Monday, May 11, 2015

Making others comfortable

I recently watched a video and in the end the youtuber quickly mentioned that many people spend a lot of energy trying to make other people feel comfortable.  It made me want to think about how I feel about that issue.  It seems like an ideal: always trying to make other people comfortable because you care about them.  It also seems like something that cannot be achieved. You can't always spend energy on other people. 

I know for certain groups I definitely try my best to make others feel comfortable.  I find Japanese class really fun and want everybody to be friends in it.  I want to make everybody get along and I will go out of my way to make friends with new students. I did it in Japan and I did it at UVA as well.  So in some situations I definitely do it, but others times I just want to feel comfortable myself and push others to make me feel that way.

This sorta relates to why people spend all this energy on others like this.  Sometimes I feel that I’m doing it just so others can reciprocate.  I know that most people don’t expect too much from me in these terms, but I still I seem to expect a lot of people.  I worry that me spending energy on others makes me expect that others will try to make me comfortable too.  What happens if the actions I do that I think are meaningful for others are not, and then I start to expect stuff that I never deserved?  Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I see it happening.  For example, if I do something for somebody that I consider considerate but that person doesn't, then I can't expect that person to do something considerate for me since in that person's eyes I have done nothing.  My usual way to mitigate this is to understand somebody or just ask them, but that also requires time.  


Maybe I want to make others comfortable to make myself comfortable.  Maybe I have empathy because I have been in situations without friends and I don’t like seeing others suffer it.  Hard to say but an interesting question I got posed. 

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