I Am So Popular: Look Me In The Eye

A couple of hours after it all went down, I met another new contact, and managed to drop into this conversation that I was enjoying meeting people, but that I’d recently offended one. Before I could say more, this new contact said, “Wait, was it something you said about New Jersey?”

Yes, word had already gotten out, because that is just how small and incestuous this particular group of folks is. Then again, we’re all part of a rather small and incestuous group, which is the one called Being Human. Regardless of how unique any of us think we might be, bottom line is we share an awful lot of the same traits, the good, the bad and the ugly chief among them.

Discussing my inadvertent faux pas with some friends later, I recalled a great observation Warren once made about me. He was teasing me about how often I am quick to take blatantly laid bait and swing back wildly. When, for example, trolls post obviously dumbass comments regarding my writing, I will first proclaim to Warren that I have no intention of responding. Then I’ll wait, maybe five minutes, maybe an hour, and more often than not, offer some riposte that is usually an invitation for the troll in question to suck my cock.

Warren loves this, because at the root of it, he sees the real message I want to convey: “I am too nice you asshole!”

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to my recent birthday. I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions, but by coincidence, the anniversary of my birth occurs just a few days after that holiday. And I do like to use this annual occasion to take stock and make a few goals. Some of these are far-reaching, far-fetched, and likely nothing I’ll ever accomplish, like Learn French, Finish the Documentary (started about five years ago), Get My Shit Together With Money. I temper these ridiculous aims with more attainable goals like Breathe, Poop, Walk the Dogs.

As the time approached to take inventory and make a plan for year forty-six, I had an idea. What if, just for once, I skipped making a list and just tried to live without heaping guilt-inducing pressure on myself. What if I let myself not worry if I don’t read at least fifty books, knit twelve sweaters, and write six novels by the end of December? What if I cut myself slack for sometimes skipping the notion that daily meditation should be mandatory?

Being a list addict, I couldn’t totally avoid jotting down a few hopes. Mainly though, I decided I would try to focus on a single main goal for the year. The seed for this goal was planted many years ago, when I first met my friend Jote, who as a child went to school in India. There, she saw tremendous poverty on a regular basis, beggars everywhere. It changed her life and when she returned to the States, she decided that, unlike so many of us, she would not avoid eye contact with the homeless, trying to ignore them while pretending to be changing the radio station.

That story stuck with me, and from the moment I first heard it, I began to wave at the homeless. Sometimes I also offered spare change, or some food if I happened to be driving home from the grocery store and had a bunch of bananas within reach. In fact, I’d done these things before meeting Jote, but the meeting helped me be more conscious and consistent in my efforts.

So for my new year, I decided that I would try hard to see the humanity in everyone. I would stop hiding so much behind my computer screen, make more eye contact, say hello to strangers. My son might tell you that, in fact, I’ve always done this, to the point of sometimes excruciating embarrassment. Because, yes, I can be that woman who holds up the grocery line by stopping to exchange life stories with the cashier. (Conversely, there was a time when I, at the height of my angry days, would exchange different words with such workers, though not always of the pleasant variety.)

When you stop to interact with complete strangers, you can plan on acquiring the label Kooky pretty fast. This shared humanity thing makes us uncomfortable, and you really never know what someone’s motives are. Riding the trains in Paris, and then the plane back home, offered some interesting lessons to this affect, as I was contemplating my upcoming personal new year, preparing to implement my plan.

For example, there was the beggar on the train who wanted money. I told her I had none. She persisted, and rattled her cup in my face, and I couldn’t help but feel accused, like she was suggesting I was holding out on her. (In fact, I wasn’t—a medical emergency before I left town meant I traveled with no money at all, relying instead on my young hot domestic partner, who fully held our purse strings.) Very hard for me to see the humanity in this woman, not because she was begging, but because she was being fucking pushy.

Another night, a different woman. This one saw me standing and gestured to an open seat beside her on the otherwise packed train. As soon as I sat, she burst out singing Cabaret and chatted up anyone within earshot, going on and on, alternately evoking smiles and prompting tight-lipped frowns of disapproval. When she exited, she stood on the platform blowing kisses to us all, and bidding us a happy life. Was she nuts? Maybe, maybe not.

The transatlantic flight found me sitting beside a guy who made the sign of the cross before takeoff and again as his meal was served. The first seven hours we sat quietly, maybe each of us fearing the other might be a gusher. I can’t remember what prompted our first exchange, but suddenly, there we were, in an animated conversation that yielded me all sorts of information including the fact that my own friend, Matt the Electrician, had recently played a house concert hosted by this guy, that the guy’s girlfriend has fake boobs, and—get this—that he and I share the same birthday. Instead of wishing he’d shut up, I was grateful for the time-killing we provided each other.

This bolstered my plans to see, embrace and appreciate my fellow humans. But the best laid plans and all that—I haven’t even gotten a week into my own new year without confronting new challenges on my allegedly simple goal. And I have been reminded that sometimes, seeing the humanity in those we love most is some days the greatest challenge of all. Which has to explain why Warren and I had a two-day argument over—are you ready for this?— refrigerator magnets. Now, of course, it wasn’t really about magnets and anger is a shape shifter that simply took this particular form. But, no new news here, I did get a quick reminder that those we hold closest are sometimes those we push furthest away in a moment of unreasonable, inexplicable fury.

Which is why, when I think about this recognize-humanity plan of mine, I already see huge pitfalls in the form of ex-friends and past lovers, people who the mere thought of is enough to evoke a wince. God forbid I run into them on the bus.

But I’ll keep trying. Yesterday, I discovered all sorts of things about my checkout gal at Central Market. Today I’ll see if I can hold open the post office door for someone. And I’ll take a little comfort in the words of Gandhii— a quote that, serendipitously enough, I stumbled upon not once but twice yesterday (on a bumper sticker and then in a movie preview): "Everything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." We can only hope.

Spike Gillespie is, for the record, pro-refrigerator-magnet. She blogs for JetBlue, KnitBuzz, and spikeg.com. She's hosting Free Sex in Public February 14th at BookPeople