Like Wine

Despite the catchy title, this post isn't really about wine. I try wine about once a year, usually at social gatherings, because it seems like an artsy, anciently historic, and sophisticated thing to do. I have failed to yet develop a liking for it, beer, ale, buttermilk, or coffee. The coffee I drink medicinally when I really need to stay awake for unnatural amounts of time to get school-work done. And, like medicine, it has some ugly side effects for me- 24 hour un-throw-upable stomach nausea topping the list. Alternatively, I suppose that particular symptom could also be from the poisonous artificial sweetener or the fat-free flavoured creamer I add to disguise the awful coffee taste...(And no, I don't know how it's possible for cream to be fat-free, anymore than I understand how it's possible to have sugar-free sugar. Please don't ask me, and please don't tell me if you know. I don't want to think about it too much. Oh wait, too late.) The point is: this post is actually about people and their interactions with each other. I had a sort of "Aha!" moment on my way to the c-train station this morning. It suddenly occurred to me that all people are both alcoholic beverages and alcoholic beverage drinkers (Yes, I'm aware that alcohol-drinkers are people too. I'm reading Gergen's The Saturated Self in class now so you'll likely see a separate rant on cultural meaning and mental health another time. Be quiet and focus on my analogy). People are like alcohol in that they come in different flavours and concentrations. Some flavours are immediately sweet and easy to like; others are bitter and require habituation and the right frame of mind to properly appreciate. Some concentrations are very low, impacting the drinker very little, and can therefore be taken in greater quantities before effects will become noticeable. Others are intensely concentrated, impacting the drinker immediately, and can only be handled in small quantities. Such people are intoxicating, and in the wake of their absorption they leave you feeling disoriented, uncoordinated, speech-impaired, and oh-so-very-happy-yet-guilty-at-the-same-time. People are drinkers in that everyone has different capacities for absorption and differing taste preferences. Like an alcohol tolerance, people have minimum and maximum bounds for comsuming and absorbing the interactions of a relationship. These limits are determined genetically, but the precise level of tolerance is set by circumstance and experience. As with taste preferences, there are some "flavours" or characteristics of people that tend to be appealing to nearly everyone. In food, sweetness is pretty much universally liked because this is a sign to our brains that what we're eating is in fact edible and not poisonous or useless. In people, things like facial symmetry, a sense of humour, and trustworthiness are generally considered attractive traits. Okay, enough of the social psychology- I'm more of a personality psychology fan. I'll throw off this defensive intellectualization and explain. I have a puzzle, which I'm going to work through as I write, so readers beware. I have been taught that personality traits are mostly stable across the life span. Experiences can shift them along their spectrums, but usually not all that far. One personality trait considered foundational to many personality psychologists is the introversion-extroversion scale. A person is said to be high in introversion when he or she does a lot of cognitive/emotional processing internally and generally feels his or her energy renewed from time alone. On the opposite end of the spectrum, extroverts feel refreshed/renewed when engaged with others and tend to do a lot of their cognitive/emotional processing out loud in conversations with others. The theory explaining these differences holds that introverts are somewhat more sensitive to stimulation from the social environment around them because they are already dealing with plenty of information about their own state of being inside. In contrast, extroverts are not as self-conscious and therefore crave the stimulation that comes from those around them. If you want to go back to my alcoholic analogy, introverts are sort of like drinkers with no enzymes to break down alcohol and not a lot of body mass- a little gets absorbed fast and does a lot quickly. Extroverts are more like experienced drinkers with genes to break down alcohol- it takes more than 2 to make a dent. I maintain that I am more introverted than extroverted. I feel much happier and able to relate if the social context is limited to (a) close family and friends I know well already and who know me and (b) very small groups or one-on-one exchanges with strangers or aquaintances. The intensity of the individual person(s) I'm with also impacts this, but not always and that is what puzzles me. None of my best friends or siblings are people I could describe as "mild". You see, I'm an addict for intense personalities. I love people who are who they are. I delight in people who demonstrate fearlessness, but there aren't a lot of those and I value genuineness more than the performance of someone who appears to have everything together. Although personality psychologists maintain that married couples ought to have complementary personalities so that each dyad-member's weaknesses are compensated for and strengths put to the greatest use, social psychologists point out that we also tend to prefer friends and spouses who are very similar to ourselves. So what does that make me? Functionally speaking, I'm the mild one. People spend time