A grocery list of desires.

This thought crossed my mind the other day about people my roommate Adam calls “flaky”. Basically, a flaky person is someone that will make plans with you and then will not show up, or always call last minute to cancel. The more interesting thing to me is how we both believe you should deal with flaky people.

To give a good idea about how I believe these people think I can compare it to shopping in the grocery store. People like myself have what I call a grocery list. This grocery list is my life priorities, and although I do not have the whole list completely clear, the top five items or so are very clear. The list can be shuffled when things change, and one thing that might change is your friend gives you a call and says we should hang out this weekend, so you put them up with you priorities, and make sure there is some time free, but they do not do the same. They just liked the thought of hanging out, and did not actually set time aside.

To put it another way we can pretend that the isles of the grocery store are days of a week. Let us say that I see my friend in isle one and tell them to meet me in isle five where I have something really interesting to show them. I stand waiting in isle five and believe they are getting closer and the day is approaching. In order to get to isle five they have to go up and down each isle before it to reach me. A person with a grocery list will bypass all the things off the list, because they have an appointment. Those who have no such list will become distracted by the items they see on the way, and then when days pass and you call on your cell phone they either do not answer, or they say oh yeah, I am in isle three, and you ask why are you there when you are supposed to be here? They do not seem apologetic and act as if what they found interesting is important enough to use as an excuse.

I know a number of people who fit this criterion on a regular basis. Perhaps we all do it sometimes, but some people do it far more noticeable. What action should we take to try and fix this? This is where my Adam and I would likely differ. He tends to approach people with this belief that he has the ability to make them conscious by making them aware enough times, and this in turn will make their lives better because he made them more self conscious. This method is proactive. I tend to approach people through reciprocity. I do not believe it is our job to try making other people aware of their actions. It is only our job to be aware of our own actions, and when someone rubs them the wrong way you react in your favor till they go away because they did not get it, or start treating you otherwise. They become conscious about the particular things you do and do not like, because they always get the same reaction when they step on your toes. This to me is far easier than chasing people down and trying to make them aware for their and our own good.

Perhaps there is a time and place for everything, and maybe being proactive works better when you live with people, or spend large amounts of time with them, and you happen to be the socially dominant personality. We have to keep in mind though that most people do not live with us, or care much about us, and if we go out of our way to try teaching them they may just run away. One example I have of this is when we had a third roommate and Adam, who is very socially dominating constantly tried beating him over the head when it came to working out and eating right after roommate three said he was interested in such things. In time he began to slack and Adam took a proactive role, but this only made our roommate run away, and he would just come home and go to his room. He eventually moved out because Adam made him very unhappy. If there is a method of being proactive to be used it should be soft power. We can be more aggressive with a young child by spanking them, but an adult wants some respect. It seems better to do the best you can to make it appealing to them to want to be more like you without force. I tend to be more reactive and when Adam tried being dominating to me I had strong reactions where we butt heads till a mutual respect and better communication was found. I happened not to run away and benefited much from my time with him in the long run. In this case his proactive method worked well. If someone is dedicated to a relationship for the long term they will eventually work things out. If pupils want to learn they will stay in your class, but Adam in some cases wants to be a proactive street teacher like Socrates that people do not want to listen to. Not a full blown street teacher, but one in the sense that people we know and do not spend large quantities of time with should be tracked down and forced to be made conscious for their own good and the good of the community. It is not till we set an example that others might take an interest, and we cannot expect everyone to take an interest. If they do and we happen to be proactive, then we can just be ourselves, because they want us to be proactive toward them. What is more important is that we find things in common with people where we do agree, and eventually this can trickle over into other areas if they choose to get closer to us in time. If they do not then they will just be our drug dealer where bump into them on the street, do our trade, and move our separate ways, and most people in life will be just that and nothing more.