Deep Thought for the Week

Sometimes life is kind of ironic/perplexing.

In general, I would say I'm not an extremely people-oriented person.  I don't like to be a hermit and can get kind of depressed if I spend too much time alone.  But, I'm not into super big crowds.  I'm more of a small groups person, and not always then.  I can be selfish.  I'm not always perceptive about how people are feeling.  Sometimes I don't care about what other people are feeling - dealing with my own feelings is difficult enough.  Sometimes I'm perfectly happy to go to the YMCA and work out without having to talk to a single person.  Or go kayaking by myself.  Or go for a bike ride around town by myself.  I know this is callous, but I don't spend much time worrying that there are starving children in Africa or forming charities to fund surgeries for children born with cleft pallets.  I do a few small things here in the community where I live and call that "good enough."  Well, that's not entirely true.  I'm learning to be more empathetic and getting more of a "world view", but it's slow going.  Heart change takes a lifetime.

I don't enjoy talking on the telephone to people.  I enjoy my "things" oriented job, although having good people skills is very advantageous (maybe required) if you want to be successful.  I credit God and my parents for my few good people skills.  They set good examples of caring for others.  And I really appreciate that.

Anyway, the point is I would not self-describe myself as a people person.  Sometimes I get tired of dealing with people and want to keep things logical (because lots of people stuff is not logical).  I have a friend at work.  I think she would (and have probably heard her) say she is a people person.  She's working as an engineer but does not enjoy it and wants to change careers to become a teacher or nurse or doctor or vet or something like that.  She has an urge to help others, especially those much less fortunate.  She probably does worry about starving children in Africa.  She likes to get out and about in town to "meet new people."  I'm happy with my routine of work, exercise, grocery shopping, and weekend travel with all the usual people I hang out with.

Here's the irony:  when I go on vacation, the most important things to me are the people.  Who will I travel with?  Am I going to be staying with somebody in the place I'm vacationing?  OK, maybe finding opportunities to stay with people is more about saving money because I like to pinch pennies.  ;-)  Just kidding.....I truly do enjoy staying with other people when on vacation rather than doing the hotel room thing.  I enjoy it whether these people are old friends or new friends.  If I have to make a choice, I will usually choose to see more people rather than spend an extra day doing an extreme activity like snowboarding or scuba diving or whatever.

My friend from work is taking a couple days of vacation this week.  When I talked to her before she left, she was telling me how she always used to choose the extra activity over visiting with more people.  She said that has changed a little bit over the last few years, but still.....she's going back to the state she lived in for 15 years.  If that were me, I would have a ton of people lined up that I would like to see or stay with and would very likely not be planning to spend even one night in a hotel.  When I talked to her, she seemed kind of tentative about where she would be staying, and a hotel was sounding like a distinct possibility for at least a couple nights.  Maybe she's more polite than me and doesn't like to impose on people the way I do.  Being realistic, she wasn't expecting to see all her friends from 15 years of life there, but she didn't even mention any people she definitely planned to see.  Maybe she had some but just didn't mention them to me.

Weird, huh?  Maybe we're deceiving ourselves about our true status of "people person".  Or a better explanation is probably that I can be very thankful I have a very large natural and spiritual family that makes spending time with them feel very worthwhile.  More worthwhile than kayaking, snowboarding, scuba diving, or biking.  Family that makes a non-people person feel like a people person.