It makes me sad knowing that, while humans can be such wonderful and complex creatures, thanks to my lack of communication skills and my general off-putting demeanor, I'll never be able to see more than their most shallow surface.
Well, no one truly will til the point when we invent mind reading devices, and most probably don't want to, either - that'd entail being exposed to plenty of unpleasant experiences. Not that realistic close relationships don't entail that, since one of the prerequisites, or maybe tests of a true bond is going through hardships together. But no one will most likely let me get even to that point.
On the topic of unpleasant human states of mind, though this isn't really a direct response to your post, on a conscious level I don't agree with the "demonization" of certain feelings or behaviours. In my opinion even some seemingly negative personality traits have merit to them, if only by making a person interesting. Being prone to "ugly" emotions like jealousy, fear, anger etc. isn't practical in daily life, true, but such traits don't exist in a vacuum, they're part of a complex picture that makes a person, with parts sometimes starkly contrasting one another, like you've said, and prone to change with experience. I remember being asked what my opinion was of an acquaintance, and getting a surprised and sort of disbelieving response when I said he "seemed sort of arrogant/smug, but clearly smart and cool." So apparently you can't have a positive opinion of a person if you think they're smug at the same time. Yet if he's arrogant, that means that he underestimates certain people, but then the things/people that he DOES value might have more worth than they do to regular people. What makes these things so valuable in his eyes? And what brought him to think this way? What kind of personal experiences has he had? Aren't these things interesting to think about?
A person at their lowest, one that's hysterically sobbing on the floor or locked up in a musty, dark room is interesting in a similar way, and makes me think 'what if I could help them out of their misery?', 'I wonder what they'd look like if i could get them to smile honestly at least once', 'what does a happy person look like after they've gone through this?' Basically, ugly things give more value to pleasant ones. And yet while I say all this, if someone is unpleasant directly to me or someone that I'm close to, intentionally or not, I usually get frustrated pret
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