jason john bartholomew

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Feb 23, 2017 · 4 min read

There are interactions that matter and interactions that don’t, and sadly, you don’t seem to have a clue which is which. This is why you inflate the trivial, allowing it way more energy and power than it could ever possibly rationally deserve, while abandoning the significant at the very first challenge. No offence, but you’re a bit of an idiot. At the very least, you are woefully self-defeating.

Anytime you let what you consider to be another’s rude behaviour occupy more than 60 seconds of your time, you lose. But this is not how you currently respond. Instead, you show your own ass, go on multiple tirades, walk blocks in a rage, and then get home and write a self-righteous Facebook rant where you mistakenly think you are schooling the world on your high standards. That is not at all what you are doing. What you are illustrating is that you let common social hiccups with strangers out in the negotiated civic space direct your emotional experience instead of doing what cool-as-fuck, self-possessed adults do: shrug it off. You are also illustrating you know nothing about other people, the civic space, your own confirmation biases or how your own stomp through the world is entitled, hypocritical, and dogmatic. And here I bet you thought you were the good guy. But no. When you let insignificant encounters with people you don’t know and will never see again hijack your day by becoming big, over-blown dramas you think illustrate some critical and insightful state of society, all while you tremble with emotion, you are only proving you’re a dumbass who doesn’t know what matters and what doesn’t.

This is say nothing of the sheer mind-blowing amount of projection you must bring to bear on these encounters in order for them to have any personal meaning beyond something simple like “woman bumps another with purse on bus and doesn’t apologise.” Instead, you spend the next two hours fuelling an inner skull rant about how this indicates some sort of -ism prejudice against you and that people are entitled bitches these days and have in general lost their common decency. Except dear little you, god bless. And so on and so forth. It never crosses your mind that maybe she wasn’t even aware she bumped you, or that she did say “sorry” but she has social anxiety and it came out a whisper, or that your dumb ass was sprawled a little into the aisle with the gangsta spread, or that it was a crowded rush hour bus and these things happen, so suck it Buttercup.

Then the rest of us have to hear about it. And about how you schooled her by sucking your teeth real exasperated like. And now aren’t we all so glad you’re out there policing society and reporting on it’s demise from the trenches, so to speak, as you do your little part to make the world more god damn hospital.

Guess what? I don’t give a fuck. I think you’re a pathetic sap who is a bit of a loser and I don’t want to live in your hostile “perfected” world. Because all I see is some self -righteous asshole projecting her world view in the form of expectations all over everybody she meets without even the vaguest clue that there are seven and half billion other world views out there, and when did we all together and decide your way to negotiate the dance of the civic space was going to be the only acceptable way? You don’t sound enlightened to me. You sound like a child and kind of needy, but far worse, like someone with a warped sense of perspective who lets brief encounters with strangers write their emotional narrative. At the same time, I’ve got fifty bucks that says at the first real conflict or spat with someone who has the potential to be a real friend in the long term, you cut ties and bail and never look back. See? You’re upside down.

So here’s a tip to right yourself. I call it the New York minute because I learned it from living in the Big Apple for 18 years. It goes like this: You are going to inevitably have encounters out in the world where people aren’t behaving as you think they ought. If the error is an egregious and obvious violation of protocol, like breaking in line or fondling your tits on the bus, if you don’t deal with it right in the moment, you don’t get to deal. “Hey Asshole! What? You don’t see us waiting in line over here? WTF?” And/or “If you don’t get your fucking hands off my tits, you’re about to go meet Jesus.” Obviously, your encounters may vary.

You then you get exactly 60 seconds to walk it off and out of your day. That’s exactly 60 seconds to completely forget that idiot and to return to your own emotional space that isn’t authored by strangers on buses, or wherever, who, more likely than not, are just trying to get through their day as well (or to cope a feel) and are dealing with their own inner skull noise that doesn’t have jack shit to do with you. 60 seconds to forget. Sixty seconds to breath and exhale and get back to where you were before the encounter. And remember, nobody really owes you shit. Well, at least not strangers.

So now you too can be a cool-as-shit, self-possessed adult like the rest of us.