with me to relax, to unwind, to heal. Just call me tranquility personified. My very presence enables ADHD children to stay asleep at night; neurotic and incensed women to stop abusing their offensive children/strangers/parents or significant other; and anxious individuals to speak at a pace and pitch identifiable as human instead of squirrel. I'm okay with messiness-I have my own flaws and weaknesses to bear; I don't expect anyone else to be perfect either. I find joy in calling out the best in others so the weaknesses don't seem so important. But I don't feel mild. Just because other people's crises don't appear to phase me at the time doesn't mean they don't cost me, or that I don't hurt when they hit me hard. Five hours of talking to strangers about their life issues wears me out. Particularly if it was a shift full of high risk or even just identity-transformative calls, I'll need as many as 3 hours of strict solitude to wind down afterwards, to sift, sort, and release all the thoughts and emotions that have built up. Hanging out with my best friends continuously is something I can do for a max. of 2 days straight before I start to shut down and withdraw into silence. The more chaotic or intense the situation or person, the more I need to draw on space and silence to respond intelligently. So really it's not that I myself am an ocean of tranquility for people to wash in, I'm just something of a garbage collector with a refurbishing/recycling side-business who knows where to put things other people don't know what to do with. God is the cleansing ocean, Christ the dump for our crap we don't know what to do with, the Holy Spirit the freshwater source for all healing and renewal. I guess it's the inpredictability of the situation and individual that I find most difficult to deal with. I'm okay if I have a plan, if I remember where, when, and how to release my own burdens and those I relieve other people of. I'm okay if I can hide. In most of the places where I encounter strangers or acquaintances, there are pre-set rules of etiquette and complementary, mutual roles to be played out. I don't have to decide on the spot how to deal with the situation- I already have guidelines to work with. When I play soccer, I prefer defense because I can see the whole field and respond to the plays instead of having to invent them. When I answer calls at the DC, I follow the general protocals set out by my training and don't have to worry about future encounters- we won't recognize each other on the street and anonymity means that I have no further responsibility to the people I talk to when the call ends. School has its own student rules/roles, and my current church is possibly as ritualized in social patterns as c-train ridership. I've very adept at avoiding eye contact in those places so I don't have to engage, don't have to know what people are thinking and feeling and feel responsible for them. You will note my tolerance for close friends or family members is greater than my tolerance for strangers (2 days versus 5 hours, respectively). Even the incredibly intense (*cough* Melanie) or spontaneous (*cough, cough* Chasey and Nolan) ones don't overwhelm me as quickly because I know them well enough and we have enough of an established history together to respond appropriately to them. We have our own ceremonies, our own commonly held language, and I can fall into those relational movements and meanings as automatically as I can tie my shoelaces or do up my coat zipper. In fact, their familiarity is so comforting that I crave it as much as solitude. In contrast, the situations I hate the most are ones where I'm expected to make snap decisions based on minimal information. These include social situations where there are a lot of people I don't know well and there is no organized activity to bind us together. Situations where my relationship to others, and the roles I am to play, are ambiguous. Parties frequently fit under this category. Acquaintances at parties are actually worse for me to deal with than strangers because the relationship's direction and quality are ambiguous. With strangers I just start at the beginning (i.e. "Hi, I'm Faye. What's your name? What are you up to in life- job/school? hobbies? How are you liking this weather?") but with aquaintances I feel lost in the misty space between here and there: "Are we at a place in our relationship where we can talk about _____ or is that too personal? Did I just give out waaaay too much information? What were they looking for when they asked how I was doing? What the duece did they mean when they said ____?" It's just too much information to sort through at once. My defense in such situations is to retreat into my own silence, a sort of cave from which I can watch and learn the social territory and its rules and plan out an appropriate course through them. This strategy just doesn't work when the law of the land calls for immediate engagement. Practical application of what I've learned about myself today: what personality traits and individual characteristics do I really want to be the same and different from my own in a future spouse? Do I seek the intensity I crave, whose being is a shot of Bailey's, even though the relationship building process would make me a veritable drunkard and likely be self-defeating? Or do I accept the willing, comfortable tameness of the Bacardi cooler, still sweet, I can drive myself home and not get a ticket for intoxication? Do I agree with the statement: "Without addictions, we die"? Do I believe in all-or-nothing gambling? God, I just don't know.