Nov 28, 2022
Relationships are NOT easy.
Do you have friends, family, etc who stay around? Then STOP SAYING you have no talent.
Honestly. I’m sick of seeing people who envy “my skills” (by which they mean technical stuff I do well and get paid for) having low self-esteem.
Dear everyone who envy me, come’ere, real talk now: So, you want my musicality? My ability to talk to the dead? My uncanny “knack” for foraging stuff, modifying and fixing what’s broken? My foresight? (Well, maybe not foresight, it was gifted. Still. If I could I’d trade it too). Take it! Take it all, go ahead. If I could, I’d trade ALL THESE TALENTS for the privilege of having your own talent, which you don’t value: people skills. Maybe this will surprise you, but no, I’m not living this whimsical idealised life you think I have. I’m often miserable. Stop thinking I have it easier than you. There are prices I pay for having what I have, for goodness’ sake.
People skills aren’t quantifiable. You can’t organise them in neat boxes or automate them. You can’t devise a technical manual or a document that gets to the core of “relating to others”. That is because we’re using these skills with every word we utter, every step we take and every daily decision. Almost 24/7. It’s too intuitive, perhaps — so when you’re bad at it, you never know where to even start learning it; And those who are good at it, think they’re just normal, ah ya know, ordinary and boring. Nope. That’s not true.
I won’t be facile and simply blame Big Bad Capitalism for that — I mean, perhaps that’s true, but I feel there is something else behind it. I’d say it has more to do with a “lack of glamour”, so to speak. People skills aren’t glamourous. There isn’t, and there never was, any prize, any celebration, any homage to these skills. We celebrate creative geniuses, STEM geniuses, etc, but when it comes to people with a good knack for human relations… Whatever, those are common skills, who cares. We just sort of take them for granted and rely on them. We only take note of their existence when they DON’T work for us; Sort of like cleanliness: if a place is clean, nobody cares; if it’s dirty, everyone complains.
If there is any merit to my theory above, then I must say: people who relate easily to others are in desperate need of more appreciation. ASAP. I don’t care how, I don’t care when. All I know is this toxic attitude of taking them for granted needs to change.
I’m not even talking about handling narcissistic, psychotic, [insert mental problem here] people. Even average people are difficult to relate to. I’m not kidding, it’s no easy feat.
Our society doesn’t value interpersonal skills. So when your talent is THERE, you think you don’t have a talent. At the same time, though, we do care about these skills. We care without valuing, but we care indeed. Ohhhh, yes we do. Human beings are very quick to crucify beginners (aka children) or late bloomers (aka traumatised adults taking a new chance) who make mistakes socially. “How dare this person be impolite in this manner”, “How dare he/she/they be inconsiderate because [insert people skill not fully developed here]”. Well, I don’t know, why don’t you try… helping the person learn? Why assume it was on purpose just because it’s an adult you’re talking to? Why, of course, you assume that, when you’re already good at it; because you don’t value what you have as much as it should be valued. It’s not common. It’s not easy. It’s not an instinct any of us is born with. It’s a skill. Let’s admit it. Let’s demystify it.
That is not to say you should give anyone infinite chances; No, not at all. If someone proves to be sociopathic or worse, DO go no contact. But first you have to give a first chance. “Oh but I’m scared it will be painful” — whoooooa, weren’t you saying it was “so simple and so easy and clearly other people just aren’t making an effort” with you five minutes ago? NOW you see how difficult relationships are, aye? How risky, how scary, how vulnerable they can make you feel. Well, tough. That is what’s up. Take it or leave it, literally. “Easy” was an illusion.
I understand having trauma (I mean, lol, look at my own story), but there is a line between “preserving yourself” and “sabotaging yourself” (or worse: sabotaging a relationship WHILST BLAMING IT on the other person, whom you left in the dark about the existence of a problem at all until it snowballed with every other problem you didn’t communicate either). I hope you see it.
Perhaps it’s a good idea to stop expecting everyone to be equally good at maintaining their relationships, because it’s like expecting everyone to “just be” a Maths genius without ever having gone to school. I mean… come on. It CAN happen but it’s never the norm. It’s very special. It should be celebrated… Just like someone who intuitively has good people skills.
A person in Japan is being admired by some, ostracised by others… For trying to raise awareness about how much we devalue people skills.
There is this Japanese lad, Shoji Morimoto, who experimented with “getting paid for doing nothing” and actually discovered a “surprising” demand for his service.
I’m not sure he is even aware of why he found so many people interested in “paying him to do nothing” — judging by the interviews he’s given, probably not. I have a theory, though: he is not actually doing nothing. He is working hard. EXTREMELY hard. The thing is, his hard work isn’t getting recognised for what it is, because it involves an activity we don’t count as valid in today’s world. Namely, relationship maintenance.
