What is it that sometimes bores me to death with people, makes me yawn my head off?
Typicality. Being true to type.
I enjoy meeting people a lot but my enjoyment is severely damped by recognition.
Let’s admit it: some of the things we do and say, some of our actions and behaviors, are truly our own. But many things are not; they are just mimicry and imitation, borrowed from our circle of friends, our social class, our sex (typically [fe]male!,) our nationality, our profession, from the city we live in, and even our neighborhood in that particular city.
As I said, I enjoy meeting people but I don’t much enjoy meeting Sweden or America or Hungary or Stockholm or Östermalmstorg.
But that is often what I do, meet behavior that I for the life of me cannot see as individual. I see a unique person in front of me but the clothes, the words, the style and the attitude are typically Swedish, or Hungarian, or Stockholm-ish.
Then I yawn, at least on the inside.
(But we can also narrow down the picture, from the country, city, neighborhood to the individual himself. Predictable individualism is not as bad as predictable national character, but can also turn stale. Our own predictability is unfortunately always easier to live with, in accordance with the Icelandic proverb Everybody likes the smell of his own fart.)
I guess I like surprises. In nature nothing is alike, not two snowflakes, not two flowers. In human nature much is alike, sometimes on the verge of being cloned.
Imitation, rather unintentional, unconscious imitation is the culprit. Of course I know that I cannot ask the world and the people in it to stimulate and entertain me. I mean, how many people find ME entertaining?
I am sure there is satisfaction in imitation, otherwise we wouldn’t do it so much. I just wish it wasn’t so easy to (correctly) guess what Swedes and Americans are going to say next.
Makes me feel like a Google algorithm.
