friends, responsibilities, growing old, other ideas
Here I am. It's past midnight. In yet another city, with my three friends from highschool.
One of them is leaving tomorrow morning at 8 am. Which means we're all getting up at 5 am to take him to the airport. On top of all this bad planning by him, he even kept me up until now by talking to the other friend. Another friend will be driving and he tried to sleep but who knows if he managed.
Tomorrow this guy will leave and we'll meet again in 20 years.
Also, I've got responsibilities: I am the host, whether I like it or not. I can't just say to the others that tomorrow I'll be sleeping and to take him to the airport without me.
What are friends and why are we attracted to friends? Life would be easier without this attraction. Friends don't make you any money, in fact they make you spend money and resources, yet we do it. I wonder. Friends are part of what separates life other than the vegetating part. I've often been accused of living like a vegetable, but it's not true, since I went out of my way to meet friends from all corners of the world. Actually they went out of their way, since I stayed here, but to me getting up after sleeping 3 hours is indeed getting out of my way. This two-weeks vacation will have cost me over 1000 dollars by the end of it, if not more.
In what directions have we grown during these last few years? I don't know. There's two guys take a lot of photographs. I worry a lot about dates, time, schedules, keys and stuff like that. I am accused of being obsessive-compulsive and a control freak, and these guys regularly forget keys, coffee and milk on the stove, don't wash dishes... i don't know. I get along better with obsessive-compulsive people I guess, than easy-going people who schedule flights at 8 am, making everyone get up at 5 am, and keeping them from sleeping on top of it.
Is my desire to be with friends enough to put up with all these problems? Maybe not, maybe that's why I get in touch with the best friends only once every few decades.
After all, I do prefer the vegatable lifestyle.
Tomorrow I'll put this friend on a plane, I'll be totally cranky and I'll ask the other two friends which of these they prefer best:
1) go back to the beach house so I and they can finish the normal 8 hours of sleep
2) come back to the city so I and they can finish the normal 8 hours of sleep
3) they take me back to do #1 or #2 and I sleep at home while they drive around, as I can't enjoy any type of activity unless I've slept at least 6 hours
I found it interesting to meet them after all these years, and good, but also sad in many ways.
Mainly I found it sad because of this: what have we done in all these years? Not much. But maybe what is sad is that I am the one who hasn't done much. I am the one seeing everything in a negative light. They're positive and outgoing.
On the other hand, I am not all bad. In life there can't be only planning and organization, but in the same way there can't be just slacking off, losing things, breaking things. My bet is that one day some accident will happen caused by their carelessness. Actually it did happen already: one broke his camera and one got run over by a wave.
But someone might bet that the most accidents will happen to me and that they will be caused by my compulsiveness.
That is the real question after all: does compulsiveness produce more benefits and less problems than carelessness?
A compulsive person is more efficient in getting things done, but he's also causing many side-effects.
1) he's not enjoying himself
2) he's stressing out and this could cause negative actions - first of all having problems with sleeping, which then causes inefficiency in action
Compulsiveness consists of permanent alertness and frustration.
Carelessness is the opposite, and it is a good and pleasant state of mind, but produces many accidents, such as losing keys, and other things, breaking things, hurting themselves and people, not seeing answers and solutions, working inefficiently.
However, the careless person lives happily, even if maybe with less resources and for less time than the compulsive person. The compulsive person has everything under control and yet he is unhappy and constantly worried - that's the only way to try and keep everything under control.
This interaction with these old friends has made me think about this a lot. There's some carelessness, a lot of it, in two of them. And there's no compulsiveness and organization in one of them. And there's being a control freak as far as the way I am.
I've achieved nothing yet, the other two are doctors, and the one leaving today has a small company. The only frustrated one seems to be me, but that may be caused by other reasons than being tidy and all that.
Anyway. They have put up with me, so I am quite grateful for that, because no one usually puts up with me on vacation without complaining at least once. They haven't said anything instead, so that means they've shown a lot of patience and respect. I can't ignore this nor allow myself to forget it.
Having said this, even if they were the best people I know, I still find it hard to be around people for this long. One dinner per week is more than enough. Living for two weeks with other people is quite tiring. If it weren't for their patience with my impatience for them (they tolerated me but I didn't tolerate them), I would have gotten into huge arguments already, and we would have gone our separate ways. Basically, I am intolerant of anything less than perfection, which means doing everything my way. This leads me to acting like a dictator and trying to have my way directly or indirectly.
