I'm stealing this title from an amazing play one of my juniors wrote. If you ever get to read this blog, you know that I liked all your work.
The great thing about living is, having a choice. I personally believe that it is you and only you who is responsible for what is happening in your life, but somewhere I know myself that it isn't true. It is like a car, you might not be able to afford a new one in your current state, but you can make the best of what you have right now.
Today I'm talking about the whole idea of opening up or not opening up. Each one of us might feel differently about this, but this is how I feel. There can be many states in which a person can be in this case. This isn't black and white as states I mentioned in one of my previous pieces, regarding heightened emotions. For now, to talk about this, I will use two states only, but there is definitely a gradient between these two.
I've seen mainly two kinds of people, one who open up to anyone. Anyone they know briefly and talk to, becomes their 'good friend' and the cycle begins. They share their childhood stories, recent incidents and maybe plans about the future with them. This starts of with a bang and then the so called honeymoon period starts, where everything seems perfect with the new found soul mate. Good things about being in this state is that you meet new people, you learn much more and you grow up happy. This I feel is mainly because you don't know the person. You know the image you have created for them and how you presume them to be, using this limited data set that you have at your disposal. Knowing the person means having data on the person, data is gathered over time and time is all that you have not shared with your new friend. A person is generally judged by how that person looks, speaks or reads; while the actual judgement should be based on how they react to in situations. Situations are the true testing grounds of anything you really want, additionally as only one instance would leave the data set incompetent and incomplete, you need various instances of the person reacting to the same thing, to measure up things.
This first kind also gets attached too quickly and are likely to stay in their heightened state, if they're looking at making friends. Otherwise, in the same crowd lie these other set of people who understand the art of networking and might seem like the ones you clicked the most with.
The second kind of people are the ones who don't open up. Everyone feels that they're their best friend but this second kind might not even have close friends. These people build an armour around themselves, which could be either due to past experiences, some secrets which they don't want to share (which means most of their lives) or the need to look perfect. You see, the more you talk to people, the more they get to know about the chinks in your armour and after a while, they would notice those imperfections in you, which maybe you yourself don't want to accept. Plus they don't want to give you any ammunition to use against them at any stage. The good things about this is that you stay secured, you're perfect to the ones who stay at an arms distance(everyone) and you have significantly lower chances of getting emotionally hurt. The downside of this protection is that you pay a huge fee of maybe being less human. You don't feel much when someone dies, or when someone says that they love you.
The point is not to glorify the latter lifestyle but is to make people understand that they need to be vulnerable to be human. If you do understand this, then break that shell, come out and believe me you'll feel good.
As the band Passenger sings, "Only know you've been high when you're feeling low."
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