Thursday 12/12/19
People sometimes--often--appear quite strange, but when we realize there can be a huge disparity between how they act and what they think--or how they wish to act, or the manner in which their thoughts cause them to second guess themselves--the strangeness becomes not so very strange. Maybe even typical. Or processable, even if it all goes under that banner of "that's how people are," with all of the attendant confusion, vagaries, contradictions. I suppose what I am saying is that behavior often appears to be completely random, based upon what a person puts out there, or what logic might dictate, or what we presume--and we needn't even be wrong--their desires to be.
This is a triviality. Not very important, certainly. But I saw that someone had written me on FB Messenger. Two notes. Kind notes. They said they were going through a divorce, that they normally did not talk about work matters with someone, but they wanted me to know that I would be welcome at their Thanksgiving table in the future, and they wished to suspend the "no talking about work" rule to tell me I was an amazing writer.
Nice, right? That someone takes the time, to share something about themselves, to extend a gesture of kindness. So, I get on the computer to write and thank them, pretty much saying what I did in the last sentence, and you know what? I couldn't. They had blocked me. Someone I had never said anything to. Before I had a chance to do so.
That's people. That's life. And it looks weird, and there was a time when I would have thought it was quite strange, and not the norm, but I know the norm better know. A person thinks they've said too much, they're embarrassed that they might come off a given way, they fret that they come across as needy, whatever it may be. Or maybe they read more, and, as is often the case with me, they become intimidated. The more you read, the more intimidated, perhaps. Or any one of a thousand different things. These are just for instances, not necessarily anything to do with the reality. I didn't even get to say thank you.
O well.
I read the news about Tim Thomas tonight. People made a lot of bad jokes when he retired from the NHL and went out to Idaho. No one heard from him, he did no interviews. The jokes went that he was some crazy Republican guy with a bunker. He popped up in my news feed tonight. He looked worn. Only forty-five-years-old. This guy was the most competitive goalie I have ever seen. By far. He was inducted into the USA hockey Hall of Fame, and he ends up talking about what happened to his brain, how he couldn't figure out so much as what to eat when he got up in the morning, that blood wasn't getting to a lot of his brain, that he couldn't function. He starts crying. That's what the man was dealing with. And all of these shitty, unfunny jokes over the years. You don't know.
And people on the left take it so far, wanting to come after people who they think might not think like they do. I belong to no political party, I have no leaning towards any party, because truth is not a party to parties, and truth is what I care about. But those mean-spirited jokes. Nasty jokes. And the guy's head was scrambled and it sounds like he had to be one competitive SOB in life--like he was in his crease--to start to be able to live a regular life again, even as a young man at forty-five. I have even more respect for him now. Be careful. Be careful in assuming that someone's behavior, or what we perceive their behavior to be, is ipso facto a result of how they're thinking or what they want, even. Sometimes it's the same, sometimes its athwart, sometimes it's the opposite. Same goes for our "take" on what their behavior means.
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