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People tend to be most influenced by people who know them well—friends, relatives, teachers, etc. They might also be influenced by authors, artists, movies, and so on. Usually, people think well of the people who inspire them, but not always. I've been profoundly affected by people I didn't particularly like, even people whose names I didn't know or to whom I never (or at least, almost never) spoke. You don't need to talk to a person to get to know them. You don't even have to like them. A person's eyes will tell you more than anything they would ever say. There was a guy I went to school with and really didn't like, and vice versa. He gave every impression of being a bully, a total jackass. He'd pick on people, beat people up, etc. I tried so hard to believe that it was true and hate him, but every so often, he'd slip up and do or say some tiny thing that made me think twice. He'd somehow prove himself to be more intelligent, sensitive, and civilized than I was comfortable giving him credit for. Mostly it was in his eyes. It's easier to hate someone when you can believe that they're genuinely horrible, but if the person has expressive eyes that tell you otherwise, it becomes impossible. That's what he was like. Every so often, I'd catch his eye, and there ensued some of the most awkward moments of my entire adolescence. In a split second glance, each of us would know what the other was thinking. We had a tacit understanding; we couldn't say anything without destroying our respective reputations. This coming from me, the one who always made such a big deal about how important it was not to care about things like other people's opinions. Anyway, a few years later, my hypocrisy caught up with me in the form of an online encounter with someone else, which was probably equally life-changing for the person online and me. When I was a senior in high school, I spent—maybe not a lot of time, but some time chatting online. One evening, I sat in front of my computer, and somebody IMed me. Nobody I knew, just some teenaged guy from somewhere in America. He'd seen my profile, where I'd apparently made a contemptuous remark about people like him (obsessed with clothes and popularity, etc.), and he messaged me angrily. I don't know if he was really looking for a fight, but he certainly got it. For several minutes, we mostly just yelled at each other before calming down and talking properly. He finally admitted that he sometimes wished he could tell his friends what he really thought of them. He said he wanted to be more like me and dress how he wanted and talk to whom he wanted without caring about what other people said. I was surprised—not unpleasantly—and asked him why he didn't. I asked him what was stopping him, that he shouldn't be afraid to be himself, and he shouldn't let other people control his life, since it was his life, after all. He expressed reluctance, saying that he was afraid that people would make fun of him. He was afraid that if he changed, his former friends would mock him and call him gay. I said that that was only one possibility, and a rather unlikely one at that, and besides, who cared? It wasn't like he really liked those people much anyway. More importantly, he'd be being himself. You can't be anyone if you can't be yourself. I hate having to tell that to people, because I know it's a good point, and people inevitably try to argue against it. He did say that he would think about it, though. A few days later, I heard from him for the second and last time. He said hello, and I was immediately on my guard, worrying that it would be a repeat of the argument from last time. Then he said that he'd thought a lot about what I'd said and was starting to change. I was a little apprehensive, thinking that maybe he'd blame me for something bad that had happened to him. Instead, he said that he was a lot happier, and he thanked me for helping him. It was a great feeling. It almost gives me hope for humanity, to think that a total stranger can touch your life, if only for a few minutes, and make you want to be a better person. It made me think about myself, too. I realized that I was being, in my own way, just as silly and pretentious, and I should practice what I preached. I decided to make more of an effort to be myself, I mean genuinely, without dressing it up. At the time, I was—well, I wasn't a goth, but I wore black eyeliner. That was about as far as I took it, and that conversation made me decide that even that was too far. I figured that black eyeliner, for instance, was no less pretentious than any of the habits of the people I'd been lambasting, and I stopped wearing it. That in turn made me start thinking about something that had happened to me in middle school. When I was in junior high, there was some guy who I really didn't like, and vice versa. I don't even remember his name anymore, which might be just as well. Anyway, he was absent for a few days, and I didn't think too much of it. Then I overheard someone say he'd been absent because his father had died. I was shocked—no matter how much I disliked him, I still felt bad for him and thought that it was awful to lose a parent at a such a young age. I remember the day he came back to school. I saw him sitting across the cafeteria, surrounded by people, but not talking to any of them. I'd never seen anyone look so depressed in my whole life; he looked absolutely miserable. I will never forget the look on his face—to this day, I remember that kid and feel every bit as upset as I did then. I just sat there and looked at him for a moment and thought how awful it was that he'd lost his father. He must have felt someone watching, because he looked up and saw me, and our eyes locked for just a moment. First he saw me and recognized me and looked a little angry, as if to say, "Oh, it's you; what do you want?" I was a little startled, because of course I hadn't intended any offense. Then he realized that I wasn't giving him a death glare and that I must have heard about his father and was feeling bad for him, and then he looked startled. Then there was a second where we just looked at each other in understanding. From then on, though we still didn't get along, we were at least not constantly at odds like we had been. Neither of us ever mentioned those two seconds in the cafeteria, but they were two seconds that changed us both forever. Years later, I remembered him and felt angry at all the goth kids, etc. who would talk about being depressed all the time when they really weren't. I'd remember that kid and think, how dare they say that; they have no idea what real misery is. If you want to know what sadness is, you look at that kid. You wouldn't even have to ask. God, that poor kid. To this day, I wish I'd known him better—I mean, known him properly—so I could have said something. So that at least he wouldn't have been sitting there all alone in a crowd on his first day back. There aren't words enough in the English language, in any language, to express that kind of emotion, that kind of heartbreak. Maybe it's just as well. Some things are too sacred to be spoken. |