The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
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KSHMIRI SHAIVISM AKIN TO BAROQUE PHILOSOPHY
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INTEGRAL SEEKERS
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SSPA
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ENJOY YOUTH X ENJOY RETRMNT
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TIME THE QUIET STEALER OF YOUTH
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My mother is a narcissist.
Worse than that, mayhap. She shows signs of being a narcissistic sociopath. A blend of narcissism and sociopathy.
She thinks she knows better than everyone else. Literally everyone. She once said, without a trace of irony, that the world would be better off if everybody in it was like her.
My mother has very particular ideas about what is interesting, noteworthy, worthwhile, and good. And she has nothing but contempt for things she doesn’t think are interesting or good, even if other people do. In fact, she can’t even understand why someone would even think it’s interesting or good. She can’t bring herself to show interest in or empathize with other people’s interests, hobbies, lifestyles, or choices—because they’re not hers. She’ll put on her trusty narcissist mask and pretend to show interest, but it’s all a façade. She is unable—or unwilling—to consider other people’s feelings or needs, let alone make accommodation for them (a sociopathic trait). In fact, she considers doing so to be a betrayal of her most deeply held principles. A betrayal of herself. She never apologizes, never expresses remorse, never accepts blame or accountability. She is inflexible.
As a result, my mother does not “click” with people. She thinks she does, but it’s only because she’s concluded that the other person is similar enough to her to not be considered a complete lout. They almost inevitably wind up disappointing her, because they do something she considers to be unpardonable—a perceived slight, or some habit that annoys her, or something they said that really rubbed her the wrong way—and she’ll end the relationship. It’s never her fault that her relationships come to an end, of course, because she’s never in the wrong (a narcissistic trait).
As a result, my mother is almost completely alone in the world. She has cut off contact with her family for what she perceives to be their favoritism of her siblings and prejudice against her (victimhood is a classic narcissistic trait). Neither I nor my brother talk to her anymore, as we’ve decided that her behavior is simply too toxic for us. My mother has alienated every single family member she has. She has one single friend (at the opposite end of the country) whom she speaks to on the phone every so often. And she has my dad, whom she lives with (and constantly nags and belittles and mocks). That’s it. She has no social life, no cause, no higher calling, no outside interests, nothing. She hangs around the house all day with her cats and her dogs, listening to the radio or watching TV and occasionally fiddling with stained glass. She has no life. She’s cut herself off from the world.
And as a direct result, my mother is an exceedingly negative person. She’s as optimistic as a beached whale. Nothing is ever good enough for her. She expects special treatment wherever she goes, almost always fails to get it, and then becomes irritable and bitchy. She badmouths other people (politicians, actors and actresses, tradesmen, waitstaff, neighbors, even complete strangers with whom she interacted for all of two seconds) constantly. She spends her days in a perpetual state of frustration and bafflement with the people around her. Narcissistic sociopaths (“narcopaths”) are not only contemptuous of the way other people do things but are wholly incapable of even understanding it, as I mentioned earlier. People will do things in my mother’s vicinity that are perfectly normal for them, but which she herself can’t understand…and she’ll feel the need to make a snide comment on it. Often, immediately. Often…audibly.
Because she is incapable of understanding people and why they do the things they do, my mother is contemptuous of them. All of them. Everybody in the whole world. Everyone who isn’t her. As a result, she is incredibly negative. She thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and not in the harmless, ordinary way most Boomers do. My mother believes that everyone else on the planet is crazy, and that she’s the only smart, sagacious, sensible person in the world. The only sane woman trapped in a madhouse. Naturally, this makes her moody, irritable, and short-tempered. A real downer.
So you can imagine my reaction when I saw this question.
The best way—in fact, the only way—to stay positive is to do what my mother is neurologically incapable of doing: to make the conscious choice to (a) click with the people around you and (b) stop getting annoyed easily.
Because that’s all it is. A choice.
And here’s how to do it:
Be flexible.
Bend a little, like a willow tree in the wind.
This is kind of hard to describe. When I’m in company with people—even people I have nothing in common with (and therefore am not “clicking” with), and who, once upon a time, I might’ve found annoying—I go out of my way to blend in. Like a chameleon, I change color to match my surroundings. Only I’m not literally changing the color of my skin; I’m simply tailoring my conversation—my remarks, my jokes, my responses to questions—to the company I find myself in. If I’m sitting around with a bunch of LARPers, I’m going to be speaking and acting and talking in a different manner than I’d be speaking and acting and talking if I was with a group of, say, Korean expatriates or car mechanics.
There’s nothing strange about this. It’s only natural. Would you talk and joke with a group of five-year-olds the same way you’d talk and joke with a group of adults? Of course not. You’d change the way you spoke, you’d adjust your humor to make it age-appropriate, and you might even alter your inflection and your tone of voice to sound friendlier.
Do the same thing when you’re sitting around with a bunch of people you haven’t (yet) clicked with, and whom you might otherwise find irritating. Try doing what my narcissist of a mother can’t do—accommodating other people’s needs and feelings and habits. Try adjusting yourself to your surroundings instead of expecting your surroundings to adjust to you. Don’t just tentatively join the conversation; throw yourself bodily into it, even if it’s a topic you abhor. Enthusiastically join in. Laugh along with the jokes (even if don’t find them funny). Smile. Open yourself to your new companions like a flower. You might be surprised how quickly you “click” with people—and how quickly they stop being annoying to you.
You don’t have to fundamentally change who you are in order to fit in, but you can make some adjustments. A little conformity never hurt anybody. You might find that people will give you a mile if you give ’em an inch. And forcing yourself out of your comfort zone that way—falling in with people with whom you have little in common, and learning about their ways and their interests—might be incredibly healthy for you. It tends to broaden one’s perspective. It may even rewire you brain, and make you into a more sociable, open-minded type.
Remember, something is only annoying because you have made the conscious decision that it is annoying. If you make the conscious decision that it is not annoying, it will stop being annoying. It’s like magic. Wipe your mental slate clean, wade into a conversation with annoying people, enthusiastically join in without judgment or hostility…and you may be surprised how many friends you end up with. And how positive your outlook then (consequently) becomes.
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