Maybe it’s just that we’re all at the centers of our own little universes, and sometimes they overlap with other people’s, and that small bit of intersection leaves some part of it changed. The collision can wreck us, change us, shift us. Sometimes we merge into one, and other times we rescind because the comfort of losing what we thought we knew wins out.
Either way, it’s inevitable that you expand. That you’re left knowing that much more about love and what it can do, and the pain that only a hole in your heart and space in your bed and emptiness in the next chair over can bring. Whether or not that hole will ever again include the person who made it that way…I don’t know. Whether or not anybody else can match the outline of someone who was so deeply impressed in you…I don’t know that, either.
We all start as strangers. The choices we make in terms of love are usually ones that seem inevitable anyway. We find people irrationally compelling.
We find souls made of the same stuff ours are. We find classmates and partners and neighbors and family friends and cousins and sisters and our lives intersect in a way that makes them feel like they couldn’t have ever been separate. And this is lovely. But the ease and access isn’t what we crave. It isn’t what I’m writing about right now. It isn’t what we revolve around after it’s gone. We are all just waiting for another universe to collide with ours, to change what we can’t ourselves. It’s interesting how we realize the storm returns to calm, but we see the stars differently now, and we don’t know, and we can’t choose, whose wreckage can do that for us.
We all start as strangers, but we forget that we rarely choose who ends up a stranger, too.
5
16 SIGNS
of a SOCIALLY
INTELLIGENT
PERSON
While you may not know what makes someone socially intelligent, you have likely experienced the kind of social tone-deafness that leaves you feeling frustrated at best, and physically uncomfortable at worst.
Manners are cultural social intelligence. Yet it seems traditional
“politeness” is beginning to lose its appeal—it can conjure images of washing out your personality in favor of more uniform behavior. While we want to be able to engage with people in a mutually comfortable way, we shouldn’t have to sacrifice genuine expression in favor of a polite nod or gracious smile. The two are not mutually exclusive.
People who are socially intelligent think and behave in a way that spans beyond what’s culturally acceptable at any given moment in time. They function in such a way that they are able to communicate with others and leave them feeling at ease without sacrificing who they are and what they want to say. This, of course, is the basis of connection, the thing on which our brains are wired to desire, and on which we personally thrive.
Here, the core traits of someone who is socially intelligent: 01. They do not try to elicit a strong emotional response from anyone they are holding a conversation with.
They don’t communicate in such a way that aggrandizes their accomplishments to incite a response of awe or exaggerates their hardships to incite a response of sympathy. This usually occurs when the topic in question is not actually deserving of such a strong response, and therefore makes others uncomfortable because they feel pressured to fake an emotional reaction.
02. They do not speak in definitives about people, politics, or ideas.
The fastest way to sound unintelligent is to say, “This idea is wrong.” (That idea may be wrong for you, but it exists because it is right to someone else.) Intelligent people say, “I don’t personally understand this idea or agree with it.” To speak definitively about any one person or idea is to be blind to the multitude of perspectives that exist on it. It is the definition of closed-minded and shortsightedness.
03. They don’t immediately deny criticism, or have such a strong emotional reaction to it that they become unapproachable or unchangeable.
Some of the most difficult people to be in relationships with are those who are so threatened by even the slightest suggestion that their behavior is hurtful that they actually end up getting angry at the person suggesting it, reinforcing the problem altogether.
Socially intelligent people listen to criticism before they respond to it—an immediate emotional response without thoughtful consideration is just defensiveness.
04. They do not confuse their opinion of someone for being a fact about them.
Socially intelligent people do not say, “He’s a prick” as though it is fact. Instead, they say: “I had a negative experience with him where I felt very uncomfortable.”
05. They never overgeneralize other people through their behaviors.
They don’t use “you always” or “you never” to illustrate a point.
Likewise, they root their arguments in statements that begin with “I feel” as opposed to “you are.” They do this because choosing language that feels unthreatening to someone is the best way to get them to open up to your perspective and actually create the dialogue that will lead to the change you desire.
06. They speak with precision.
They say what they intend to say without skirting around the issue.
They speak calmly, simply, concisely, and mindfully. They focus on communicating something, not just receiving a response from others.
07. They know how to practice healthy disassociation.
In other words, they know that the world does not revolve around them. They are able to listen to someone without worrying that any given statement they make is actually a slight against them. They are able to disassociate from their own projections and at least try to understand another person’s perspective without assuming it has everything to do with their own.
08. They do not try to inform people of their ignorance.
When you accuse someone of being wrong, you close them off to considering another perspective by heightening their defenses. If you first validate their stance (“That’s interesting, I never thought of it that way…”) and then present your own opinion (“Something I recently learned is this…”) and then let them know that they still hold their own power in the conversation by asking their opinion (“What do you think about that?”), you open them up to engaging in a conversation where both of you can learn rather than just defend.
09. They validate other people’s feelings.
To validate someone else’s feelings is to accept that they feel the way they do without trying to use logic to dismiss or deny or change their minds. (For example: “I am sad today.” “Well, you shouldn’t be, your life is great!”) The main misunderstanding here is that validating feelings is not the same thing as validating ideas.
There are many ideas that do not need or deserve to be validated, but everyone’s feelings deserve to be seen and acknowledged and respected. Validating someone’s emotions is validating who they really are, even if you would respond differently. So in other words, it is validating who someone is, even if they are different than you.
10. They recognize that their “shadow selves” are the traits, behaviors, and patterns that aggravate them about others.
One’s hatred of a misinformed politician could be a projection of their fear of being unintelligent or underqualified. One’s intense dislike for a particularly passive friend could be an identification of one’s own inclination to give others power in their life. It is not always an obvious connection, but when there is a strong emotional response involved, it is always there. If you genuinely disliked something, you would simply disengage with it.
11. They do not argue with people who only want to win, not learn.
You can identify that this is the case when people start “pulling” for arguments or resorting to shoddy logic only to seem as though they have an upper hand. Socially intelligent people know that not everybody wants to communicate, learn, grow or connect—and so they do not try to force them.
