The Struggles of Being a Private Person

Privacy, the long held notion that your business is not everyone’s business. Apparently a long forgotten and ancient notion. If you’re not posting 1,000 pictures on Facebook, or Instagram, of your kids, you clearly don’t love them enough? Are you giving yourself a breast exam, better share it with the world.

Obviously not everyone believes this, a percentage of people are not on Facebook. But those that do are very loud and obnoxious about it. There are some things they just don’t understand.

You’re not Being “Shy”

Believe it or not, not everyone wants attention on them all the time. Does every St. Jude’s child wants to be in the St. Jude’s commercial? No, their hair looks…or the parents. Has bringing attention to someone or something always solved every problem? No, it can make them worse.

Humility is a virtue. Knowing that the entire world doesn’t need to know you repainted your nails is a sign of most every type of intelligence. Some things don’t matter as much as people think they do.

Or they do, and getting 1,000 likes won’t fix a damn thing. Some things are better left alone, unnoticed, or resolved privately and proactively, non-superficially.

Alone Time

Being hounded and surrounded by people is tiring. They could have the best intentions, but those intentions need to know that you will be back in a millennium. Thank you for your mortality.

There can be too many cooks in the kitchen. It doesn’t take an army to solve every problem or issue. There is such a thing as too much “helping”, love can be too thick.

Seriously, do you have any idea how many people figure things out, or get great new ideas while in the shower, or going to the bathroom? Alone? All it takes is one person, one idea. One 5 minute-1,000 year period of quiet contemplation.

People

People are people, they think their shit is hot when really it’s clogging a toilet at the North Pole. People can be unreliable and give you good reason to have no confidence in them whatsoever.

Have you ever told someone something in private, confidence? And then it suddenly wasn’t so private or confidential? Or trusted someone with a secret, or problem you were having, then have them use it against you Game of Thrones style?

It has happened to everybody, and it sucks. Which is why some people are quieter, mysterious, closed off. Trust is earned, and lost with great rapacity.

Your Personality

Not everyone is an open book, either culturally or personally. They can be prone to being loners with independent streaks, who don’t need a squad. Or have different boundaries and definitions of “Openness”.

Would you tell a stranger you just meant your dead grandma’s social security number? No, you shouldn’t even know her social security number. If you warmed up to everyone you met immediately the entire world would be on fire and you would be far from the king or queen of Friendship.

Everyone is different, and relationships take different lengths of time to develop with them.

Some Things are Meant to be Private

How many people need to know that you’re pregnant? If you have hands, get out one, extend your, that many. Not the entire internet. There are things that the entire world just doesn’t need to know about.

As mentioned earlier, not everything requires an announcement. There are also things that under any circumstance, don’t require any kind of announcement at all. For example, the video of the guy on the plane who found out his wife was pregnant-over the speaker on the plane, along with everyone else.

When he wasn’t excited about it enough and looked self-conscious and awkward, he was chided for being shy and not loving his unborn child enough, not being ecstatic. Not everyone wants to find out life-changing news pertaining to them, along with total strangers who couldn’t care less. Or would just bother them.

A small audience is fine for some news. In fact, it’s expected is respectful, how did the grandparents feel in that situation? Probably slightly insulted, or the wife’s doctor? It was really early, and not that safe, to announce her pregnancy, she had just found out.

It is literally, and figuratively, stupid, disrespectful even, to announce things to the world sometimes.

Vagueness does not equal unfriendliness, mysteriousness does not equal shyness, quietness does not equal cold. But that attitude equals being obnoxiously presumptuous. And a greatly misplaced sense of entitlement to information that isn’t yours.

Private people aren’t cold and unworthy of your friendship, or love. That just has to be earned, merited- it takes time. And there is only so much time, so if you want to get out there and make friends, choose and invest your time wisely. And also, don’t be a dick.