Just for the record I am the one who is actually right

On some of my little theories and bad and good faith

I have all kinds of theories and sayings about people. I suppose making these up has always been one of my hobbies. Some of them are small, so for example I have a theory that you can tell someone is about to break up with their partner or is coming out of a breakup if they start posting on social media loads when they didn’t before. I think this is their way, conscious or not, of trying to face the world more, put themselves out there again and so on. Like: “Hello world! I’m back!”

I always email myself notes about my theories and these sit in my “emails I send to myself” folder with notes like: Find white bra. Or links to obscure articles from legal websites or scientific studies or whatever that I’ll forget to read otherwise or lines of dialogue for my short stories and novels. That “emails I send to myself” folder is such a mash of interests and obsessions that it starts to look like a grand unified theory of the universe when I let it sit for a few months without clearing it out. I do always clear it out. I try to make sure I use all the things I put there.

Another theory I have is that people who always make shrill proclamations of their special sensitivity (“I was shaking”, “I couldn’t watch!”) are deeply un-empathetic, almost to the point of sociopathy. The same with anyone obsessed with their own victimhood. Or if you hear one side of a story about something you didn’t ask about the first time you talk to someone I think that’s dodgy. My friend Brian put it like this recently in a casual text conversation about this: “Anyone should see that the one who is obsessed with smearing the other is someone to be avoided.”

And I really like that phrasing, I read the psychoanalytic meaning of “the other” onto it. The other as any unknown body or entity, which we can approach with fear and anger or learn to approach with curiosity. (I typed “try to learn” there. And I always find it an interesting impulse to put “try” in front of a verb which is not declarative. Like when is learning completed? Surely the entire escapade of learning is a process of trying? But I do think using “try” suggests I don’t think success is guaranteed. Maybe suggestive of some resistance I have to the idea that people can change.)

Last week I was talking about one of my other sayings or theories a few times and then I thought I have never written about it so I might as well. It came up this week in the context of a few friends asking me for advice. And it always goes down well whenever I say it or give it as advice. My saying is: “Do something nice for someone who hates themselves and you will pay for it in the end.” Whenever I say this to people they always go: “Oh god it’s so true.” It is, isn't it? I think this one is actually maybe my favourite pet theory.