Social Grace

I am completely snowed under just now, but as usual, that gives me the most desire to procrastinate. Actually, I've been pretty good today, knocking out 2500 words of properly cited literature review. Of course, I need to repeat this exercise about 5 more times before next Wednesday and I don't see how that's possibly going to happen with all of my other obligations, but at least I'm not as bad off as I was this morning.

At any rate, my manic panic over my current work and deadlines is not the point of this post. Rather, I am perplexed by the behavior of some acquaintances of mine and I wonder what has happened to social grace?

A couple of weeks ago, Mr.Aloof popped out of the ether again, as he tends to do. He wanted to tell me about a photography exhibition he put on, which was fine. I replied to his mail and asked him a few questions about the exhibit and so on. He replied back. I replied to his email asking a couple of other follow up questions and he replied back... and there was not a single question towards me in his email. It's entirely possible that there weren't any towards me in the first couple though I deleted them already so can't check. But still, having gotten the information I was curious about, I see no need to respond to such a blatantly rude social email that does not inquire at all about me, my life, what I'm up to or how I'm doing.

Then last night I was out to dinner with M. This is a story in and of itself. Suffice to say, M and I are on pretty shaky ground friendship-wise these days. But I am trying to put in some effort. So I agreed to meet up for dinner. And I asked M about work, about her recent work-related travels, about projects and people and her flatmate and her family. And she answered socially enough, which was good, and certainly a step up from past interactions. However, there were these moments of silence where I sat there and just wondered in my head if she was going to show some initiative and general politeness and ask me anything about me and my life. I tried not to say much about what was going on with me to see if this would prompt some questioning. Alas, it was not to be. She didn't ask me a single thing about myself throughout the entire meal.

I would like to think and hope that when I meet up with my friends I am suitably interested in their lives and what is going on with them. I would hate to think that I was like my mother- who only seems to ask questions as a segue to talking about herself. I remember things about my friends, what they told me they were up to, what was going on in their lives, and when I see them or speak to them, I follow up. I am interested. I care.

When people interact with me and don't ask me anything at all, the only thing I can conclude from this is that they simply do not care. Which does not make me inclined to care much about them. I'm not asking for the situation to be reversed, I'm simply asking that it should be balanced. Yes, I like to find out what is going on with people I care about, but I would think that people who cared about me would like to find out what is going on with me!

Honestly. I don't think I'm off base on this one. Some people are just undeniably rude and self centered and should go back to some remedial lessons on politeness and social interaction.

Rant over. Back to work.