Psychic

Jeans that fit. I've given up on walking my way back into the next size down comfortably anytime soon. Don't be put off by the crossed arms. That's a polite posture in the OR, when scrubbed in, it allows others to move around you with more space.

We are not psychic. As a species, we just aren't. And yet we keep assuming we can know what is in another's mind without asking. We attribute to others what we would be feeling in that situation. Judgement, rudeness, lying, friendliness, and perhaps rarely the most accurate, disinterest. This has benefits, allows us to be compassionate. May keep us safe around hostile people. But it's not really accurate for anything less than those very general situations.

My mother consistently told me she couldn't read my mind, that I had to actually tell her what was wrong. (So, very good instructions.) I was one of those quiet kids by nature, and around my father, learned early to keep my thoughts to myself. I knew whatever I said to him would be giving him ammunition to throw back at me. And at other times, my mother would tell me she knew me better than I knew myself, knew what I was thinking. Knowing I could lie to her about nibbling on the chocolate chips she kept for baking, and get away with it, gave me a mental space of my own. Gave the lie to her contradictory assertions.

She also assured me "Of course he loves you, he's your father." I knew he didn't treat me lovingly. I didn't care if he bragged about how smart I was to the men in the neighborhood he talked with, assuming that was true. Even that smacked of taking credit for my achievements - when he actually interfered with my studying and was contemptuous of intelligence. How my mother could claim to know what he felt, especially when it contradicted my own reading, and her own statement that she couldn't read minds, confused me.

I don't know, I cannot know, what is in anyone else's thoughts. Unless they tell me, and that seems consistent with how they behave. So D and I tell each other what we feel, what we are thinking, and have so many years together to trust each other at our words. We watch Moby's body language, and guess at his intentions to the best of our ability. We know these are just educated guesses. We hope he feels loved, by treating him kindly, as the cat he is.

I have observed since childhood that the people who most assert that they are not lying, that others are liars, are the most likely to be twisting the truth all out of shape. Angry people figure everyone is out to get them. I am starting to learn that behaving in a cheerful way allows the people around me to relax enough to be at their best, take me as a friend. This has been my work of the past week, and the response, both from my cow-orkers, and within myself, has astonished me. I'd already come a long way toward this, but the sense of mastery eluded me.

Telling a girl to "Gimme a smile!" is intrusive and insulting, resulting in my own defensive snarls of "what have I got to smile about..." If only one person had told me, "When you smile, you feel better. You smile for your own joy, it just happens to leak out on others." Not to go around grinning all the time. My face when I am thinking is not a happy-looking one, but that's a matter of others trying to read my mind. Which fails, of course. But my having a ready smile, to throw up as a shield or an opening to others, helps me prepare for social interaction, upsets their presumptions about me.

The whole of life is just full of new lessons, ain't it?