Please allow me to wax philosophical tonight. I've had a bit of an insight, and I want to write it down before I forget it.
I have made a few lifestyle choices which deviate from the norm. Nothing on the order of joining a cult or adopting fifteen cats, just not things that the American majority usually does. The example we'll use here is my lack of a TV, although I bet almost every person reading could find an example from their own life.
When, in the course of conversation, my decision not to have a television comes up, it's usually met with one of three responses: (1) I could never do that! (2) Why would you do that? (This one conveying something less than genuine curiosity. Or (3) I knew someone who did that for a while, but then she stopped (and you will, as well). This usually makes me feel that my conversation partner (1) disapproves of my decision, (2) hopes to show me why my decision is foolish, or (3) is sure that they know me better than myself.
Generally I leave these conversations annoyed and defensive. But tonight I was reading an essay which made me realize that most of these conversations are not about me. (If I were wiser, I would realize that most of life is not about me.) I think when people are exposed to an atypical choice, they use it to measure their own choices. And I do this too, a lot more often that I'd like to admit. "That's not why I chose - could I have chosen incorrectly? No, I couldn't have. So let's figure out what's wrong about his decision." I don't want to denigrate people; cognitive science research shows us that our brains are wired to become happy with the decisions that we make. So, these people don't mean to make me feel bad. They're often just reassuring themselves that they made the right choice. It's hard for them, and me, to remember that the right lifestyle choice is defined by the individual situation.
12 comments:
I think sometimes those decisions make people feel bad about themselves. Like, should I not have a tv? Should I get rid of mine? Am I a bad person for enjoying tv shows? You know... I sometimes feel this way when someone tells me they are vegetarian (which I think you are) or vegan. I get defensive... and my knee jerk reaction is, "Well, I love meat." When really I am thinking, "Do they think I'm a horrible carnivore because I refuse to give up the eating of meat?"
You are right; it does cause people to reflect inward on themselves...
The only lifestyle choice I can think of is that I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart or eat at Cracker Barrel as I'm protesting their bad business practices and how I treat employees. This has sometimes caused huge issues when going out with other people, believe it or not, because I absolutely refuse to renig on either of these under any circumstances. And I get a lot of these people getting just as defensive with me... So I try not to react so bad when other people explain their own lifestyle choices. It's not about me. ;)
oops. I mean "...how THEY treat employees..."
wait, but how do you watch star trek then? (sorry for not being more philosophical, that does make a lot of sense what you said)
An alternate, though by no means mutually exclusive interpretation:
Explaining away discrepant data is one of us humans' specialties...we are meaning-makers and story tellers, and we constantly incorporate things explanatorily in ways that keep us the hero of our own stories.
A in A - a computer, which plays our Star Trek DVDs.
I'm inclined to agree with Mars Girl on this. i know people who are vegetarian and i know people who don't have tvs and I have been that person at one time or another. i think it's typical too, for people to make the assumption that because you made a certain choice- you must look down on people who made a different choice. That people who choose to be vegetarian or not to have tv's have a "holier-than-thou" attitude about it. So by denigrating your decision they are beating you to the punch.
Too philosophical for a guy on vacation and having just finished a half a bottle of wine :(
I empathize, as a fellow non-TV owner myself. There is one other comment I get a lot, which is: Oh, but you can now watch all of this on the internet too! It goes along with your summary of the comments that pity the non-TV owner. Without the TV, we were missing out on a lot and now we have an opportunity to join with our more fortunate brethren.
I empathize, as a fellow non-TV owner myself. There is one other comment I get a lot, which is: Oh, but you can now watch all of this on the internet too! It goes along with your summary of the comments that pity the non-TV owner. Without the TV, we were missing out on a lot and now we have an opportunity to join with our more fortunate brethren.
Why is it such a difficult thing to really accept other people's choices, beliefs, etc when it is different than mine? For me it is a lifelong challenge. Hopefully I have made some progress. Great blog and comments.
I get this not only as a non-TV household but also as a small business person. Often when a person finds out about my line of bags and store, they jump in with suggestions of what THEY would do. It wasn't until The Mister pointed out that it's more about the other person than it is about me and my business that I was able to shrug it off.
True- comments made to you in a conversation may not necessarily be about you. However, I think that it's important to remember that your attitude about your lifestyle choice, and how you react to a conversation about your lifestyle choice, is definitely about you. Shawn and I recently had to make an important decision, and we ended up picking the atypical lifestyle choice. It's interesting that although the decision was shared, we each took a different approach on how we discussed the matter with others. My behavior was more defensive, and I felt like we were being judged by everyone we told. I suppose that I could have tried to resolve my feelings about the matter with the idea that my conversation partner's disapproving comments were not about me. But when it comes down to it, I was defensive about our decision whether or not anyone made disapproving comments. Shawn handled the situation better, I think. He didn't perceive comments as negative, but instead viewed the conversation as an opportunity to educate the other person on the reasons why we made the atypical choice.
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