Fruitless pursuit
August 1, 2024
Every time I pass a stranger, I wonder about the stories left unopened. The can of fruit drops or the can of worms: in that brief moment, I merely learn about their smile or their lack thereof; the way they walk, the way they talk; a flash of how they might be feeling in that moment. Even if we don’t talk, their body language serves enough as an elevator pitch. I don’t need much to be convinced that someone is interesting. Usually, I conclude that a new person seems nice, but an idea I was exposed to was that everyone can seem nice through first impressions because society conditions them to be that way.
Which leads to the question, “How much can you know about someone you walk by?” This idea is a little similar to the one in my previous post, but here, it’s more that we know so little about each other. How many people do we actually know? As in, how many people can we predict exactly how they’re going to react to a situation? Or maybe how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking about at a given moment? At least for me, I can’t say that I know many people on a deeper level, and perhaps this is normal. The process of knowing someone is like trying to pass a drug through the
To open up a case study, I introduce the neuroscience professor from camp. He’s a very interesting guy–as a starter, here are some of my favorite out of context quotes from him:
“Every time I feed my cats at night, I say to them in a loving voice, ‘I’m gonna kick you off the balcony’ and they just think that I’m awesome.”
”Fun fact: goats eat these mushrooms on purpose. It’s really funny when they pass out … I don’t know if they see like… goat God.”
”So the downfall of our society is from pop science, and some people really should not have podcast equipment … we can’t just start taking podcast equipment and start telling people to take ice baths.”
”The next time that someone says MSG is bad for you, you can tell them that they’re being influenced by racism.”
“Cause I’ve got a gene that makes me susceptible to in-grown toenails. That’s what 23 and me says. Should I go get CRISPR to remove that gene?”
“Smells like A sharp.”
”I could never touch that. That’s your body saying, ‘dumba—, that blueberry marshmallow vodka almost killed you.’”
”I have a colorblind friend, and every year on his birthday, I send him one of those cards with different colors that says ‘I hate colorblind people’ and he can’t read it.”
”That’s preventing you guys from your muscles falling apart and you guys turning into meat soup.”
“They really like bald people, like they really love bald people to get EEGs.”
“I love voles.”
“If anyone says that they don’t care about the biology, off with their kneecaps.”
“So you really like your skeleton, right? Imagine I came in and yanked out your bones. You would be soupy.”
Was this also an excuse to document some out of context quotes? Absolutely.
The point is, as many quotes as there are, it's extremely difficult to distill what kind of person he is, at least for the general reader. But for me, it's easy to fall into the benefit of the doubt and assume everyone has good intentions.
I addressed the idea of not completely vibing with a person even if you have a lot in common with them in a previous post. And in fact, I thought about how truly good people in the world might be scarce. In particular, a friend picked apart one of my friendships so hard that I started realizing that "Hmm, maybe the friendship—or whatever it is—isn't so healthy after all." It was especially funny when other friends started agreeing.
But then you went ahead and did what everyone said you’d do
Now I’m ashamed to call my friends how do I tell them the truth
...
Now I’m stuck in this position
Still searching steady tryna find another excuse
‘Cause I do not want to taint my perfect image of you
But it’s time that I stop running and I face all the proof
In Grave of the Fireflies (spoiler warning), resources become so scarce from the war that one of the main characters, Setsuko, sucks on marbles to trick herself into thinking that she still had Sakuma drops. The fact that I can hallucinate a friendship as easily as Setsuko hallucinates having fruit drops haunts me. How can I say that anything is real, if I can't even identify what is fake?
And so the scary part about trusting another person is that they could just become a stranger who holds your secrets in an instant. That's why people are so fascinating to me. Pessimistic old me would not agree with this at all—I would see myself as the stranger.
If I were to run into my past self in an elevator, what would I think? I don't know for now, but I do know that all the mistakes I made weren't a fruitless pursuit.
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