Week 5/6/7…8 — Being an individualist is my lazy excuse

I have always found communication hard. I find it hard to understand others’ motivations and read what people really mean. I also find it hard to explain to other people my decisions and what I think. So I try my best to avoid it most of the time and just go ahead and do my own thing.

Until at the group meeting, I wanted to get dinner for everyone because that is how things work — if there is an event, there needs to be food. So I had in my head a process, I ask Arya and Abdi what they want to have, we decide on one thing, I go get it then we have dinner happily together. Thinking about it now, I do realise it was more important for me that everything goes as the process than what I have for dinner or if I have dinner or not. And that was silly. Of course it didn’t go as I planned. They said something but I couldn’t work out if they mean they were not hungry or they are happy with anything or they are being nice and didn’t want me to go through all the trouble to get food. I insisted my plan and got some microwavable food in the end so we could all go home and have it whenever we like and the way we like. But no one seemed happy. I was frustrated because I just couldn’t understand why it was so hard to do a such a simple thing, why we were all trying to be nice and yet it was so complicated. My intuition was to give up.

Then it hit me all of a sudden, isn’t this my pattern of communication every time? I couldn’t agree with my parents, I didn’t like my grandma’s picture of a good life, instead of communicating, I moved away. When things didn’t go how I liked with a friend, instead of communicating, I withdrew.

I would like to blame the increasingly popular individualist values for it. It is all about me, everything I do is for no one but myself, what other people think of me does not matter. A standard story today emphasises on me. I did … eventually I found peace with my body; I did… this is my choice; My … is not your business. I liked how it sounded, I declared myself an individualist. It was liberating at first. There is no grandma behind me anymore always criticising no matter what I do. But I missed out the other side of it. It is lonely to be me. Leaving the grandma behind also means leaving all the care and love she gives. And care and love is to stay in the conversation, no matter how messy it is. Only then we can start seeing things from the other side and meet each other at Betty’s burgers and have the classic plant together.

Communication is hard but I will try.