman to the banks of the other side of the river. A few miles up the road the monk who hesitated admonishes the other monk for having broke his creed and touching a woman. The monk who helped the woman replied, “Although I touched that woman, I set her down long ago, you however, are still carrying this woman, and clinging to her.” Or something like that.

Point is, it works, and in the end, when you have truly forgotten about it and moved on with your life, the other person will still be harboring resentment, hatred and anger, not only for you but for anyone else who has crossed their path, and you will notice it on their face, in their posture and in their aged bodies, and you can be thankful you’re not them.

What I think a lot of these writers and self-help people leave out is, just don’t engage. Observe yourself and see why and what you are saying and to whom and then evaluate that. It works, especially if you can do it sober, or maintain sobriety for any length of time. It is a painful process and exercise to see just how aloof you may be. Just try to go to the bar once and not get drunk. Watch yourself and others. Ask yourself, “Who am I? Am I listening to others? Are they receptive of my company?” Sadly, more often than not, you’ll realize something you were choosing to overlook.