I had an odd moment of serendipity that I want to tell you about. I’d been speaking to a friend who worried whether they were “really” nice or whether they were just the people-pleasing type. I’ve had conversations like this before and the thought always baffles me.
Lots of people believe in the “real” them, the one that exists only in their minds. I am not one of them. For me, we don’t transcend our actions and our decisions in any meaningful way. I mean, sometimes there are accidents. If you push someone in anger, say, and it also happens to move them out of the way of a falling piano, I guess it’s hard to say whether you did something good or bad. It is hard to set aside intent, but I want to take a step back from intent and talk about disposition. I also want to talk about The Animals.
Not long after my conversation about the “real” us, I heard Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. I have a pretty complicated relationship with that song because I’ve listened to it since I was a child. I knew and know all the words, but sometime in my 20s I started connecting the lyrics with real life.
It occurred to me that this was a guy singing to his girlfriend whom he had just beaten, or at least was habitually vicious toward. Eric Burdon’s bluesy voice and the mood swings the song describes also suggest maybe drinking is involved.
The speaker details how being in the world makes him angry and that he doesn’t “mean to take it out on you.” It’s a litany of apologies for misdirecting his impotence and anger punctuated by the chorus:
“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh, Lord please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
It was absolutely bonkers to realize how much a person who worries they’re not being nice for the right reasons has in common with an abusive dude who knows he’s being mean for the wrong reasons.
That’s what made me think we should spend more time thinking about disposition than intent. Wanting to be a good partner, even suffering over how to do it in your head, doesn’t excuse abuse.
At some point, you’re not misunderstood by anyone but yourself. Unfortunately, the same holds true if you believe you’re not a nice person but wander around being nice.
It makes me wonder whether we’re just good at hiding our gut reactions from ourselves or if we’ve just perfected ignoring them.
I can be a hothead. My gut reaction is to lash out when I’m angry. It’s my disposition, but it also isn’t who I want to be. If I don’t “really” want to be a hothead, though, I’ve got to check the way I respond. I’m getting better and better at going silent when I’m angry and taking a minute to soften my response.
Almost every time I’m mean it is on purpose now, but it is much harder to make the choice to be mean than it is to just blow my top and start apologizing. Your internal disposition is irrelevant. Once you start acting in the world you only have an external disposition.
The thing is, in the end we are 95% action and 5% intention. Our dispositions will always come through and if we don’t like that fact we have to change our dispositions rather than explain them away as “not the real me.”
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Personal Updates
I’m bored by the scorched-earth approach in political discussion, as I mentioned last week. In this week’s non-Delmar story on Medium I tried to elaborate. There’s this weird all-or-nothing approach that seems to be seeping into what used to be Progressive conversations.
I worry that abandoning the center in hope of total victory is a lose-lose situation.
I asked what I thought was a simple, innocuous question on Facebook this week (completely forgetting what Facebook was like) and it devolved into a shouting match. The question was for a story I’m working on and hopefully I’ll be able to tell you more about it soon.
I did discuss it on this week’s Day Drinking on Delmarva podcast, if you want to take a listen.