Wanted

The Fresh Air interview from yesterday brought up an interesting point with regards to the high frequency of people texting or just being on their phones all the time in our current culture: that this kind of behavior stems psychologically from our desire to know that we are wanted by someone. At least, I can feel it myself. How often do I get momentarily excited myself the moment I hear my phone go off or see the LED light go off, indicating that I have a new e-mail/text message/whichever? (and the disappointment that follows if it's just an e-mail from coursera or some other mass mailing list >_>).

And on that note- what about all of those times where you find out about some event that you haven't been invited to? It always makes me somewhat uncomfortable to hear about such things before and after the fact, even though it happens all the time anyway. Even though I probably wouldn't have gone to a lot of these events anyway, the notion of being invited is good enough, because it at least lets me know that other people want to see and hang out with me. Just as getting a text message is good enough, because it reminds me that people want to talk to me.

This kind of thinking... it's so self-centered. It's all about looking for reassurance that I'm wanted, that I'm needed, that I have enough worth and value to be in other people's lives. And if none of that happens, then it reflects badly on me as a person because I'm probably either a bad friend or a bad person or I just happen to suck at keeping in touch with people or all of the above. I've even heard this come out of other people's mouths with regards to why person x is never invited to events and so on. It's a route that's well paved to lead to depression in the long run.

I struggled a lot with this myself. Having to invite myself to other people's events after hearing about it over the grapevine; wondering if they'd forgotten me or if they just didn't want to hang out with me in the first place, even though they were pretty nice around me anyway. Always seeing them instant message each other  offhand while my own windows were bare, because I didn't like initiating such things myself, but I'd still wonder what was wrong with me anyway. Hearing them talk about past or future events in front of me that I hadn't been invited to. Eventually I just grew fed up and stopped seeing them for a while altogether, although to them it probably didn't feel like such a long time considering how infrequently I was around them anyway.

And ironically, months later, I still hang out with some of them once in a while now anyway, because things just worked out in a weird way like that. I kind of always knew how trivial a lot of my worries were, but I still let them get to me anyway. And it's funny how even now it still gets to me once in a while, when I already should know better.

It's stupid how often we worry about such things, when there are people out there who have few friends to count on because of their current situation, because of a mental illness, because of a disability, or because of some other issue. I'm reminded of it every once in a while because someone very close to me is in that position... and I realize how blessed I am to have the experiences I've been able to have. My anxiety about my social self-worth is nothing in the big scheme of things.