Watching other people drink.

I haven't had a drink in so long that I forgot that other people get drunk as the night progresses and even have to wonder what the fuck was going on with the outburst of closely held emotion at certain moments (always vague and agreeable though they are) conveyed to me spontaneously. The older I get the easier it is to see the world outside of my own ego.  So long as there could  be value added to my existence from knowing someone, it is worth it.  Avoiding them because they might think that George Bush or Barack Obama was/is the best President seems pointless and highly arbitrary.  I'll admit that my ego is stoked when competition for information arises, or when there's a pressing ambiguity (maybe these are one and the same), and particularly when there's an audience present.  In fact, as I realized last night (we had a few people over), audience changes dynamics dramatically, and not just in a way that makes the host stay busy with dishes and food.  To wit, the presence of an audience changes how two people will interact with one another.  It keeps intimate conversation at bay, I think.  And I mean intimate in tone, not substance.  But I don't mean artifical intimate.  "I'd like tea" could be said in an intimate (and friendly) tone, whereas "I totally agree with you about your stance" (whatever the stance) could be said in a way that is artificially intimate.  My point is only that audience slows people up, it chokes back what could be normal discourse otherwise, and it does that over and above actual explicit disruption (though there was plenty of that too).


Having written this, it occurs to me that it might seem like the product of someone whose ego still reigns supreme, i.e. someone who is driven by visible conformity, but I'll just have to assure you it isn't true for the time being.  So to be more specific I'll say that some people simply want more attention than others, and will go out and say shit louder and more forcefully to command it.  And that pisses me off a little bit.  There's nothing I could do about it, short of apologizing for one guest to the guest I'm trying to have a conversation with, and as I write this, I realize that I haven't been righteously pissed on if a while (it generally isn't really worth it).

And here's the lack of ego. I'm not pissed off when I recognize that someone needs to have the spotlight of an audience to feel happy.  Generally I may even oblige.  Instead, I know that s/he has to face harder truths than I could provide with my attendance.  I'm willing to fight not when I'm pissed but when I recognize that such a person could be much happier with themselves if they could someone drop this tick.  Overall, though, it isn't really my place to go around trying to make everyone I think can be happier, actually happier.  I know there's a lot I don't know, and that the unknowns may weigh heavily on the observed trait and the trait's intransigence.

Look, we all have a lot of principles to stand up for and ideals to get pissed about.  And we have a lot of potential to actualize and dreams to live.  Life's about trade offs and possibilities, though, and hopes and dreams can, unfortunately, actually grow up to keep us closed off from one another.