The Straws We Grasp

The Straws We Grasp

         The term cynical is often applied to people with a less than cheerful outlook on life. At times it's unfairly, if not ironically given by allegedly positive thinkers who fail to recognize that labeling someone is a negative act. However, it's just as unfair to pass judgment on a person who chooses to maintain an optimistic viewpoint, so please understand that I do not wish to sway people one way or the other.
         Certainly there are people who take things to the logical extreme. You have the ones who can smell a conspiracy at a child's lemonade stand, but there are also people who could break into a musical number at any moment over something as trivial as picking up a penny. But where do we draw the line? What is the compromise that allows those of us on these opposite ends of the spectrum to deal with one another?
         The simple, yet unpopular answer is that there is no line. There is no compromise.
         A few years ago, I had returned to my hometown of Bennington, Vermont. During the summer, I got a part time job helping out in a small antique store.
         The owner and his sister were always pleasant and easy to get along with. They co-owned the store along with the owner's boyfriend, who ran the other half of the shop, where he made and sold various chocolate covered treats as well as other baked goods. While he was never blatantly difficult to get along with, when he was the only one in the store, he may as well have littered the floor with any of the remaining eggshells.
         One of the perks of working at this store was that the owner let me bring in some of my artwork to sell. Painting had become a way to relieve stress in the previous years. And while the “real artists” were quick to share their criticism, there are still a few pieces that I am proud of to this day.
         My themes ranged from blatant social commentary to things that just pleased my eye. But the owner's boyfriend came right out with it and asked me, “Why are all of your paintings sooo dark?”
         He wasn't asking about one particular painting. I could have pointed out to him that the painting of a man looking into the fire was anything but dark. People have been sitting around campfires and contemplating the flames since the dawn of civilization. But no, he had made a judgment about all of my work, and he put the question in a tone of such condemnation as to hardly invite any contradiction.
         At another job a few years prior, there was a coworker who presented her cheery optimism in the form of greeting people in a booming voice, regardless of how much sleep they appeared to have had the night before. To make matters worse, one morning, out of the blue, she snuck up from behind and threw her arms around me.
         It wasn’t her intention to startle me. A hug was just the physical manifestation of her positivity. But like a belligerent group of teenagers who don’t see the harm in defacing a gravestone, it didn’t occur to this woman that some people might not want to be touched by people they barely know. Though I knew this coworker by name, she was not a friend or a family member, and hugging was a violation of my personal space.
         Fortunately, she apologized and never hugged me again, but continued the obliviously delightful verbal assault on my person with a daily, “Hi Nate! How are you Nate!”
         One morning after losing the battle with insomnia the night before, I saw her and preemptively greeted her with, “Hi Coworker!”
         Strangely enough, she didn’t seem to appreciate receiving the same greeting in the same manner that she had been giving it to everyone else. But whether she only stopped doing it to me I can’t say anymore than I can accurately remember if anyone else was annoyed by her unchecked joviality.
         What occurred in both instances was a difference in personalities. None of the parties involved, myself included, were entirely wrong or entirely innocent. The end result was a very strained relationship that only worked because it had to. In the case of the antique shop owner’s boyfriend, I simply stopped trying to form any kind of relationship beyond what I needed to earn a paycheck and quit working there once I found a better paying job. And as for the coworker at the grocery store, we didn’t work in the same department so avoiding each other ninety-percent of the time was as easy as breathing.
         You could come back with, “Well, avoiding each other is a compromise, isn’t it?” But a compromise is an agreement consensually reached by two parties. In the instances provided, avoiding each other was the action one party took to avoid further confrontation. In the instance of my coworker, avoiding me was probably the only way to avoid what, to her, was an act of aggression that she didn’t believe she provoked. Believers in karma could infer that I got my comeuppance for giving her, what I felt, was a spoonful of her own medicine that day the antique shop owner’s boyfriend made his remark about my paintings.
         How we choose to view a situation or the things we tell ourselves about the people we encounter are merely the straws we grasp that get us through the day. I could easily have turned this into a list of ten positive things about my job, with the intention of showing those who view my previous works as being negative and unappreciative that I am not always this way.
         Instead, this essay is written in response to the mixed reviews in response to my previous writings, as well as to any future critiques. Here in this first week of the third decade of my life, my goal is to share the experiences that have shaped me and allow others to draw their own conclusions. My experiences working in retail, dealing with homelessness, and the trials and tribulations associated with the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome are among the many topics I hope to cover as the year progresses.
         Some will identify, or feel that I have hit the nail on the head because the experiences that have shaped their view of the world will make them so inclined. Others, for equally valid reasons, will disagree or have their own unique viewpoint they’d like to share. The majority will miss the point entirely and I will respect their lack of experience as well.