11 - Failing to Be Easy With People

The friendliest, most like-able guy I knew rarely argued. This guy was one of the happiest guys I knew. When needed to, he could, with absolute constructive brilliance, but he picked his battles. By definition if you are arguing, you are assuming that the person you are arguing is a person of thought, and through reason he/she will be persuaded to reason or vice versa. He was truly what I would call an 'easy with the people' type.

He changed my life.

When I was between the ages of 12-16, I had some kind of incredible blind teenage confidence, bordering arrogance inside of me that I still have to this day. When I spoke, people listened, when I put forth my thoughts, ideas and opinions they were almost always respected. The issue I had at the time was that I felt like what I was saying was always respected, not because it was Haruun that was saying it, but what I said had substance. This sounds strange writing this down, but I think what I always wanted was to say what I wanted to or what I thought with out explaining myself. I really didn't like explaining myself. You can imagine what a complex this creates.

I think this came from growing up in a household where we argued a lot, in a good and bad way. Good in that my opinions and thoughts were rightfully able to be challenged constructively. Bad in that I grew up feeling that people had explain themselves to me. Like everything had to be proven or explained. You could see how annoying was for others.

The issues that this created looking back now were outstanding. There are so few people in my life now that don't need to explain anything to me. If they told me something I wouldn't question. I can count these people on one hand.

This made me an incredibly arrogant and truly un-trusting person.

The arrogance comes from feeling like your opinions are better than others. This is a special kind of arrogance. Some people attach personal value to an opinion and will defend it no matter what evidence you bring forward. This is common, especially amongst the proud and the young. This was never me. I valued truth, and 'right' when I was much younger, but later realized that there were very few things worth arguing and being right isn't important. This is what made me arrogant, feeling like I didn't need to argue, that I am comfortable with my opinions already and do not need to engage with people.

The dis-trust comes from rarely taking anything at face value. Some people might think this is a good thing, I did too, question everything kind of thing. The issue with this kind of thinking is that yes it is good to question things, but constantly questioning thing makes you an un-trusting person. Being an un-trusting person is a bad thing. Someone could tell me 'the math teacher said homework is due on Monday', and I would ask follow up like questions, like when did she say this? Who else knows this? You could imagine how uncomfortable this is for people dealing with you.

That friends approach to people taught me a lot. I rarely argue these days, it truly isn't worth it to be right all the time. Being friendly and easy with people is something that's important to me. I've seen what being easy with people does, the happiness and peace it brings.