What on earth did she mean by this?

[Sashamasha]

Last Saturday night me and my husband had some friends over for dinner just a few other couples. One couple was a friend of my husband and his wife. She is about my age (36) and although I have seen met her several times and seen her about I've never really spoken to her before and always got the impression she was a bit shy.

Anyway after dinner some of us got talking in the kitchen just about how at our age you finally start to grow up, that you get a much stronger, more solid idea of who you are and your values and that you just really know yourself and have a handle on the world. She wasn't really saying much although she was listening.

Trying to bring her out her shell I asked her very directly what her what her opinion on the topic was and although I can't remember it word for word she basically said something like the concept of being a grown up and having some sort of control was a comfort but that as humans we are all just needs, urges and want and that any understanding we had of ourselves or the world was fleeting and incomplete. She also said she felt that thinking of yourself as some how solid, defined and in control was to be in denial of what we are and a kind of self deception although she then said that self deception was probably a necessary evil.

Well there wasn't very much left to be said after that! She sounds a bit gloomy but she isn't she is very sweet but just never says much and seems to be a bit of a loner (she's an artist). Anyway I can't get what she said out of my mind, I feel a bit disturbed by it and if I am honest I don't really understand it.

So anyone have any idea of what she was on about?

I really don't mean to be dismissive I'm not I really am interested and I do think she was fasinating I just struggle to see where a normal woman would get the energy to think like this never mind the balls to say it?

I guess we are all different, different personalities and so on and that must account for some of it but I do think that there aren't many people like her about, not that I know anyway.

I could have told you she was an artist before you said it. It's a very artisty, zen, philosophical type answer that we are all just fleeting concepts and nothing in the grand scheme of the world.

She likely is just naturally an introverted thinker who expresses herself through art and enjoys philosophy.

I actually agree with JellyBelli.

You said she was quiet, yet you decided you had the right to "bring her out of her shell" by asking her a direct question. And if she had shaken her head, dropped her eyes to the floor, blushed, felt small or stupid next to your self professed "intellectual superiority"? What then? Would you have felt good? In control? In control of her feelings?

Instead she made you question yourself.... good. It reads like you need to have a bit more self awareness than you think you have.

Blimey I must be really shallow, cos she sounds incredibly hard work, and rather poncetastic to me. On the other hand, I do have the wall of books, and most of them are classics, or what would be described as modern classics.

On yet another hand (I have many), it's mean to 'bring someone out of themselves', I'm pretty introverted, and I hate being the target of a conversation, or being forced to join in.

My house is absolutely wall to wall with books, every last bit of space has a book shelf. I keep my books because I'll often go back to them especially if it's a book that has resonated with me. I adore my books, and I don't think it's odd to keep a hold of them.

I also don't think it's a 'studenty' thing to read books about Buddhism etc (I mean the millions upon millions of practising Buddhists in the world can't all be students). I run a business and have to be incredibly practical but I enjoy reading the different philosophy's in the world. Buddhism is actually an incredibly practical religion based around how to have as little suffering in your life as possible, and one of the major causes of suffering is the idea that we are fixed or that we own things. Every single thing in our life will end, everything we think we own including our bodies will eventually be taken from us, this is not morbid this is just fact. We find peace with acceptance of this fact not struggle against it.

It seems to me she has a struck a chord with you, maybe you find the idea of no definite self disorientating? Or challenging?
I think this can only be a good thing, it's healthy to be asking these questions.

Xx

I find it a bit odd because I usually get mine from the library or if I do buy them once I have read them I pass them on I don't know why you would keep a bunch of books you have already read lying around?

Because you value them, have spent years collecting them, want to refer to them on a regular basis. Lots of reasons!

I don't particularly agree with what she said, but She sounds highly intelligent and very interesting company.

I wish more of my female friends were like that to be honest. They mostly want to talk about handbags and one another. I like them but I do occasionally have an out of body experience where I look down on myself and wonder 'why the fuck am I here?'

What she said reflects some fairly standard philosophical & psychological views of the self. Doesn't seem at all abnormal or gloomy or alarming to me. She has a worldview and perspective on things that's different to yours - this is the sort of thing that makes conversation interesting, isn't it?

I think your title for this thread, your reaction to her statement and book collection show you up as being narrow minded and judgemental.
I also think that you weren't trying to bring her out of her shell. Your direct question was confrontational. Not at all friendly.

You said she was quiet, yet you decided you had the right to "bring her out of her shell" by asking her a direct question. And if she had shaken her head, dropped her eyes to the floor, blushed, felt small or stupid next to your self professed "intellectual superiority"? What then? Would you have felt good? In control? In control of her feelings?

Instead she made you question yourself.... good. It reads like you need to have a bit more self awareness than you think you have.

^these posters pretty much sum it up I think.

just struggle to see where a normal woman would get the energy to think like this never mind the balls to say it?
Now you are beginning to annoy me
What should normal women be thinking about?
Their next spray tan?

