Run around screaming. It's theraputic.

I feel like shit. And not through any fault of my own. I just got scolded / yelled at by a client of the firm next door.
It’s rather a complicated situation but the lawyer who rents the office next door hasn’t been in for about 2 months and seeing as his secretary and the usual secretary for this firm I’m working for are both on maternity leave, I have to take all the calls for both firms. That shouldn’t be too bad really. The callers to this firm are ok. A little nuts and sometimes annoying, but normally placid. The callers for the lawyer next door are a little more aggro and pissed off. But that’s generally speaking. I think it’s more to do with the compound fact that he’s never in when they come looking for him.

The torrents of rage pouring from the telephone speaker seem harmless enough but I’m not the best at fielding angry and sad. I’m severely empathetic so it hits me harder than most people.

Empathetic


Verb
Sharing someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation
ORIGIN: Greek empatheia, from pathos ‘feeling’.

It’s a gift. Or a curse. It’s really both. Depends on whom I’m with. Like if I’m with a happy person, then I generally feel happy. Although that’s usually the case anyway. A better example is when I’m talking to someone on the phone and even if I don’t know him or her that well I can tell if something is wrong. It’s only usually a sense of something’s off but if they were happy I probably wouldn’t have to figure that out. It proved quite useful during those dramatic high school years. I avoided quite a few minor fights thru that. I could tell when people were going to cry and I could avoid those people who seemed a little pms-y.

People will say that everyone can sense what people are like if they know how to analyse faces and tones and body language and all that but I’ve never read any books or considered posture or things like that. I can tell even if I can’t see their face or see them. It’s a sense of darkness or light. You feel it from within and there is n o reason for you to feel that way. Of course, you have to be open and receptive to emotions. What I mean is that you can’t be overwhelmed by your own feelings in order to empathise with other people. If you are deliriously happy or depressingly sad the reception on you empathy antenna is fuzzy and you don’t feel other people as much. However, there are times when I am really sad or happy and other people pass by and I feel like a tingle inside and the feelings are mixed up. It’s quite hard to explain. It emanates from the same place where you feel love and sadness – I take that example because I assume everyone’s felt intense love or longing (not lust. That’s a whole different place!) at least once before. Whether it’s for a new puppy or a dying relative. It’s just glows or hurts from inside.

I don’t claim to have ESP or detract from true psychic powers – I sort of believe in that – but it’s just a really strange connection I have with people. The weird thing is that most people – most people I know – like people watching. You know, where you sit in a café or by a window and watch people go by. You analyse them and wonder what they are thinking and so on. I don’t particularly like people-watching. Not because of the empathy thing although that does prove miraculously cool sometimes. It’s more that I get bored of wondering what other people are thinking. I’d rather find out what I think about.

People consider others too much. I know we are a sociable species and we need other humans around to be sane and stuff. We can’t be like the lone tiger or any other animal that wanders off alone all the time. But I think the world would be a far better place if we stopped trying to figure out what other people want and are thinking and spend a bit more time on why we are the way we are. Why are we a sociable species? Why do we sit down when we go take a dump? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. What if we were the opposite reaction? What was the initial reaction? Did the Earth decide that it needed fewer trees? Strange how Gaia works.

Well enough of the mumbo jumbo. I’m honestly not feeling to pleasant since being hit by that angry woman’s phone call. There isn’t anyone in the office at the moment so left alone by myself and I don’t know if I can crawl out of this pit I’ve dug. Sigh. Such an emo post. It really makes me ill.

I don’t get emo people. Are you really sad? Why are you sad? Why don’t people understand you? Is it because there is no reason for you to be sad? Maybe you’re just sad in a different sense. Being happy is a feeling you should enjoy. At least you can control that. Maybe if you all stop wearing black and thinking that you’d rather be dead, you’d be slightly happier? Being sad isn’t cool and just because there are a lot of you out there doesn’t make being emo popular.

I think that’s what we all strive for in the end. To be popular. To be liked. That’s why people adore money. Because having money makes you popular. And being pretty too. I, not holding a degree in psychology, reckon Freud was spot on when he said that everything we do is because of sex. Or some words to that effect. Animals in the “wild” can be dormant and useless for year or decades until mating season comes along and they all horde round like the horny beasts that they are. For example, the male black widow spider dies soon after copulation. Their purpose on this planet is to reproduce and continue the species. I don’t see what makes us so special that we should be any different. The majority of humans on earth are planning and / or have reproduced. The remaining few are just sidetracked by other things, or are unable to further the species. For whatever reason. I think being ugly is nature’s way of cutting back the population boom. But you have to admit that the Homo sapiens species has been very prolific in the last several centuries. When (and we will when the sun explodes or something) we die out, aliens from other planets will examine our bones and conclude that we were a very stupid and selfish species who didn’t know when to quit. But that’s just a theory. But you heard it here first.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to be popular, fine. That’s totally natural. Being purposely sad is stupid. Humans love sex. Live to be popular, happy and horny. That’s what you are here for. Go forth and multiply!