I have to say, this is already working. I've actually been more motivated than I have in over a year to actually sit down and write some of the crap going on in my head.
A picture of a person I would love to trade places with for a day. I thought about the different people with whom I might like to trade places, and the manifold possible reasons for doing so. The fact that we're talking about a 24-hour period really obviated the venal personal-gain motives. I would not enjoy trading places with some Zuckerberg-rich and responsibility-free single dude for a day, only to have to return to my life of scraping by with fiery ambition and little patience for the hustle.
That very quickly brought me down to two people: my sister and my cousin. I have always wanted to know how my baby sister's brain works, what her inner life is like. What thoughts does she think to herself, how does she really feel behind the stoic expression learned at our father's knee (okay, and perhaps mine as well)? But our relationship has really improved over the years (more on this another day, I'm sure) - someday, I'll be free to ask her with the reasonable hope of getting an honest answer.
That leaves my cousin.
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| Good-lookin' sunuvagun, ain't he? |
G's inner life might interest me, but he's pretty honest about what he's thinking and feeling at any given moment; I can always ask him, and he'd always tell me. Our personalities are sufficiently different - and our personal histories sufficiently similar - that I don't necessarily envy him anything he's got on paper. What I envy, what I want to learn, is his apparently-effortless social skill, the magnetism I've watched draw every eye in a crowded room. The way he projects a confidence so solid you can feel it; I want to know how G does what he does.
It's not something he can teach; he could instruct me for a year in eye contact, body language, small talk, and flirtation, and it wouldn't help much. Fact is, I don't lack in any of those departments (well, maybe body language, a little) - not when I'm full of confidence and/or comfortable with my surroundings and the people in them. If we were both at a party full of my friends, you wouldn't notice a major difference between our social behaviors. But plop us down in a room full of strangers: Geoff shines in the middle and I prop up the far wall. What I want to learn is how he views those situations, what thoughts run through his head: which thoughts become actions, and which are discarded (and how does he successfully discard them)? What does his confidence feel like? How does it inform and motivate his actions?
I'm rock-bottom, deep-in-the-gut certain - more certain than I am of my own name - that if I knew that secret, my entire life would change. I'd see more doors open before me, and be more inclined to explore the paths beyond them. Maybe nothing about my personality would change; maybe I wouldn't be any different a man than I am as I type this. But I would be more able to share myself with the world, and ask people in that world to share themselves with me.
And learning that secret wouldn't take twenty-four hours in my cousin's head - it wouldn't even take a whole night out. If we could have done this last night, I'd have known between the time he picked me up at 9:40 and five minutes after we crossed the threshold of the karaoke joint at 10:10. Maybe I'd have stuck around while he sang. We have similar vocal talent, but our skills branch off into different areas (which is why hearing a Dash-G duet is a treat I hope you all get someday); I would love to do more of what he does.
There's something else I might like to learn, something he can't fully articulate - my cousin sees some light in me, some core thing I can't see in myself after years of frank self-examination. Is he just assuming some part of what lies within him and his brothers - and his father, and my father, and one of our uncles - lies within me as well, because we share blood? Or is there something truly there, the seed of true gregariousness and charm that is permanent rather than conditional upon my surroundings? If I could see that as he does, find that seed and nurture it, I'd be a long way toward rectifying one of the last things about Dash that truly disappoints me - often, saddens me.
(If something about this seems a contradiction from what I posted for Day Five, understand two things: one, put an audience in front of me and ask me to perform and all social awkwardness falls from me - until I'm offstage; two, I was drunk and/or high for most of my offstage social interactions at Vassar. Chemical courage worked for me, for years.)
I think the trade, by the way, would be beneficial for him too; that's often the way with close friends (for we are that, in addition to family). There may be many facets of my world-view and emotional life that he could adopt to increase his happiness and effectiveness in the world. As things stand, we're left to the more difficult path of learning from each other: one articulates and demonstrates, the other incorporates and emulates.
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