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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