Moving Past Being Liked

This week I came to two realisations. First, I desperately want people to like me. Second, I desperately want that to change.

I’m not talking about popularity here, I’m talking about something a little bit different. I don’t mind not being the most popular person in a group. Growing up as a nerd one gets pretty used to the fact that there are people out there more popular than you are. That’s not my problem. My problem is that I want people I know to think fondly of me. And I don’t just mean the people I like. I mean everyone I have ever met.

To maybe put this into context for people who don’t understand exactly what I’m talking about let me tell you about what happens whenever I fly somewhere. Whenever I fly somewhere I’m always terribly disappointed. Not because of the food or the seating positions or the in-flight movie selection or the headphones that don’t work or the headphones that do work but only in one ear or the little bag of peanuts. No, I’m always terribly disappointed because I never feel that the air stewards like me enough. And I desperately want them to like me. I want them to like me so much that when the headphones are only working in one ear I suggest it might be my fault. Or if I want a bottle of water with my peanuts I tell them it’s OK if they get it for me after we’ve landed. I even try to remember their names. Not so I can use it in that annoying way to pretend that we’re friends but just because I think it’s nice if you remember someone’s name.

You can see how this desire to have people like you might cause a problem. You can’t be everyone’s friend and when you try to be, well, you either have to lie or you have to compromise who you are. In both cases you’re being dishonest and I don’t want to be dishonest anymore.

I don’t want to be dishonest because I think, inevitably, dishonesty stops you from achieving what it is that you want. I remember when I was in high school, me and a bunch of friends tried to shoot a pilot for a comedy show. I don’t remember it being very good although I felt like we had fun trying. One thing that has never left me, though, was when we were trying to shoot a skit we’d written about asking for help in shopping malls.

You know how malls always have that information counter? Well we had a skit where one of us would go up to the information counter to ask for help. Only it wouldn’t be for help finding something. It’d be help on fashion (like I said, I don’t remember it being that good). I remember we went into the shopping mall with a boom mike and a video camera and tried talking to one of the ladies that was manning the desk. Well, I don’t know what kind of security company was in charge of this place but they swooped down on us before we’d gotten so much as a response from the woman. And I remember at this point just wanting to stop. Not because I didn’t think it was funny but because I didn’t want to security guard to dislike me. And I didn’t want the staff at the shopping mall to dislike me. I remember the other guys wanting to try again and me desperately wanting us not to.

Now I don’t think this show would really have ever taken us anywhere (did I mention it wasn’t very funny?) but I still regret my decision. I regret it most of all because I can’t respect it. I really wanted to try to make this show but when the crunch came I chickened out. And I didn’t even chicken out for a good reason. I chickened out in case, heaven forbid, a security guard thought badly of me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting I want to go out there and make the lives of everyone I meet a living hell. Far from it. I want to be an honest, caring person. But being honest sometimes means telling people things they might not want to hear or things that they’re going to hold against you. Being honest also means not compromising on who you are and what you want, even if it means stepping on some toes. In the past that would have stopped me right there. But now I tend to think it’s better to have been honest and have someone dislike you than the alternative. Because the alternative is to lie. Not necessarily to another person, maybe just to yourself. Regardless, it’s not something people can respect. And I think if you want to succeed, you need to be respected.

This is really difficult for me because for as long as I can remember I’ve always wanted people to like me. I’m not sure if it’s because I was a first child or if it’s because of ego or what but it’s been there for a long time. Of course not everyone likes me. I’ve realised that from an early age, too. But the people who didn’t like me were often the ones I tried the most to please. And yet, the funny thing is, in spite of all the things I tried I can’t think of one single case where a person changed their mind.

Which makes me think that sometimes you can’t change those things. Or at least you can’t by pretending to be something that you’re not. You are who you are and you do what you do and if people don’t like that, they don’t like that. That’s just the way things go. But if you’re honest about what you’re doing and what you want then at least there’s one thing everyone can say about you: you deserve to be respected.