Btw, a very necessary digression: Feel free to join the discussion in the comments, but please, PLEASE, I BEG YOU, try to resist feeding stereotypes about “Japanese culture” — It’s a wee bit racist. Try not to. You don’t actually live there, you don’t know if culture is TRULY the only thing at play in why people in Japan feel lonely enough to pay a guy for hanging out with them, but regardless, the assumption is a bit racist. Resist the urge, is all I ask you. The reason I said that is: there are lonely people in a lot of places worldwide, sometimes for the same socioeconomic reasons as Japan, sometimes not, but the result is pretty similar. Here in Ireland, I can name at least 50 people off the top of my head who end up drinking to forget loneliness and would happily pay for a similar service, but GUESS WHAT, they’re white. So nobody thinks of “culture” when assessing the problem. See what I mean? Apparently everyone who isn’t white is always “cultural” and exotifiable in a harmful way because it comes with the assumption the problem is not worth trying to solve, since “culture” is such a fixed thing that “doesn’t change or evolve easily”; almost as if it was their nature to be that way, as if they were a different species or something. Ugh. It gives me the creeps. Stop that nonsense. Anyway, back on topic:
Morimoto is probably one of these people whose natural talent revolves around relationships. I don’t know him, but allegedly the overwhelming majority of his customers gave good reviews, so that goes to show he’s good. I’d assume the work involves accompanying people on the surface, BUT DEEP DOWN it’s full of social pitfalls and prickly situations he has to graciously avoid. For instance, imagine someone revealing he has murdered a person, or done something equally taboo. Can he judge? When and how? Even if he won’t ever see the person again, what to do DURING the interaction? Can he sleep at night thinking back on how it went? I don’t envy his “easy” job. Neither should you. I’d envy the talent, though. But then again, we’re all different.
Some would say, “well but that service is nothing new. It’s what psychologists do” — except, no, it isn’t. In fact the 2 things are extremely different. A psychologist is someone you visit EXPECTING that professional help to make sense of how your mind works. Morimoto is offering something else entirely: a safe place where people DO NOT examine their issues on a deeper level; they simply externalise them, and hopefully feel lighter. But that doesn’t mean “never judging”, being passive or a doormat; he must be able to discern who is in bad faith, trying to put him in danger or something. Especially so, given how informal the process seems to be. Not easy.
Maybe it is a muscle? Aye, that’s possible. So what, though?
A lot of people argue that “natural talent isn’t a thing”, everything takes practice, yadda yadda. I have a love-hate relationship with that argument. I love it when it comes from a practical standpoint — say, a teacher trying to encourage a student who is ALREADY working to achieve a goal. However, I hate it when it comes from a deflecting standpoint — like when someone says it in order to resist opening their minds or feeling grateful for what they have. “Ah, natural talent isn’t a thing, sure what I do is nothing, you can do it too if you practice” (except we’re bypassing a whooooole load of variables here such as life story, presence/absence of trauma, personality traits, hopes and dreams, privilege, community support, natural inclination, peer pressure, etc etc etc — and then somewhere along the line comes “practice” too, but can you see 🌟 all else 🌟?).
So when I speak of natural talent, I’m not being a basic bitch, rest assured. I’ve researched my piece. You can’t dissuade me with some twee cliché about meritocracy. “Natural talent” in my vocabulary is just short for “the result of having been in this specific person’s shoes his/her/their entire life”, so, sure, it doesn’t go by the dictionary definition, but we aren’t being facile either. It rubs me the wrong way when I hear people closing their minds to this entire concept, because often times what they’re doing is trying to stay in the comfort zone; trying to avoid considering that different people have different stories, and you can never EVER be “as proficient as” someone else in whatever it is you’re pursuing because you simply aren’t that person. You are you. Your own proficiency will be different, coming from your own background. But in order to acknowledge that, you must let go of that cozy, samey-samey, comfortable urge to judge people at face value. And that takes work.
Maybe laziness is the thing I hate the most? The bane of my existence? It could as well be, I’m a Capricorn after all. But I digress.
So, whether you agree with my definition for “natural talent”, or you would still rather just focus on the practice that it takes… You still can’t deny that life is made of choices. Choices are made of tradeoffs. You do this, you miss out on that. You do that, you miss out on this. So it’s a bit pointless to take an idealistic stance and be like “I can become anything”. Hm, no. No, you can’t. Every choice you make in life will lead you to prioritise one thing over the other. Don’t take that for granted.
This is why, every time someone goes like “interpersonal skills aren’t a talent because anyone could have learned what I know, it just takes practice”, I feel like yelling back “but they didn’t though”. In the end of the day, what matters is “what is”; not the shoulds and coulds of life.
I don’t mean to imply that you should normalise people’s struggles with social skills — but maybe, just maybe, consider that they are ALREADY DOING all they can to improve. Some empathy goes a long way.
