Friday, October 26, 2007

Cluelessness as the Key to Success

My animator has (almost) always been an even-tempered individual.

I say almost, because he can remember a time, back when he was a child, when he used to whine and cry about everything. This behavior got him picked on by the other children, for there seems to be nothing that some children like more than to cause upset. He was easy pickings in this regard.

Sometime between 6th and 7th grade, this changed. Either something broke in him, or he learned a powerful lesson. Whichever it was, my animator suddenly became one of the calmest, most even-tempered individuals you’ve ever met. To this day, it takes a lot to rattle him, and even more to get him angry.

One of the things that makes it easier for my animator to stay even tempered is the fact that he is, for the most part, totally clueless. He doesn’t always know what’s going on, and it becomes very hard to become angry about a situation when he really doesn’t have a clue as to what the situation is. In addition, he is exceptionally forgetful. On those occasions when he did realize that he should probably get angry about something, the odds are very good that, the next time he runs into the person who caused the discontent, he will just fall back into old habits and treat him or her as my animator has all along – kind of with a nice balance of pleasantness and puzzlement. Even if he does realize he is supposed to be mad at the individual, he often can’t remember the full details as to why, and usually decides that it’s easier just to forgive the other person rather than risk getting into an argument about which he doesn’t know the issues.

I think I can say with some degree of certainty that this cluelessness has contributed to the success that my animator has had in life. Thanks to his brainlessly-derived forgiving nature, my animator has managed to make few enemies in life. He also has a gift for diplomacy when necessary, and another gift for cowering in fear for when he knows that diplomacy won’t work. These are major factors that make him successful at whatever it is he does at work. While his tendencies result from a far from stress free life, it is, for the most part, relatively free of conflict.

The connection between my animator and myself has given me many of these same tendencies, and I have, thus, experienced a corresponding level of success in Second Life. There are so many people around my animator and myself that experience emotions that are utterly beyond either of our comprehensions. I have few people who don’t like me, and I manage to accomplish most things with a reasonable level of non-incompetence. I have a hard time hating anyone. The few people that I have an active dislike for have made a very extra special, conscious effort to attain this position. If I don’t seem to respond to you in SL, it certainly isn’t because I don’t like you. It is my natural shyness compounded by my fear of exposing my cluelessness that makes me occasionally unresponsive. Do not worry that I don’t like you. Odds are very good that I would remember none of the reasons why I should dislike you, or even that have noticed that there may have been such reasons.

So, for those of you who wish to have a puzzled and sometimes happy and a mildly successful life, give cluelessness a try. If it works for me, it may work for you as well. If you wish lessons on how to appear clueless, simply watch me for a while. You can ask me for advice, but odds are likely that I will respond with a deer in the headlights pleasant expression. I’ll do my best, of course, but please don’t be surprised if my response makes no sense whatsoever. It works for me that way.

2 comments:

Wildstar Beaumont said...

a very nice post, Alphonsus :)

Anonymous said...

what was that again? :)