Wherein Tiny learns about humans

While I may have been born a rather gregarious person, a spate of moving and deaths of relatives from ages 5-8 removed that from me like a sponge being wrung dry. Since then I've been relearning that side of me, the part that enjoys making new friends and talking to people. Of course, most gregarious 29 year olds have years of honing their natural tendencies, while I was raised by the silent wolves of my walled off self. Now I'm back to human interaction but with huge gaps in my knowledge, a socially awkward and perpetually confused dog trying to run with a pack.

I'm reminded of my lack of fluency in humanness often: when making small talk at parties (apparently my ice breakers (death, politics, jobs, and punctuation) are less ice breakers and more normal-people-repellents); when missing basic social tools (how *do* you end a conversation?); when dating; when talking about my life or values or goals. Since I've been working to shed the layers of insulation and break down the Berlin walls of fear of loss, I've realized that I'm still really just as socially savvy and with as much finesse as the five year old I stuck beneath those layers and behind those walls. I have trouble with the nuances, the gradual progression from acquaintances to friends. Partly it's confusing, but partly it seems unnecessary. To love, to make friends, to care about people, is to be open to pain. Why bother with the defenses of testing the waters or feigning less interest than one has?

I'm not brutally honest--I lack the self-awareness of my own feelings and desires for that--but I also have decided to embrace the notion of being authentic with people, of sharing my humanity and my foibles and my talents rather than guarding them jealously as knowledge others might use against me. The world has responded in kind.

Part of this process has been a conscious decision to temper my judgmental nature. Unlike my years of introverted exile, a tendency to evaluate the effects of actions (my own and others) and weigh them against purported expectations seems innate. The notions of fairness and equality and justice have always been attractive to me and their antithesis repulsive. I remember the frustration of my new baby brother getting to sleep with my parents when I and my other brother didn't, and this memory still has emotional resonance even decades after I was able to understand the difference in needs between babies and three year olds.

And while the products of a focus on equality and justice may be fruitful, the same standards applied with swift justice to individuals (including myself) is much less so. By replacing judgments of actions with curiosity about the context in which those actions take place, I've learned to listen better and, I hope, further the causes I care about. The carrot is stronger than the stick and there is more to be gained in changing structures than in attempting to change the individuals bound by those structures. At least that's what I tell myself and then humans are a bit less foreign.