Walking in the Light

Inspired by the courage and honesty of one of my great friends, I’m going to write a post that’s very personal too. This is something that I consider to be one of my greatest personal challenges to overcome, one of my most grievous flaws.

I am an incredibly difficult judge of character. I am extraordinarily critical of everyone I meet. One of my most difficult challenges is to meet someone and accept that they have flaws, are human, and overcome it and like them anyway. Instead, I meet someone, find a flaw, and associate that flaw with that person. This one is irresponsible. That one’s too haughty and self-important. This one thinks he knows everything. That one is too immature. The list goes on and on. It’s not that I can’t see the good in people, it’s that I see the bad and that almost always outweighs the good to me. And I stamp these people with these judgments, and I dismiss them because of them. I think this is a defense mechanism from when I was younger – I had a lot of trouble making friends and finding people who enjoyed me and my company, and in response I looked for and found shortcomings in the people who rejected me. These situations were very frequent, and I think it became less responsive and more impulsive. I just do it now, with everyone.

I do it still with those by whom I feel rejected. I remember vividly one particular person from school, with whom I truly wanted to be friends. When this person rejected me, I turned around and was immediately able to identify and target his shortcomings, and I used those to villainize (spell check tells me this is not right, but I can’t find the right spelling for it) him to myself and, I’m ashamed to say, to others as well. I know how hypocritical this is, as I am sure that I carry a distinguished number of flaws myself (though I say truthfully but with shame that I am mostly unable to see them).

Rarely, I meet people for whom I can either find no flaws or are willing to overlook the flaws. These people I consider my friends. But they actually have it worse than anyone else.

With few exceptions, I hold my friends to impossibly high standards. To clarify, this means that I hold expect them to “perform” as friends at a level that is actually impossible for a rational human being. I wish this were a joke, but it’s not. I expect them to be there for me, always, with a near superhuman capacity, ready at any moment to answer the phone or respond to a text should a situation arise in which I need a friend. I expect them to keep plans regardless of any new development, however pressing that development is. I expect them to put me first, which is the worst of it. It’s absurd, I know, and when I stop to think of it, I realize my expectations are irrational. Venomously, though, I become impulsively upset at the slightest breech of my friendship code, and while I quickly identify that this irrationality has occurred and work to assuage my emotions, it bothers me to no end that this happens. I’ll be the first to admit that there are certain undefined guidelines that good friends should follow, but those guidelines are broad and reasonable, unlike my imaginary Robert’s Rules of Order for Friendship.

The good news is that these hurt feelings almost never linger for more than like an hour at the most before I realize I’m being a huge idiot. Most of the time I can just work through it and forget about it and no one is any the wiser. Occasionally I am a TREMENDOUS idiot and blow up about it to the person before I realize how wrong I am, and by then I’m afraid I’ve already wounded a perfectly good friendship.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’m really working to overcome it. I say the words “I don’t really like (insert random acquaintance’s name here)” WAY too much of the time, and I spend too much of my time being angry at the people I care about, too.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a friend and you’ve been the brunt of this before. If so, I’m very sorry. Please accept my apology. And know that I’m working on making sure we can have a smooth, drama free friendship. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of prayer, but I’m on my way.

Stay strong, guys.

Kori