Personalities and Stuff (Not Sports Related, if you were wondering)

Do we change? Yeah, probably.

It's easy for me to start out with something lame (and moronic) like "Do we change?" but hey, it's trite for a reason: it works to introduce the subject (and also to lame-enize the author).

I was hanging out with Philippi, Keith, Jon, and Elizabeth today and I was thinking about how people act and how they operate in given situations. My mind was focusing on changes over the years. Philippi and Jon drew most of the attention because I've known them much longer than the other two (though I'm confident I could write the thesis to Keith's psychology).

Philippi does certain things in certain contexts with regularity, a consistency you don't normally see. I don't want to editorialize as to whether this consistency is good or bad - I don't much care - but I do want to say that not only is he consistent from situation to situation, he's consistent over the months and years. I could give specific examples, but be satisfied with first-hand evidence from a guy who watches shit like this on an all-too-regular basis. Besides, offering specific examples may or may not offend Philippi; that wouldn't be cool. I only offend people to make them and others laugh, not to hurt them (unless I'm mad or whatever; then I can be a bitch: a group of my friends took an informal vote a while back and it was unanimously determined, much too quickly for me to feel at all comfortable about it, that I was the most able to rip someone apart using words. Apparently I've a gifted a tongue for doling out verbal lacerations and psychological beatdowns.).

Jon is also rather consistent, but only after he made a particular change years ago. This one I'll talk about because a) I don't think it will offend him (it is, to my mind, a positive change) and b) I don't much care (love ya bro). Jon used to be rather shy (alright, really shy). He was insecure about his weight and used to get in a trouble a lot with teachers and other kids and stuff. Nothing severe, but he would talk back a lot, and he was very hurt when insults were thrown his way. In fact, and this is awesome, he once told a rather verbally abusive P.E. teacher in the sixth grade to "fuck off." Beautiful. That was good for a solid two days of suspension, I think (our Dad was excited pissed).

This continued into high school where he played in the marching band (for all four years). Now, band, especially high school marching band, is a place where people can develop their psyches without being embarrassed. People can become lesbians, escape the jock life, and embrace the geek life, all within the confines of marching band and without fear. Everyone is screwed up, no one feels comfortable about who they are, and so change is easy and natural (and expected).

This is the turning point for Jon. He's musically talented and so he didn't feel insecure about playing his, or any, instruments. Also, he was free from the fat jokes that murdered his previous adolescence. This allowed Jon to develop and nurture one of his singular, and powerful, talents: charisma, filthy, absurd, ridiculously powerful charisma. Jon can become friends with anyone, anywhere, anytime. People trust him much quicker than they would trust, say, me. I come off as technical, potentially pretentious, and reserved, whereas people see Jon as fun-loving, crazy, slightly unpredictable (but in a good, I'm-in-love-with-James-Dean-way), and extremely affable. People like him, immediately. People have to make up their mind about me. I have to work harder to gain the affections and trust of others, and it's usually a subserviant trust, one in which they respect me for ability and then begin to trust me. My friendships take years to develop; Jon's incubate overnight.

So here's Jon, large and in charge, no longer insecure about being overweight (or anything, really), and he's got this ability to transcend all cliks and be seen as affable and likeable by everyone. The change from Freshman to Sophomore year is, literally, shocking. The photos prove it, too: the Freshman picture, Jon is bald, wearing a basketball jersey, wearing a slightly demure, unsure smile; in the Sophomore picture, he's wearing a totally out of style Hawaiin dress shirt, and he's adorned with both crazy wild man hair (both head and facial) and a carrraaazzy Jon-smile for which he will be eternally known. Jon, in other words, finally came into his own, and lucky for him it was at the beginning of high school.

So Jon made this change and he's clearly different because of it. Philippi is mostly the same, and that's fine, too (his changes, I think [and I could be wrong], were really about adapting his current abilities to new situations, whereas Jon developed new abilities). He's as well off as Jon is in life, he just took a different route. And this is what I find interesting: that people come into their own lives at different times, in different ways. It makes sense intuitively but it's fascinating to see it "in action." Two people who've developed over the years in different ways, right next to me.

Of course, I'm not really sure what I've done to change, if at all. I think my own significant change, if there has been one, was a recognition that natural talent wasn't going to get me to the places I wanted to go, a rationalization that came to fruition a few years ago, six months or so after high school. It's funny what community college can do to you, as long as you don't let it crush your soul.

I think I'm still the same guy when dealing with relationships, but I think the external effects are different because I've changed atmospheres. In high school, it was easy to make friends; there were a lot of people looking for someone who was stronger than they were (I don't mean that condescendingly), and I attracted some. Weaker personalities are drawn to stronger ones. Sadly, these sorts of relationships don't last very long, because they're predicated on very little intimate material. The ones that have lasted (the count is low) are due to many long hours spent trying to figure them out. Real work had to be put in to sustain some of them; others were left to die a slow death.

Outside of high school, most people have usually found a stronger personality, or are more sure of themselves and are thus not in the market for one. The demand, then, is smaller, hence my inability to gain traction in new people's lives (there are exceptions, of course: Peter and Brian spring to mind). And so the pool of people I've come to know as "friends" has shrunk from its huge high school and immediate post-high school number to a much smaller one.

Is this bad? Eh, I don't know. While there's a certain pride and power you get from being able to summon eight people, minimum, on any weekend night, and some weekday nights, to go for dinner and a movie (and fifteen, minimum, for planned parties), it eventually becomes a strain trying to sustain every relationship to a point that's satisfactory to both parties. Friends have been "let go," so to speak, meaning we haven't spoken in sometime, if for no other reason than that we each got busy. It's sad to think that I may have wittled down my friend list in the same manner one would pick baseball teams at the park; it's a sad reality that I cannot sustain twenty relationships at a level of intimacy past acquintance. Maybe others can, but I find it perplexing, difficult, and frustrating. "If there's little pleasure involved, then why am I doing it?" is the usual rationalization.

I sometimes think it's strange to analyze interpersonal relationships with as much detachment as I do. This a probably the reason I was not able to sustain those twenty relationships.