Daily Reflections

10/22-23/2022

What’s Your Story

“People want two things. They want to be liked and they want to be right.”

--Scott Rockman—

I’ve heard my dad say this for the better part of my life. And I believe it. I don’t believe it in the way one comes to believe things because of repetition, like “broasting” is not an actual cooking method (‘Broaster’ is a brand name for a pressure fryer. The Pepsi to it’s coca cola is called “henny penny” so one can see why for efficiency’s sake, the former made the vernacular). No, I believe it because one of the first times I heard this was when I was getting over my social anxiety to be a better bartender.

He told me that these are the two things because he was looking to help me past the jitters. If you understand that people want these two things, then you need only offer one or the other or both. In doing so, you make it about them and then the spotlight is not on you. You don’t remember how to make a Rob Roy with a twist? Ask the guy who asked you for one. Assuming no one is that impatient, they will be more than happy to tell you how they think it should be made. (Its 3 to 2 Scotch over vermouth and a dash of bitters by the way, and yes somebody on the other side of the bar rail told me how.)

In the absence of an opportunity to give someone a chance to be right, one always has the opportunity to show them that they are liked. Doing so is fairly straightforward. Ask them stuff. This was the very advice I gave my daughter when she was beginning to do longer and longer tattoos. In such an endeavor, one is forced to share close space with the customer for an extended period of time. However, the customer cannot be right past the point of what the tattoo is, where it goes and how big they want it, all of which is established before the session. What to do with the remaining few hours?

So, from my experiences, the truth of this statement is reflected in its practicality. It is true, in so far as it works as a perspective from which one can deflect their anxiety and get along in the world. Or so I’ve told myself. And it did work as that tool. But anyone who has found alternate use for a tool exhibits a higher order of understanding the general principle of that tool. So how amorphous could this tool be?

The first exploration is, of the two things people want, which is primary. I used to think it was wanting to be liked. The spattering of self-positive reinforcement on the internet are really just the seedlings from the branches of humanist psychology that brought us self-actualization, Mr. Rodgers and the scores of school assemblies in the nineties aimed at teaching us to love ourselves seems ample, if not anecdotal, evidence for this. I suppose that makes all the pyramid scheme cults the emerald ash borer of that tree, but I digress.

The point is, we were taught to like ourselves so that we might always be liked, thereby satisfying the first need. Learning that this is enough is a big step. But deep down, we kinda have to at least accept ourselves, since we are stuck with us. Not liking our Selves only ever ends up one way. Out. As such, I am not diminishing its importance, nor am I suggesting that such a comparison is necessary. I am trying to determine which “want” has the larger drive.

Being right, then? Could that be more powerful? I mean if you had to pick one. Or, if you could only give the customer one or the other, which would they prefer? Deep down in the darker recesses of the cave, where the ego hides, which of the two do we really want? Could it be to be right? I am beginning to think so. Especially if one sees it as being right, not righteous, though it is hard to differentiate these days. Being right is to be correct, not good or bad. Being righteous is being right and good and liking it. A dangerous form of affirmation in my opinion and wholly worthy of another discussion

For now, it is enough to acknowledge that everyone needs to be right. To feel right. How do we even begin to like ourselves, if we don’t think we are right about our own perspectives. This is where it gets tricky. Being liked only applies to the positive aspects of our existence. Yet these bodies of clay are not comprised solely of the water that gives them life, nor the air they hold, but also the earth that offers form and the fire that fixes their shape. Likewise, we must consider all the aspects of our existence. What of the negative aspects of life? All the factors that make up our perspectives and beliefs. There is no story without conflict and no resolution without reconciling that conflict. That is the real guts of the story; how we go about that reconciliation, and in that, we must feel we are right.

If we sense that we are not, we are compelled to find a new explanation. Suppose we have suffered great abuses in our years here. Would it not be a fair observation of the world that it makes us suffer? Hell, the buddha only saw three examples of suffering in his otherwise idyllic life before deciding that all life is suffering. Talk about a born empath. And was he right? Perhaps. But what is more important is that an entire belief system, itself being the macrocosm of his path to nirvana is predicated on the belief that he is.

On the other side of that proverbial coin, let’s consider someone like Hitler. The atrocities he not only perpetrated but enlisted the subordination of an entire culture to aid in, all rely on the principles of hatred and racism being correct. Just as ancient tribes painted monsters on the insides of their shields to remind them that those they march against are evil, so too did the picture the Reich painted of the Jews need to be reinforced to establish its rightness.

Therein lies the power in rightness. For what we will do, how far we will go in service of convincing ourselves that we are right will always outpace how far we go to be liked. No doubt we do so much to be liked. Irrationally and vigorously. But the staggering levels of both virtue and violence we can reach in pursuit of what we need to be right can almost be too extreme to be called human. So much so we often need larger external forces, like deities to reach for them.

If this is the case, that our need to be right eclipses our need to be liked, then the story we tell ourselves about who we are, what we are, how the world is and how we ought respond is the most important tale in our lives. One of epic scope (as far as we can see) and in constant need of revision and, Ideally, never published as we are our own editors. So, what are we telling ourselves? What are we doing to prove that we are right about it? How far are we going to chase down that proof and, ultimately, what do we seek to do with that surety?