The Impulse To Say Something

I just zoomed with a girl who didn’t like her Asian looks. Actually she didn’t explicitly say it, but I understood that she felt her looks made it hard for her to fit in, made her stand out in a negative way. She tried not to attract attention to herself because most of the attentions she received were not positive. As an Asian American and as a woman, she had plenty of reasons to wish herself small, so small that she could just disappear from the view.

However wishing to reduce herself to an invisible size was only a part of her personality. She is driven and she has big dreams. She is not really satisfied with her invisibility. She is very bright and she yearns for connection and communication, just like any normal human being. I feel the impulse to save her, but can I really do it?

Then there was somebody else with whom I discussed “cunning”. What was wrong with me? Why did I do that? I think it was because of the late hour of the night that scrambled my brain and confused my reasoning. The conversation should have been finished, but I dragged it on for several extra minutes, which did the mischief. One moment’s indiscretion, forever’s regret. And there were cultural differences involved. I, of all people, should have known one culture’s compliment is another culture’s insult. Cultural differences and the strangeness of English language are my favorite topics, which I explored many times, only to see myself failing, as any ignoramus, when life’s real test arrives. I sounded judgmental, condescending, negative, presumptuous. English’s subtlety is a very unsubtle way to trip a non-native speaker whose happy translation is interpreted as something unrecognizable.

Do I sound like a narcissist? I know I am a victim of narcissism, who is in danger of becoming a full blown narcissist. Is that true that no matter how hard one wants to shed the narcissistic traits instilled by one’s parents, one still ends up retaining a portion of it. It’s like the lint clinging to a piece of clothes and refusing to let go.  

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Image by Erik Karits from Pixabay