Lately my roommate Bedazzler Champion (still test-driving blog names for her) and I have been having these tag-team problem sharing sessions where she talks about her problems (and I pretend to listen) and give sage advice and then I talk about my problems and she pretends to listen and give sage advice.
Now I don’t really open up very much or very well, so when I say “talk about my problems” what I actually mean is that I briefly describe them in the way that one might briefly describe the top part of the iceberg that juts out above of the water: “so cold and ice-spiky!”
The thing that we keep saying to each other is that ‘other people’s problems are always more interesting’. It is true. I love other people’s problems. All of that crap going on in your life right now, I find it fascinating! Maybe it’s the ‘misery loves company’ thing, or maybe it’s what my Pop Culture professor (and all Germans) called schadenfreude.
That’s pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Honestly though, I think it is more just that I like listening to the telling. Any discussion of a problem begins with a story, because a problem is just a story that hasn’t ended yet. In order to explain to someone why you had such a shitty day, you have to start with the story. For instance:
YOU: “Why do you have all of those severed fingers in your glove box?”
ME: “Well, that’s a funny story . . .”
Not to get all English Department about it, but if you can find a way to understand The Story - in anything - then you already have a leg up on everybody else. Everything is s story. I have actually told people that the only reason I am able to do my job (it’s a ridiculously complicated Accounting Department position calculating “residuals” in the Merchant Services industry) is because I am able to follow the story of the money I am moving around. Am I being too obtuse? Here, this will make more sense: I have a charming and delightful little friend who (doesn’t read this blog, so I can unironically use words like “charming” and “delightful”) recently started doing Accounts Payable for the company where she works. I have done AP, so I understand it and I was asking her how she was taking to it (some people burn out on accounting-type work really fast) and she was saying that she actually found it relatively enjoyable. This was met with sputters of rebuke from the other people around (or as I like to call them, “the non-account-ies”). My charming and delightful friend explained that the math really isn’t very difficult at all, but that it takes a while to learn The Logic.
For this blog post, ‘The Logic’ will be used interchangeably with ‘The Story’, or at least interdependently, I haven’t decided yet because I’m making all this up as I go along.
So we live our lives as slaves to the tyranny of the forward passage of time, right? This is why we read from left to right and top to bottom. We have all agreed (in the Western world at least [get with it Buddhists and Hindus!]) that this is what time is like, and so that’s how we live.
So understanding The Logic is being able to look at a bunch of numbers on the page and discern the ways in which they interrelate; in other words, it’s being able to see The Story. You have to mentally place everything in its order in order to understand it. This is how a really well-programmed Excel spreadsheet can transcend the mundane to become artful (I have actually spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to write a story that functions like a spreadsheet, made entirely of pieces that are clearly connected, but with all of the complicated relationships made invisible).
I felt a little validated then when my charming and delightful friend invoked The Logic, because I felt like someone else understood (in some miniscule way) the way that I see life. Math is really not that different from storytelling, in fact, math is story telling and stories are fascinating!
You know what else is fascinating? All your problems!
That’s how all this started remember? A problem is just a story too.
But why then are problems (other people’s) more interesting than just a story? Why do I always want to gouge my eyes out when you tell me about your trip to the grocery store, but I’m just rapt when you tell me about how your house burned down after you accidently lit your cat on fire? Is it just that nasty German schadenfreude? Maybe. But maybe it is also because when I hear about your problems, it is just so much more genuine, so much more heartfelt and somehow more meaningful. We spend so much of our time not being meaningful. We make so much small talk. We spend so much of our time asking “Hi, how are you” and responding, “Good”. I am a champion of small talk and I can small talk just about anybody under the table, but I have to flip a switch to make it happen. Most of the time I avoid it like the plague. So maybe this is all about some pretentious quest for truth and a deeper understanding of mankind.
But probably not.
Maybe it is just that other people’s problems are more interesting, And maybe they are more interesting because they are so full of real emotion and none of it affects me at all.
I can’t help but think at this point that some psychiatrist somewhere is reading this and going, “Wow, this guy needs to be on a couch.” Why? Probably because I’ve written a thousand words about problems and accounting and meaning without offering up a single detail about what is bothering me today.
So what is bothering me today?
Hey, look at that iceberg! So cold and ice-spiky!
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