Ha ha! That's the kind of thing I'd say without thinking not realising that it would bring the conversation to an immediate halt and make everyone feel uncomfortable. You sound like you and your friends were just chatting but she make a valuable and deep and rather insightful contribution to your comfortable conversation and you didn't know what to do when someone challenged your world view.

She sounds really interesting and I'd be dying to get to know her better.

I just struggle to see where a normal woman would get the energy to think like this never mind the balls to say it?

What's your definition of 'a normal woman'? Do you mean people who are the same as, or very similar, to you, and accordingly 'think' the same way?

I've got two primary aged kids, I'm self-employed and currently setting up two new ventures, I help out at the school, and I exercise 4 times a week. I still have the time and the energy to 'think'. I'm neither extra-special nor sub-normal.

Surely people 'think'? It's not an esoteric activity that requires special allocations of time and conserves of energy, is it?

The 'normal woman' thing is bonkers. I can't believe people DON'T think about these things.

She also said she felt that thinking of yourself as some how solid, defined and in control was to be in denial of what we are and a kind of self deception although she then said that self deception was probably a necessary evil.

I agree absolutely with this. We're just fragile lumps of flesh who don't have half as much control over our destiny as we think. And I like that.

Very interesting.

I kind of agree with her, but part of growing up is the insight to recognise the needs, urges, intuitions etc.. Insight and awareness and modifying our reactions are part of growing up. Or have been for me.
Our time on earth might be fleeting and our 'self' might be an illusion but at the same time people can be habitually funny, habitually mean etc... we only get one life so it's worth figuring things out!

I think most of us have a blind spot (or two) rather than being in total denial. The concepts are difficult to understand. Other people's blind spots protect them and frustrate me and my own blind spot protects me from something. I'd love to know what my blind spot is.

I guess I just feel like my headspace is taken up with work stuff, stuff about my kids, my family and friends. Perhaps some people just have more mental energy than I do. I accept that I'm not especially deep or intellectual in the way others are. I've always felt I was clever though and its easy for me to dismiss "deep thinkers" as pretentious navel gazers even if on some level I know there is more to what they say. Its just to much work to get into it all.

Can anyone recommend a fairly short book on this sort of thing?

I think what she meant was that any control or strength you think you have is very easily wobbled by things like illness, car accidents etc the stuff you can't control or anticipate.

However I think you both have a point.I would say in my mid forties I am much more confident and sure of what I want and how to respond in certain situations etc but as I have a child with ASD, a chronic illness and a DF with dementia some days my strength is hard to find.

I do like to read mostly fiction though crime fiction and thrillers but also some literary fiction I love Gone Girl.

'Gone Girl' is pretty much one huge musing on the illusion of control over one's life and a stable concept of who anyone truly 'is', 'how' we change in response to events outside of our control, and how social concepts such as 'the cool girl' shape our behaviour.

I think she sounds great, very interesting and I agree with her perspective.

I totally agree with what she said and don't think it's particularly controversial. I think the majority of human life and motivation is based on many of the same urges and needs that animals have. Most of what drives people is the need for food, shelter, status, producing children with the most ideal mate and then protecting our offspring until they are independent. Our lives have all sorts of complicated detail, but it all pretty much comes down to those needs.
We generally don't like to see ourselves in this light, so to make ourselves feel better we pull the wool over our own eyes and imagine we are in control and important and not just an evolved ape with a bundle of wants and needs and impulses living out a very brief life on a little planet in an infinite universe.
That can seem like a gloomy view but I don't find it so. It makes our everyday differences and problems seem less significant.

just struggle to see where a normal woman would get the energy to think like this never mind the balls to say it?

Ummm, it takes energy to think??? And why would it take balls to say it?

I've always felt I was clever though and its easy for me to dismiss "deep thinkers" as pretentious navel gazers even if on some level I know there is more to what they say.

Well that's not a very clever thing to say. I think most people are capable of deep thinking or questioning the meaning of life and the universe without being overwhelmed or pretentious naval gazers.

I think she has made you feel a bit uncomfortable OP and so you are rattling off things to make you feel better, e.g. Airy fairy, a bunch of books lying around etc. I don't think you mean it necessarily as judgementally as it sounds, but it's worth asking why the thought of women sitting round thinking deeply, reading widely and establishing their own private coda for living their lives makes you uneasy or surprised. On the other hand being intensely practical and wanting just to crack on with the everyday is pretty rational too and no one should judge you for that either just because they find philosophising more meaningful. We're all heading for the same end anyway, it's whatever makes traversing this stretch of consciousness we call life more interesting and bearable after all

www.bbc.co.uk/music/records/nn9g95

I m listening to 6Music and this track by Jeffrey Lewis came as I was reading this thread.
It seems appropriate 😊