I remember telling my friends "you organize the day because otherwise I'll be dictating every single detail", and half an hour later I was asking my friend to postpone his shower until after the hike or else it would be useless. That is shockingly funny and we laughed about it, but it shows the fact that I try to control people, by giving them "advice" and in other ways (just with my facial expression), exactly as my much hated father did with me.
I've become exactly like my father, and like him I say "it would be best to...", "i would advise to...", and I keep on busting people's balls trying to optimize every single detail of everything that surrounds me. Optimization sickness... On the other hand it all seems rational and with a good purpose. If others did it with me I would hate it and rebel, as I did with my father. When people don't follow my advice, I have noticed that I often wish them to fail and pay for not listening to me, even fail at my own expense, like the time my girlfriend was drying my towel on the porch, didn't attach it to anything, and the wind took it away, just as I had predicted. I was happier to be proven right than sad for losing a towel. A couple of days ago, the same happened with the friend who broke his camera. On our way to a place, they were faster and didn't even wait for me. They left me behind by a few minutes and didn't care. On our way back I decided i would not wait for them, just as they had done with me. But then one of them kind of engaged in a race with me, to show me he was faster than me (ridiculous because I grew up here and I know where to put my feet). He didn't say anything, but he was right behind me, trying to pass me again, and most likely leave me behind, as he had done on our way to the place. So eventually he slipped and broke his expensive camera, and to tell you the truth i feel that it served him right, even though of course I didn't say anything, like rejoicing openly.
Now they're all sleeping, and with all my frustration and compulsiveness, despite going to bed 2 hours before them, and I am falling asleep two hours after them. By not worrying about how much sleep they get, they will have slept more than me. The consequence of everything will be that I will ruin their day tomorrow with my conditions.
In a social context, it's better the carefree careless easygoing type of person. In a work environment, you want who does the best job, which is often the control freak guy. You want to have a control freak dentist, who will obsessively try to do the best job he can, and know every single detail about his job. You don't want a careless carefree easygoing dentist or surgeon. The same for every other job. You want a control freak maid. You want a control freak driver, who won't get you into an accident. You want a control freak waiter, cook.
You basically want alert people, and being alert is the opposite of being relaxed. Being intelligent is the same as being alert, and being relaxed in many ways is equivalent to being stupid, unless you're constantly alert about stupid details, which could be the case, while the carefree guy could be thinking about the big picture. I am not ruling that the carefree guy could produce better results than the control freak. However, when the carefree guy. as a consequence of his attitude, lives in a messy house, loses things, like keys and such, i don't see what kind of good consequences from his attitude could compensate those problems.
Anyway. Tomorrow I have to go to the airport. No matter how little I will have slept at 5 am, which is now only 3 and a half hours away. I think i will get in touch with this disorganized guy in another 20 years, once I'll have forgotten about all the headaches he's caused me by being disorganized.
In the future, I gotta remember to stay away from disorganized people, which pretty much leaves out 90% of potential friends. In fact, the most likable people are the disorganized ones. If I want to rest and relax for a few hours, I certainly won't look for a control freak like me. But if I want to live in a house with someone, I want an organized, methodical, precise person. That's the problem: you can meet these friends for a few hours, or go on vacation with them as long as you live in separate houses and you don't have to travel with them.
That's the mistake my father did, by marrying a disorganized clumsy mom: he gets to criticize her all day long, but he doesn't really live a happy family life. On the other hand, the advantage is that he's never getting criticized because she's not like him. He makes her life hell, but no one bothers him. Maybe that's what I tend do with my friends. I tend to choose careless people who will put up with my obsessive-compulsive narcissistic control freak personality, and to whom I will be useful, rather than choosing people like me, with whom I'd be fighting all day long about which way things should be done.
I do have such a friend, at the bank. We spent hours discussing how glasses should be dried: whether on the way up or down. I was washing dishes and he dared to tell me that I should dry them the other way, but I told him "no, I do it this way because otherwise this and that happens...". He said "but this way they dry faster...". And then we went on for days.
All people can be classified according to this spectrum: on one side control freak and on the other side of it careless morons. The best people to hang out with are the careless morons, but the people you want around your property are the control freaks. Don't allow the careless morons to get into your house basically or you'll start resenting them for damage they'll be doing to your property. Break things, reposition things the wrong way, open things without closing them, leaving doors... a lot of damage they do on a daily basis. This time I've got 2 careless morons I have to look after and one good guy, who's not even a control freak.
