If You Were Upset (because someone didn't smile back at you)
John L. Waters
December 15, 2005
If you were upset because you were bicycling along and you smiled at someone but they didn't smile back at you, well, consider this. The two-wheeling person who didn't smile back at you might not have even seen you, as morning sunlight in the face can be a momentarily blinding distraction. Also, the cyclist might have been unable to show a lot of emotion in facial expression. It's also true that some people simply take a walk or a bike ride to get away from social interaction. Trying to force everyone to be happily extraverted for your pleasure is totally egocentric and often leads to failure. Remember that out on his daily walk the ambulatory Beethoven often looked stern. During such times of intense concentration the unsmiling man wasn't extroverted.
When a person doesn't respond the way you expect, you need to work to adjust to reality. This work may distract you from your bike riding and thereby pose some danger to yourself and to other people. Moreover, the other biker or hiker may be concentrating on balancing or steering, or on some inner problem. For example, I'm often in thought when I'm out walking. Furthermore, my own smile looks like a grimace. Many persons have wished that I were different from the way I actually am. Consequently sometimes I feel a stiff negativity in people hit me like a strong gale. All around me the trees crack and fall and I'm out there silent as a clam in my cold and aloof wooden world.
I don't know your own life situation, but I do know that worsening finances, health, family, or job security can make a person withdraw into his or her own shell. But a great many people feel insecure right now and the popular social system is fiercely competitive. Conventional society puts a lot of stress on people. Only a few persons ride on top of the socio-economic wave. Many more persons are drowning in this monster tsunami. Like Beethoven kept dwelling on his latest symphony, today's thoughtful person keeps envisioning the better social system, like Edison kept envisioning the better illumination system even though so many of his experimental light bulb filaments rapidly burnt out. Too many persons are suffering today for people not to be thinking about and working on creating a less wasteful social system. Selling the idea is hard, however. Meanwhile, the happy smiley people want things to stay the way they are. Many of them live privileged lives by riding on the aching backs of the working poor.
There is a natural desire to keep safely and secretly hidden from other persons that which is necessary for one's own life. This is why so many people live in private apartments and keep private bank accounts. Furthermore, a southbound person rapidly approaching a northbound person on foot, horse, or bike knows that if there isn't a physical collision this is going to be a swift and trifling encounter. Given the speed of travel in today's world, the limits of reality keep a hard worker more or less socially withdrawn.
You want me to smile back and otherwise look nice for you, but suppose I have a deformity or suppose I am poor and don't have all the clothes you expect a man to have. Then I can't look as nice for you as you want me to, even if I do smile back at you. You're determined to react to my superficial appearance and not think hard. It's like I need to dress up my whole body to suit your special taste. But I meet many others on the same trail you are on. Their expectations may differ quite a lot. To please them all I must be a human chameleon. Since I'm odd in appearance and in manners, I'm sure to be maligned or attacked, at least in thought.
While on the street I've occasionally had brazen self-righteous extraverted people tell me to smile. Their voices are distraught as though my lack of facile facial expression has offended them. The music I play they don't hear, or they wouldn't enjoy it if they did hear it. It's soft melody, not sturm und drang or nasal twang Country Western or Rock and Roll. My serene happiness radiates in my serene music. I also write serenely on the alphanumeric keyboard, but not everything I write reads like John Milton or the pulps or flashy Internet neon. For many a neurologically impaired and impoverished underprivileged person, life's a goose that has just passed through one of an airborne Boeing 737's roaring jet engines. "Disintegration" is the popular antiseptic word.
Perhaps as a biker girl you weren't curious enough about people, so you didn't ever investigate the full spectrum of humanity. Lots of people today are put-away persons living inside a uniform, or inside a prison, or inside a factory, or inside a mental hospital, or inside a monastery. Other put-away persons just live socially aloof so you don't really pay attention to them. Now, however, as an older person no longer confined inside of a small school you can explore more, and you can resonate with a wider variety of human individuals. There are also kind animals that bring a person comfort without ever dressing up, talking wittily, or smiling to show off their ultrabrites. These tolerant creatures are lifesavers. Medical science proves that animal companions lower many a person's blood pressure.
Every special person has something special to give, but my hunch is that not everyone's able in the same way. Like Stevie Wonder, some disabled and talented people manage to find an appreciative audience. Other talented disabled people fail to connect, and this is a great loss and a tragic waste to the body politic. That's why it's better for us to focus on this issue than just try to get everybody smiling to be polite and/or parroting and promoting the so-called "one true religion" so as to not get thrown into the slammer or refused gainful employment.
