Thought Box

Once in a while I get into these really introspective moods, and I begin trying to figure myself out. For the longest time, I considered myself to be the humanoid equivalent to “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” – something that may or may not have multiple levels, but can certainly be easily deciphered by those with yet developing minds… These days I feel like Ayn Rand has risen from the dead (I’m assuming she’s dead) and decided to rewrite Atlas Shrugged with a new main character. Not that I am suggesting that I’ve even read Atlas Shrugged, but look at the size of it and imagine the complexity of an Ayn Rand novel that could even attempt to be that long!!! (That’s correct, I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, though it is on my list of future titles to peruse… Along with the 10 books [I just counted] sitting on top of my desk that I’ve purchased in recent months.)

Now that I am fully disclothesed (this spelling makes you wonder…) on my history with Ayn, I suppose I have to apologize for defamation and continue onward with why I feel as though I’m all of a sudden complicated.

I am no longer predictable to myself. I can no longer walk into a situation and feel as though I know what emotions and thoughts I might be having once I exit. I have found myself getting angry over things that never would have angrified me, feeling passive towards things I am often passionate about, and saying things I would normally not. Perhaps this is an evolution of how I choose to interact with the world, but the interesting thing is that I’m not sure it is for the better!

For example, I am becoming increasingly passive with many of my friendships. Normally where I would have fought to maintain a friend, I am deciding that a friend breakup might be the better option. Instead of outwardly claiming that I have a ton of friends and declaring that I like everyone around me, I’ve become more selective of those I spend time with in realization that very few people in my area are just not the type of people I really enjoy being around. Perhaps we’re talking about different core personalities or different life ambitions, but either way I have become pretty apathetic. Does that sound like the Jeff you’ve all known for years?

I don’t want to paint like Goya and suggest that I am suffering from all kinds of inner turmoil that is ripping me apart from within, because that is simply not the case. I’m not particularly bothered by the way I am responding to daily stimuli; I’m intrigued by it! Some of the emotions and thoughts that have coursed through my veins in recent months have been novel and new – and I’m moving away from the version of Jeff that was somewhat of a pushover because I was so concerned about making everyone around me happy. I think I could be moving in the right direction, but I need to take consistent evaluations to validate that I have not veered towards some form of destruction.

This has mostly been running triathlons through my brain over the last few weeks since it is apparent that few people get me. I am consistently surprised by how those around me choose to interact with me based on some sort of social perception of what my character must be, given that others with somewhat similar personalities have preceded me. I don’t get the Chris Farley thing as much as I did in High School, but I certainly feel like I am compared to other individuals within my sphere of sociality.

Now, this could be that I am becoming increasingly more diverse in my individuality, or it could be a condemnation of the laziness of a society that feels it is easier to discern the soul of someone by creating Venn diagrams and going through the compare and contrast process that we were all taught in grade school. I am guilty of this as well, though hopefully to a lesser degree… It seems as though social convention is to now categorized people by specific predominant personality traits and then to interact with them, and all others within that category, in a predefined manner. As the world grows smaller, we interact with more and more people, and I would argue that our interactions become increasingly more shallow. No longer do we attempt to search the bottomless depths, it is more economic and productive to surf along the surface.

I find human psychology interesting… :)