Saturday 4/30/22
If you say something fair and true to somebody about a negative quality or form of behavior, they will almost always be upset, though they will have no recourse. They will have nothing they can say back to you, all the more so if, besides knowing that what has been remarked is true, that they cannot compete with the sayer of those words intellectually or rhetorically.
One sees this all the time with me and these people in publishing. You will note that they almost never have anything to say back, and when they do, after they've started something that was unwise to start--as with Raluca Albu--it's handled in a way that doesn't go well for them, where they look ridiculous. So what do these people do? They hate you. Which is ironic, because the issue at hand is this bad behavior or flaw on their part, not on yours.
What are the better options? Address that, for one. Acknowledge it, at least. Work at it. Consider that maybe it should be worked on. Apologize. Make amends. Try making a joke. Take the truth in stride. Start over. See if someone might be willing to forgive you. Or wipe the grease board clean.
People don't do that. They have a tantrum. They bad mouth you. They ban you. They trash you to others. They become angry over you. They stew and obsess. Seethe. They stalk. They take their ball and go home. They never address any of the real problems, though, and this is why they fail as humans and in life; they make the problem out to be you, which is not the reality. They never do the work of facing the actual issues. Or the start of the work, I should say, let alone the work work. It's also impossible to write well if you are this way. To create art requires self-awareness and an ability to face truth. There has never been an exception to that, and there never will be.
This is amusing, these two screenshots. The woman in question--Lara, aged forty-one, no children--is a therapist in New Jersey. On her profile, she writes about her child-like capacity for wonder. She goes on about these virtues which she attributes to herself, as this wide-eyed, perspicacious person.
My profile is what one would expect a profile of mine to be. The words are at the level and of the depth that one would expect. It's me. Even in that, with the character count capped, it's me. So this individual swipes back on me, and writes me without bothering to read my profile, going by just my photos. She was very attractive. Nay, I would say beautiful. But doesn't even read what I wrote. For all of her talk about introspection, and wanting an emotionally mature man who grows, curiosity, etc.
Rather hypocritical, no? I always handle what I see, what is sent to me, definitively. Do we remember Chris Beha? Of course we do, if only for how ridiculous he looked and what he represents, rather than anything of any actual substance or value that he might be, because the word "nil" might as well have been invented to describe the latter with such a person.
Who is in the right is not up for debate. It's tennis. I merely return the serve. Crisply, and right where it cannot be hit back at me for the point. I take no bait, I use my words, and I'm correct.
This isn't a big thing, this encounter, as such, with this person. It's typical, save that most people don't write profiles with any words at all, or more than half of them spelled correctly, as this individual did, let alone complete sentences that are meant to get you to think that the person writing them is a person 1. Of substance and 2. Looking for substance.
The hilarious part is that rather than respond to my response, which is only fair and accurate and well said, she hit delete in an angry huff, because what can you say? "My bad, you're right, that's embarrassing." I was curious to what she'd say, because you can't object to what I said. It's all true. But same as with Beha, when that's the case, a very small person can only flee and do some version of at least some of what I described above.
That's so simple, the "my bad" bit, and yet people don't have that in them with anything they think possesses any consequence; they can do it when they drop the five dollar bill at the Starbucks, though, and have to reach down and re-hand it to the cashier. Stuff like that. But in matters personal, that are in some way about them as who they are, they infrequently have that measure of self-confidence, self-awareness, humility, or just a good nature. They have anger, though. And they have blame to give someone else, when in almost every example, they're the cause of everything they don't have, which they want.
This is someone who gives therapy to others. Like I said, a small thing, but it's amusing and telling. Just say, "Eeesh, you're right," and start again. Take it in stride. Probably not someone you want as your therapist. Run some stairs instead. Read Thoreau's journals. Drink more water.
