Stuck on you

I’m reading a very interesting book: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell. I was thinking about “stickiness” in advertising and it reminded me of an incident from several years ago. I was at a movie theatre with my dad; as we were waiting to go in to the theatre we were looking at posters for upcoming movies. One of the posters had a picture of a magnolia on it and the information that it was directed by the director of Boogie Nights. That was really all the information the poster had, as far as I can remember. My dad said, “That looks good.” I laughed and said, “Dad! You only think that looks good because you liked Boogie Nights! You don’t know anything else about it, how can you know if it looks good??” He laughed and agreed with me.

What I said to my dad was probably not what I would have said to a friend, other than a very close friend. I would have thought it, but not said it. In thinking about why that is, it dawned on me that the reason we often disagree with friends about other friends or people we know is because the closer you get to a person, the more you know what they’re thinking, the more their guard drops. That’s obvious, of course, but I think it’s something we tend to discount. How often do we think, “How is everyone fooled by that person?”

I was thinking about a girl I used to know, years ago, in reference to this idea. We became very close and as we did, I slowly stopped liking her. She was a know it all, she was an interrupter, she was arrogant, she was a taker, and she was incapable of taking anyone else but herself into consideration. But it took me a long, long time to come to terms with that because everyone else who knew her, but not as well as I did, thought the exact opposite of her. So, I watched her interact with others and realized she didn’t say the same things to them that she said to me. She acted quite differently, in fact. Then I realized that I was her only close friend and had been her only close friend since I had known her. She literally did not have any other friends that were more than acquaintances. Ah, it made sense. Whenever a person got past the façade and found out what she was thinking rather than saying in these circumstances, people stopped wanting to be around her.

I suspect this friend knew this was the case. When I distanced myself from her she didn’t bend over backwards to try and remain friends. I think she was used to that happening. Indeed, she had told me about several former friends who, she said, had sort of drifted away. If I had seen the way that woman had acted with those friends I may not have been all that keen to become better friends with her. Then again, she may have acted quite differently since I was one of the new friends.

I think these people I am describing are often seen as successful in the realm of friendship. They have large groups of friends and many people will profess to think they are wonderful friends and people. But when you look at it more closely, the fact that they have few close, close friends is something that is troubling if you are looking at deeper success. In other words, it is veneer of success without the actuality. Simply put: it is nothing more than superficial sharing and caring. We need someone in our lives who isn’t family who sees us, warts and all, for what we are and what we think.

I’ve mentioned Shelley many times; Shelley and I have been friends for… jeez… twelve years? I think that’s right. We’ve disagreed, we’ve even had months where we didn’t talk all that often. There was a time when I wondered if we were still friends, but looking back, I was the one who was going in a different direction, not Shelley. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with my attempt to deal with a changing life and the meaning of everything now that my life had changed so drastically. Luckily, I woke the hell up. What I had failed to realize is that friendship tends to transcend those changes in our lives. That, in fact, is the nature of this deeper friendship I am trying to get to. I am extremely lucky that Shelley had already learned this particular lesson and I am a better person for her unwitting guidance. In the end, we’ve gotten even closer because we missed each other when we weren’t in regular contact.

If I said something about a movie that my dad had said in the Magnolia story, Shelley would bust me on it. I would do the same for her and we’d laugh like my dad and I laughed. I think it’s important to have those relationships in our lives. Actually, I think it’s vital. I wonder what it is like not to have close people to us who we know will see us with all of our flaws, see us at our worst, and thinking nothing of it. I think that must be hard, living in hiding all of the time. But the truly interesting phenomenon in the social relationship wheel are the people who have the patina of sociability; the people who appear to be well loved by a lot of people and who seemingly are great friends. I’ve always wondered how long these paradigms last before they need to move on to a new set, or before they lose their identity in that hidden outer image. I would think the loss of identity would cause a lot of internal discord and would eventually lead to disorder.

As an aside: I’m not talking about people who do a great deal, people who are seen through their actions. This is a bit of a subtle difference, I think. For example: I had an experience where, contrary to years of direct and overt actions, people believed I was the exact opposite sort of person than those direct and overt actions indicated, based on the assertions of others. That is unreasonable and not sustainable because people cannot act in a way that promotes caring or not caring and then be assumed to be the exact opposite of those things if their actions have intention. In other words, if a person only seems like a good person but never does anything nice, the shift in perception might be warranted. But if a person does a great deal of nice or caring things for others and then someone asks you to change your perception of who that person is, the shift is likely unwarranted. However, this is different from simple friendship and how we interact with people we know on a very basic level.

As it turns out, Magnolia is one of my all time favorite movies and dad thought it was just ok. I still think it’s funny that he was willing to pronounce the movie as looking good based on his love for another movie. I think I might have to call him today and kid him about it again. After I go shopping with Shelley.