Tuesday, September 21
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I know your kid (in you)
[journal]If the past month has taught me anything, it's that I don't know people as well as I thought I did. In university I was so happy that I was able to pick my roommate. I picked one of my best high school friends who was also going to McMaster. By mid-year he had put thumbtacks through the pictures of my face on his bulletin board and said, not so quietly, a number of times that he would enjoy killing me. Cramped intimate quarters and sustained interaction seemed to be a catalyst for showing his true colors (I was a saint of course).
It seemed that way too these past few months when I spent time with friends and my brother's girlfriend. Suddenly, stranger politeness and social habituations were stripped and the ugly insides were shown. People acted like themselves; they were who they really were.
Seeing the kids in the classroom I feel privilege that I get to see the real them right away. You have all your personalities right there out in the open. I see selfish boys and girls, friendly boys and girls, suck-ups, sweet, funny, silly, eccentric, risk taking, and whatever other personality adjectives out there. Now as teachers we tell them which of their traits are good and bad, are right and wrong, are acceptable and unacceptable. Slowly we conform them to hide who they really are and everyone becomes this friendly, but fake, social model. This totally screws everyone over because by the time they are 20 they become masters of deception and closet half (the so called bad half) of who they are.
If I really want to know someone, I need to travel back in time and spend a day with them when they were a child. While it seems like Bob, Jill, Marie, and Luke are all nice people, it's more probably like only Bob is actually nice and the latter just learned to be nice.
You might wonder what the difference is, but I think the difference is significant. The difference is apparent when you share a room with someone, or go on vacation, or get married. You'll then see the difference between the actual and learned nice.
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