People are Great

I'm shy.



Really, quite cripplingly shy.

It comes from not ever quite fitting in. Not at school, where I liked science over history. I liked classical music over pop music and I played the cello.

Not at work where I was more interested in doing part time study for a degree in computing rather than going out to clubs.

Until recently I'd been in a long term, happy, close relationship with someone who was also shy. We didn't really need anyone else. We had a very small, very select, very special group of close friends. It was good.

That shyness was a real handicap once I was on my own. Fortunately, I've a job that makes me have to "greet people" and it's my job, when they visit my office to make them feel at ease.

I think I'd told myself I didn't like people because other people, on the whole, weren't very nice. I think that was an imperfect remembering of being made to feel the outsider.

Things have improved for me, confidence wise, but I still have the odd relapse to scary intoversion.

Yesterday I was feeling really quite low having started the day listening to the appallingly sad stories of the firestorms in Australia.

I then stumbed over this on TED. So sickened was I watching the first 15 minutes that I sort of missed the point of the last bit a little. I shared it with a friend who feels stuff pretty deeply. It was countered with this. The message was clear - "cheer up - it's not all bad"

Since "the boy" died I've met several people whom I now consider to be pretty good friends. That's in just a little under two years. Add these to the people who were already friends and that's a nice community of people.

Variously they:
Suggest meeting for coffee...just cos
Send a hug by email just because my email to them sounded a little upset
They send links to photographs, to music, to videos or cartoons that I might like or that might make me laugh.
They offer to drive to my house from their just to give me a hug because they know I've just had a little melt down.
They act as "point man" for me when I meet up with someone new. They make sure I'm safe.
They offer to cook me dinner at my house when I'm likely to spend the whole evening doing a catalogue for an exhibition
They cook me meals, invite me to spend Christmas with them.
They have me visit them and take me out sight seeing and taking photographs...they share bits of their hometown that they love.
They share their love of photography, they take me out taking pictures and tell me what they can see.
They teach me about things they love - film photography, history, architecture, stone circles.
They lend me lenses just to see what they're like to use.

It's not a one way street...I do similar things for them.

None of us have to do any of these things. We do it bcause we want to.

The number of good people I've met hugely outweighs the other sort.

But this is what Philip Zimbardo is saying in the bit of the lecture I almost missed. People have a huge capacity for evil if they are put in circumstances that will encourage it...but on the flipside they also have capacity for great good.

In short. People are great...and it's a shame it took me this long to realise it.

On the bright side, if I hadn't taken the first steps, I might still not realise it