Friendishly Advice

I recently had a conversation with a close friend about the the issue of understanding. In this case, a female friend was trying to understand a male friend of hers, who seemed to be trying to understand her. The whole issue of understanding was kinda getting in the way of the friendship.

Which lead me to give her a little advice… Us megalomanic geeks are of course also guru’s of other peoples relationships and well suited to giving advice, even if we are loners who don’t have girlfriends cause we are just too geeky for our own good. ;) “The advice??” I hear you scream… along with “Get on with it, and stop waffling on about yourself!!”

Oh ok… In my studies of human relationships, interaction, and general interactivity, I have noticed that far too many people NEED (with a burning desire) to either “Understand” or “Relate” to another person. When interacting with someone else, the require a connection, a peer group, similar interests. At the same time, they tend to dislike or detest people who don’t fall into their ideal world. This leads to people trying desperately to understand people, or categorize them, and if there isn’t a pideon hole to stick them in, there’s always the waste bin.

My Advice… Don’t try and understand people, don’t try and categorize them… Use your instincts to work out where you like someone or not, and then just like them for their diversity, their individuality. We all have enough things to worry about in life, we don’t need to worrying about who did what and why they did it, or why someone believes something that you yourself don’t.