a little venting is good for the soul

For about the tenth time in the last week, I have heard someone express concern about making me mad (the ironic thing, was in least two of these cases it was people who had thought it odd that I had asked them if I had angered them).

Human dynamics are a problem. I suck at them. We all suck at them. No matter what some television huckster tells you, there is no absolute solution to the problem, no magic book or videotape that will cure the condition human. Feedback, face to face, is problematic. Feedback over the telephone or online is often disastrous. People read things in your voice or your choice of words in an email that just are not there. If you write two emails over a week's time to the same person, and they only check their emails once a week, it looks like you are neurotic for having written twice, if you do the same thing and they check their emails twice a day, you look neglectful or off in a snit.

McCroskey teaches that feedback is an essential part of the communications dynamic. In a para-communicative world (emails, text messages and even telephone conversations lack the feedback levels of personal communication) we often have to read our own meaning into the rosetta stones we pick up in our in boxes.

To clarify matters, anger is a fairly foreign emotion to me, reserved for only truly egregious sins. I get angry over a guy who hits his girlfriend or wife. I get angry over politicians sending other people's kids to die in order to protect their own stupidity or perfidy. I get angry over betrayal. Real betrayal. I trust most people to act to form (Joe Gideon in "All That Jazz" speaks of looking for the worst in people, a little bit of himself, and usually finding it). I don't think I'm a bad person, but I know I have flaws, everyone has them. I accept that.

When I say I trust people to act to form, that means I create a mental model of them and trust them only as far and in matters I know them to be trustworthy, otherwise I would feel betrayed all the time, as I have yet to meet a truly kind hearted person in this life. Some more gentle than others, some more honest than others, none red-lining the perfection meter, and that's how people are. I accept that. It doesn't mean I have given up on caring what happens to a friend who is going through a rough spot, or just sigh and shrug when someone says they'll be somewhere at a certain time and never shows up, but it means I have to forgive them, it's part of my theology, part of my self-definition, to all you DSM-IV fans out there.

Even E.J., whom I know to be devoted to my legacy, will turn on me when the situation calls for it. I have been at one time or another, abandoned or betrayed by almost everyone I have ever trusted. It is part of human nature. I accept it without judgement, without cynicism. People have their agendae, accepting that is part of growing up. When I have tried to rise above that, to be of a truly charitable heart, I most often encounter perplexed souls who want to know what I am up to.

Those are the people I feel sorry for, but not angry with. But then, they get angry because you feel sorry for them. Sigh. Everyone wants to live life on their own terms, but no one wants to accept that you can't control everything, including the hearts and minds of others.

I know there will be friends who will read this and think it is about them, never imagining that I actually have other friends besides them (what do they think I do with the other 23-1/2 hours of the day, sit in a closet and wait for them?). As I write this, I am actually smiling a knowing smile, because I have been on all sides of that equation, more than once.

I love you all, in my own way, accept you all for what you are and think you want to be, and believ that all people have some good int hem. Argue if you must, but you're wrong. And that's part of what, as my friend Twist would say, makes me who I am.