Posts tagged with "social commentary"

The Appreciation Paradox

Often, when some­one thanks me, I find myself say­ing “Don’t men­tion it” or “No need to thank me”. Yet when some­one does­n’t thank me for a favour, I feel like I’m being tak­en advan­tage of.

It’s a fun­ny thing that I feel like a thank-you is unnec­es­sary only after some­one has said it. Maybe it’s because as long as the per­son appre­ci­ates the favour, that’s all that mat­ters.

It’s sim­i­lar to the way Pat once offered to let me stay with him and Jen if I ever find myself with­out a job and a house. I’d prob­a­bly nev­er take him up on the offer because I nev­er want to be a bur­den any­one. At the same time, he knows this and does­n’t expect me to take him up on it, but he offered any­way because he knows I would­n’t take it for grant­ed, and would still be hap­py to take me in if the sit­u­a­tion war­rant­ed it.

Perhaps such acts become more of an acknowl­edg­ment than a prac­ti­cal ges­ture. As long as I know that some­one is appre­cia­tive and rec­og­nizes a favour, that’s all that mat­ters. But real­ly, isn’t that what a thank you is — an acknowl­edg­ment through thanks? At the same time, with­out a thank you, how would we know that some­one is appre­cia­tive?

It’s like the act itself is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly nec­es­sary and unnec­es­sary.

A Bitter Belief

Jack: What kind of movies do you pre­fer, the ones with the sad end­ings or the hap­py ones?

Claire: The sad ones def­i­nite­ly. I like movies that make me cry.

Jack: Then you’re with the right guy.

Jack is the lead­ing man. Such screen time is only reserved for pro­tag­o­nists, though anti-hero’s fit this mould too. You want to root for him, to dis­cov­er that in the end he’s smart enough to give up the crim­i­nal life, to stay out of trou­ble, to tru­ly appre­ci­ate the one who loves him. That’s what Claire is bank­ing on too.

She wants to ful­fill the dream that she’ll get the bad boy, and she’ll be the one for whom he gives up his crim­i­nal life. A sto­ry that’s been told time and time again, in life and on the screen. But he won’t, and that makes her want him even more.

Through their rela­tion­ship, you have a hard time believ­ing that any­one would be so self-destruc­tive to fall for a guy like this, the way you don’t believe a pro­fes­sion­al assas­sin would sud­den­ly devel­op a con­science when dis­cov­er­ing that his mark is a 12-year-old girl. But this is Hollywood, and we’re lead to believe that any­thing is pos­si­ble.

And as he cleans Claire’s blood off his bed­room floor, you real­ize that it’s hard­er to believe he was able to fill a buck­et of water from the faucet when he just got out on parole and his util­i­ty bills have been unpaid for over a year, than a girl falling in love with some­one so bad for her. After all, life has not proven oth­er­wise.

This qui­et­ly fills you with bit­ter­ness.

The Truth Hurts

Some peo­ple are hurt by the things I say here. But I make no judg­ment; I only speak the truth, sup­port­ed by the facts. So if some­one is a stalk­er who blames her prob­lems on the object of her atten­tions, or treats her son like a trained ani­mal, or decides to charge friends and room­mates for rides to the gro­cery store, and I doc­u­ment it here, I’m not the one who’s embar­rass­ing them. They do that enough for them­selves.

It’s like a doc­u­men­tary about the Holocaust. The film­mak­ers don’t need to offer an opin­ion that con­demns it. The footage and tes­ti­mo­ni­als speak for them­selves.

Sometimes, the peo­ple who don’t like what I have to say are so delu­sion­al that they sup­ply their own real­i­ties, per­haps because they don’t want to be at fault.

They don’t real­ize it’s the truth that hurts, not me.

Checkout Purgatory

The check­out clerks (girls most­ly) at my gro­cery store have a strange habit of not acknowl­edg­ing the next cus­tomer until the cur­rent one has paid. So there’s often a point where the cur­rent cus­tomer has passed the cash reg­is­ter to put their gro­ceries in a cart, and they’re just wait­ing for their cred­it card to go through.

I end up stand­ing right in front of the clerk, who won’t say any­thing, even though you know they see you out of their periph­er­al vision. They only say hel­lo as soon as the pre­vi­ous cus­tomer has been rung through. Like they’re com­put­ers who can’t han­dle more than one task per per­son at a time.

It’s quite awk­ward.

Issues In Others

After going through ther­a­py, I’ve start­ed to rec­og­nize com­plex­es and issues in oth­er peo­ple.

Some put their hope in some­one, then hurt them. Some only fall in love with peo­ple they can’t have, and as soon as inter­est is rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed, they lose the attrac­tion. Strong signs of emo­tion­al depri­va­tion, stem­ming from trau­mat­ic rela­tion­ships. (Unfortunately, I’ve been the cause on more than one occa­sion, and it was my own issues that lead to this destruc­tive behav­iour where I did­n’t treat a heart as del­i­cate­ly as I should have.)

Most peo­ple aren’t aware of their issues, but I’m always baf­fled by the ones who are aware and still don’t do any­thing about it. They repeat­ed­ly make the same mis­takes over and over again.

I’ve always believed that self-improve­ment is the high­est form of liv­ing, and I’ve been able to work through my own bag­gage, so I refuse to accept those who don’t work through their own.