Mama's Got a Lesson for Me

My Mom and I had an interesting talk yesterday. At first, it was just a typical conversation about my work, where it's going and what I plan on doing next year. We were speaking about my interests, what I like and what strengths I should play toward. My Mom decided to describe her impression of me, in relation to interacting with people:

My Mom in a marathon (completely unrelated to the topic of this post)

Mom: "I remember you said you took a lot of classes outside of your normal biology ones. You really seemed to like those courses that focused on people"

Me: "Ya I know, I really like sociology and psychology. Pretty much anything that studies people."
Sociology is the word I used to describe the courses in Sexual Ethics, Sexual Diversity and Sex in History I took in university. Obviously I never told them I took those classes.

Mom: "You've always been really good at watching people, gauging reactions, understanding feelings and knowing how to react."
I was genuinely impressed when she said this. These are things that I consider myself highly atuned at picking up. As some of you hopefully recall, this what I practiced since highschool, mostly in relation to my hyper-vigilance for hiding my sexuality. Of course I don't think my Mom realizes why I'm good at that, but her noticing that my alertness of peoples' states made me proud of her for noticing.

Mom: "Like a few weeks ago, when we met [your cousin's fiance's] family. I was still gauging the situation to see how I should approach them. You on the other hand, in few minutes, saw they were all really shy and became really friendly and went in the house to introduce yourself and talk with them. None of us were ready to do that but you just knew to do that and they loved you immediately and became bery comfortable."

As readers, you all need a bit of an explanation to understand this: When my extended family went to meet my cousin's fiance's family, we arrived at the family's home and they were all extremely shy and afraid to talk to us. Most of them literally hid in their tiny house for 3 hours while our family hung out outside, setting up tables and talking amongst ourselves. As guests, our family didn't want to just barge in on them.
Unlike my family, 5 minutes after we arrived, I just walked right in the house and became extremely friendly since I realized they were extremely awkward. As in awkward to the point of starring at the ground when you look at them awkward. I can't be sure to why they initially acted like that, I think it has something to do with the disparate differences between our families: our family is urban, affluent, Moms+Dads still together, successful at work, non-religious and used to guests, while their family is a poor, rural, Mormon, a single Mom who had 3 kids with 3 different fathers who each abandoned her, along with cousins and uncles/aunts, whom aren't used to entertaining friends.

Seeing how my Mom was being really honest and observant about me, I decided I would be open with her about myself. I decided to share how I think those situations out to decide how I need to react.
Me: "Well, one of the reasons I can do that is because when I walk into a room of people, it takes about 30 seconds or a minute to get a good feeling about peoples' personalities. I just do this naturally. This will probably come off as mean or cruel but it's pretty easy to see if someone's personality is strong or weak. By weak, I mean shy or quiet or too agreeable. With a weak personality, I stop feeling self conscious or awkward around them because I know I can say or do anything I want and they won't be speak up to say anything mean or openly disapproving. They'll just go along with it. I could even be mean to them and they'd just be quiet about it."

My Mom gives me an odd look. I keep going:

Me: "I realized they were extremely awkward and shy so I became outgoing because knew I wouldn't get any negative repercussions from them. I could have walked in there, eaten the food they offered, knocked over the dining room table and then just left without saying anything to them. Of course I wouldn't do that, but I could have. Instead I was really friendly, talkative and hugged them all and I knew they'd just appreciate that because of their personalities would take anything. Me being friendly like that, they just didn't have a chance but to like me. It was like shooting fish in a barrel."

Mom: "You know, that's a really bad way of looking at the situation. Why would you even suggest being cruel to someone because you think they would take it?"...

The conversation went on for a little longer. My Mom was a little bothered by my "dual" way of seeing the situation (in the sense that I think in terms of potentially being mean or nice ,as opposed to just nice). I guess it is negative, but I very much still look at things from a neutral perspective, where I can treat people positively or negatively. I don't usually want to hurt people, since there's nothing conductive to anyone having a good time that way. I just think like that.

My Mom had a good line to add in though.

Mom: "You know, I think you just like to portray yourself as dark or mean so that you're freed from the convention of people expecting something from you. You wouldn't actually do anything bad. You tend to focus on the negative and downplay the positive you do."

Her observation was actually pretty striking. I've thought about that all through the night and day today. I think she's right on the money. Just rereading my entire blog, it's pretty easy that I tend to focus on negative or dark imagery. I think I am a little dramatic and stuck in negativity, and not just because "adversity is more interesting than plain-and-easy".

I know that when I think about myself and my memories, bad situations do stand out easier than the positive ones. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but I do view the world as something inherent with good and bad experiences and it's just normal to run into each of them. It's not a secret either that my teenage and early 20s were filled with a lot of unhappiness, so a lot that's shaped me isn't love, trust, friendship and everything else the Care Bears taught us. Equally however, I do maybe focus too much on that since, today, I am a good and happy person most of the times.

She's not the first to suggest something like this. A few of my friends have said things similar. One in particular, who's name has not yet been mentioned, said I like to act like a dick just to cover up the fact that I care a lot about people. I think he was pretty right about that too.

Oh I definitely care about people

This is something I'll keep thinking about. I don't really have anything to conclude about this idea. I sure gotta give my Mom some credit though. She's a lot more perceptive than I had thought.