The Viable Alternative

I was talking on the phone last night with a very good college friend of mine and he told me a very interesting story.

A couple of months back, he told me ran into a mutual acquaintance of ours who recanted to him a story in which he had met some girl at some event with whom, if memory serves me correct, shared some mutual friends. Apparently him and the girl exchanged names and had a conversation such that if they had run into each other again in the future, they wouldn’t be strangers. Well, fast forward a few months later, the dude was at a bar or lounge and saw that same girl. He walked up to her, said “Hello,” and reminded her of who he was and where they initially met. The girl however, gave him no acknowledgement whatsoever and as if he didn’t even exist, totally ignored him and walked away.

Let’s just say the dude was quite disgusted, and knowing how sensitive the he is, I’m sure he seethed over it for a long time.

When I first heard it, I was a bit amused, but after that wore off, instead of being disgusted by such behaviour, I actually began to feel sorry for her.

Think about it, you meet someone, you have a pleasant conversation with her, or even if it wasn’t “pleasant” in such a way that made you walk away from it feeling like you were floating on cloud nine or had reached some altered life transforming state of consciousness, it was at least cordial, and when you run into that person again and reintroduce yourself and remind them how you met with actual locations and dates, they don’t even see it fit to acknowledge you even by at least saying, “Sorry, I don’t remember,” do you think such a person who would behave that way towards someone is actually happy with him or herself? Do you think they actually like themselves or their lives? What do you think is actually going on inside of them?

Let me tell you, ANYONE who would behave that way towards someone is not a happy person and there are some deep issues that drive such a person to behave like that. This girl had a bloated sense of self importance based on some arbitrary standards that made her feel she was too good to acknowledge the dude or that the dude was not good enough for her to acknowledge. The interesting thing is that these arbitrary standards she used to measure others and boost herself up are a cover for a deep sense of inferiority because someone with a true sense of security and self love would not see simple courtesy or their acknowledging of someone else as a threat to her worth as a human being. Her worth as a human being involved totally dismissing someone else and trying to put herself above him because truly, she had no sense of worth. Such people are always looking out for what they can get from someone based on their status rather than what they themselves have to offer because deep down, they don’t think they have anything to offer. Thus, it’s truly difficult for them to form truly authentic bonds with people because they’re only able to see the surface level of people which is directly due to the fact that they have a very shallow sense of their own selves. Imagine how lonely that is.

So, rather than wasting your time and energy getting angry at people who blatantly mistreat or disrespect you, you should actually be feeling sorry for such people. They struggle with a deep inferiority complex that comes from things that happened in their past that wounded them to such an extent that they lost their sense of worth and they have no idea how to regain it other than to put someone else down. Imagine living like that? Such people are coping the best way they know how. As someone who used to put people down to hide his own deep sense of inferiority, I can tell you that while on the surface it felt good, on a deeper level I was suffering inside from all the pain festering within and trust me, that was no fun.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love