Right now I spend my time talking alot. Atleast more than I would like to. I can feel that my social battery runs out quickly, and when it does I have zero interest in the people around me. I have always struggled being around people for longer periods of time. After a while I just want to get away.

It’s so hard to know what is your own experience and what is the common experience that we all share. Like being sad in a crowd and falling in love. Feeling sad in a crowd makes you feel alone, especially when you start telling yourself that; I am the only one feeling this way. While falling in love is something that feels like discovering something new and unique in the world, you almost feel like you are having a breakthrough regarding what it means to be human.

Everybody is undoubtely unique. But to what extent? And how can we even begin to answer that question?

At the basic level all humans seem to want the same things. Safety, the feeling of doing something important, love and caring relationships. So perhaps at that level, we are not unique. Our uniqueness must lie in the way these needs manifest themselfs. I wonder then why my need for relationships and people is not as intense as of other people, like my girlfriend.

At this point people would tell me that of courrse people are different, there are certain qualities people have, and looking at that we can put them into groups, so that we can talk about ourselfs and eachother easier. So then i might call myself an introvert and my girlfriend an extrovert. So that next time im talking about this to someone i can tell them I’m an introvert, and then they will know that i need more space for myself.

But the issue is then that the person im talking to will put me in the group “introvert”, and even though that group might have some commonly agreed qualities, there can be other qualities that person might add to the group, drawn from their own personal experiences. And besides all the commonly agreedes qualities given to that group might not all apply to me. And those commonly agreed qualites might not even mean the same thing to everybody!

We can never be certain of the experience of anybody else but ourself. To me thats something which makes it hard to communicate with other humans, but it’s also a very beautiful thing, because it means that we need to trust eachother, and we need to listen if we want to see the world and people around us clearly. It means that having stereotypes, and putting people into groups before really being with them doesnt make any sense.

Always have this thought at the back of your head; Am i trying to propse my own ideas onto this person, or am I listening?