Copyright 2005 by John L. Waters. All Rights Reserved
LINKS
My website at Humboldt State University
My search for a publisher
My letters of recommendation
When a person doesn't respond the way you expect, you need to work to adjust to reality. This work may distract you from your bike riding and thereby pose some danger to yourself and to other people. Moreover, the other biker or hiker may be concentrating on balancing or steering, or on some inner problem. For example, I'm often in thought when I'm out walking. Furthermore, my own smile looks like a grimace. Many persons have wished that I were different from the way I actually am. Consequently sometimes I feel a stiff negativity in people hit me like a strong gale. All around me the trees crack and fall and I'm out there silent as a clam in my cold and aloof wooden world.
I don't know your own life situation, but I do know that worsening finances, health, family, or job security can make a person withdraw into his or her own shell. But a great many people feel insecure right now and the popular social system is fiercely competitive. Conventional society puts a lot of stress on people. Only a few persons ride on top of the socio-economic wave. Many more persons are drowning in this monster tsunami. Like Beethoven kept dwelling on his latest symphony, today's thoughtful person keeps envisioning the better social system, like Edison kept envisioning the better illumination system even though so many of his experimental light bulb filaments rapidly burnt out. Too many persons are suffering today for people not to be thinking about and working on creating a less wasteful social system. Selling the idea is hard, however. Meanwhile, the happy smiley people want things to stay the way they are. Many of them live privileged lives by riding on the aching backs of the working poor.
There is a natural desire to keep safely and secretly hidden from other persons that which is necessary for one's own life. This is why so many people live in private apartments and keep private bank accounts. Furthermore, a southbound person rapidly approaching a northbound person on foot, horse, or bike knows that if there isn't a physical collision this is going to be a swift and trifling encounter. Given the speed of travel in today's world, the limits of reality keep a hard worker more or less socially withdrawn.
You want me to smile back and otherwise look nice for you, but suppose I have a deformity or suppose I am poor and don't have all the clothes you expect a man to have. Then I can't look as nice for you as you want me to, even if I do smile back at you. You're determined to react to my superficial appearance and not think hard. It's like I need to dress up my whole body to suit your special taste. But I meet many others on the same trail you are on. Their expectations may differ quite a lot. To please them all I must be a human chameleon. Since I'm odd in appearance and in manners, I'm sure to be maligned or attacked, at least in thought.
While on the street I've occasionally had brazen self-righteous extraverted people tell me to smile. Their voices are distraught as though my lack of facile facial expression has offended them. The music I play they don't hear, or they wouldn't enjoy it if they did hear it. It's soft melody, not sturm und drang or nasal twang Country Western or Rock and Roll. My serene happiness radiates in my serene music. I also write serenely on the alphanumeric keyboard, but not everything I write reads like John Milton or the pulps or flashy Internet neon. For many a neurologically impaired and impoverished underprivileged person, life's a goose that has just passed through one of an airborne Boeing 737's roaring jet engines. "Disintegration" is the popular antiseptic word.
Perhaps as a biker girl you weren't curious enough about people, so you didn't ever investigate the full spectrum of humanity. Lots of people today are put-away persons living inside a uniform, or inside a prison, or inside a factory, or inside a mental hospital, or inside a monastery. Other put-away persons just live socially aloof so you don't really pay attention to them. Now, however, as an older person no longer confined inside of a small school you can explore more, and you can resonate with a wider variety of human individuals. There are also kind animals that bring a person comfort without ever dressing up, talking wittily, or smiling to show off their ultrabrites. These tolerant creatures are lifesavers. Medical science proves that animal companions lower many a person's blood pressure.
Every special person has something special to give, but my hunch is that not everyone's able in the same way. Like Stevie Wonder, some disabled and talented people manage to find an appreciative audience. Other talented disabled people fail to connect, and this is a great loss and a tragic waste to the body politic. That's why it's better for us to focus on this issue than just try to get everybody smiling to be polite and/or parroting and promoting the so-called "one true religion" so as to not get thrown into the slammer or refused gainful employment.
Copyright 2005 by John L. Waters. All Rights Reserved
LINKS
My website at Humboldt State University
My search for a publisher
My letters of recommendation
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