Posts Tagged ‘deep thoughts’

I’m struck by how much people think and how little we know about each other.

I’ve been reading the blogs for Carolina SEAS 2010.  To be honest, I haven’t really been putting out the best effort to get to know people, and, often, because of my position as the research fellow, I miss out on the social events that the others coordinate simply because I’m not always with them.  So I don’t really have as much of an opportunity to bond with people.  Plus, I’m shy about opening up and talking to people, hence why it’s easier to express myself in written form.

So it just strikes me when I read the other participants’ blog entries and read about what’s going on in their heads.  Most of my day-to-day interactions with people—anyone, friends, family, strangers—is on a fairly shallow level.  We don’t really talk about how we ~*feel*~ about things.  We don’t really talk about what’s going on in our heads, or the revelations we’re having.  Or, when we do, it comes out in a way that’s really inadequate: “Yeah, I learned a lot about Islam the other day.  Lots of stuff that I didn’t know.”  Or: “It was really eye-opening to be in another culture that lives on less and realize how much I have at home.”

Yet it’s often so difficult to express in person (for me, at least) how utterly mind-blowing some of these revelations are.  Hell, it’s difficult for me to express that even now, when I’m writing.  And it’s often opaque to others exactly how much people think and how much they feel, particularly when they choose to mask it by just bantering with each other and cracking jokes and having fun while never really talking about anything deep.  (Which isn’t a bad thing, of course; that’s how friends are.  I’m not criticizing having fun or not talking about anything deep, simply observing.)

So it’s really interesting, seeing how people think, what they’re thinking about, and what’s going on in their minds beyond their smiles and jokes and conversations about random topics.  It’s like I’m seeing into a world that I’ve never seen before.  It’s, well, mindblowing, and it’s incredibly difficult to try to express exactly how mindblowing this is in writing, and incredibly difficult to express this connection that I suddenly feel without sounding really cheesy.  People that I thought wouldn’t really think about these things are thinking deeply about them; people who put on tough fronts when they’re with friends suddenly have their fronts crumble when I realize how sensitive they are through their blog posts.  People I thought I wouldn’t be as close to turn out to be struggling with the same things that I am.

This is why I like reading blogs so much.

I’m a shy person.  Reading people’s blogs makes me realize how much I want to talk about so many different things.  But maybe it’s my problem, in that I rarely seem to be able to connect to people in person in the same way.  I always think, wow, this person’s really cool; I wish we could be closer friends!  But I don’t know how to bring up these topics that I really want to talk about.  I don’t know how to express in words, on the stop, all these layered thoughts and emotions that I have towards these topics.  I don’t know how to talk about the complexity of these things without sounding really lame.  So I’ll make a joke and laugh with you about silly things instead, or I’ll ask you about how your day was and we’ll have a conversation that lasts for five minutes at most.

I’ll admit it; I’m awkward and shy. I wade into the waters to see if you’re comfortable with me removing my filter, because a lot of people will say that they’re okay with me saying anything, yet will get offended anyway if I talk about taboo topics.  I don’t express myself well.  I think too much.

But if that’s okay with you, then let’s be friends.

Okay, enough procrastinating.  I’m gonna go out and interview people now.  For real.