people

People are strange enigmas, whose keys are hidden inside, becoming ultimately impossible to truly figure out. As a writer, I have to try to understand what drives people by observing their actions, try to assess their qualities from the outside without being privy to the mental part of the equation.  The actions and words seem to be in sync, but the mind can scream other things, and yet it all makes perfect sense.

Let’s start by talking about actions. When people feel alone, away from places or people they know, they will tend to find something to remind them of home or familiar people. Humans are selfish and will seek to comfort themselves using others to their own convenience. Some become exceptionally adept at this, and the best can even talk themselves into believing they haven’t done wrong. Being passive aggressive, letting things happen all the while telling people exactly what they want to hear to lead them down the road one chose to ones benefit, that’s an exceptional skill to master. This is especially easy when the mark is just going to be close for a limited amount of time, then the façade becomes even easier to build and maintain, since any holes or inconsistencies can be ignored by the very finite nature of time. You can call this hooking people, or better yet, programming. By repeating certain behaviors, reinforcing them with code words or particular phrases, even using prizes or punishment; something of an amateurs approach to behavioral psychology.  

But the details, that’s the difficult part of all of this, and here is where many amateurs lose their footing. See, people aren’t naturally dumb or willing to believe easily. We all have natural defenses that subconsciously prevent us from getting conned that easily. That is why this game tends to be a tip toe between playing the aware person, their conscious mind (I’m not exactly sure if this would be the correct term, but let’s go with it), and signals to the deeper recesses of the mind. 

It’s easy to know who would become a master of this art. Many people suffer difficult childhoods, enduring neglect or hardship. Most can just succumb to these troubles but the few who do rise; they tend to be made stronger in a way because of all of it. They will be driven to avoid going back figuratively back down. Because that’s one of the beautiful things of humans, the adaptability, the capacity to respond to adversity and to try to grow or overcome it; even if it’s still less than a fifty-fifty chance, it is truly amazing.  Something interesting about this, taking a quick overview of many successful or driven people, one thing more than a few do share, is having encountered hardship. No, I’m not saying every success story is a rag to riches tale, but wills forged under difficult situations can be harder to break in the face of greater adversity. 

It is also easy to identify what people consider important. We all have tells or certain little, sometimes unnoticeable quirks, that can show others how we work or what concerns us. Sometimes it’s as easy as looking at what people favor doing with their hands, what objects they consider important. From there and with a little asking around or figuring other idiosyncrasies out, you can create a picture, though not entirely accurate, but pretty close to the real thing. So maybe people are actually easy to figure out, but sometimes the problem is that we don’t want to figure them out. We love the mystery, the unknown; it drives us in strange ways. We don’t want to accept that most of the times, it just a simple con game, a little battle that cared little for casualties.