Personal Space Cadets

I am a very private person and an introvert. This fact is lost to a lot of people I interact with over the period of a day. I suppose it's easy to be fooled. I talk a lot (I'm in communication field, I have to), I update my Facebook several times a day, I try to keep in touch with my friends, family and colleagues. But I do maintain a separation, silo between my family life, my professional life and my friend circles. I'd never talk about work in family or friends gatherings and vice versa. I doubt my family has any idea what I spent my time on in a given day or the challenges I face and overcome.

But there are several people who don't get this boundary, and I call them personal space cadets, PSCs, as they'll happily intrude your personal space with the attitude of a god given birth-right. They'll blithely chatter on about my personal life whether I'm present or not.

I resort to one of the three responses:

1. Red Herring: Try to steer conversation to something about the state of the world, economy or some philosophical consideration.
2. Comic relief: Try to find an anecdote which is humorous, so that I'm not the center of attentionvanymore.
3. Borg: I go on and on about some boring detail of my public life, as if like the Borgs on Star Trek, I have only one thought in my brain, and it overpowers my entire being.

I call this progression/maturity from my response 10 years ago, when it was stonewalling, not giving people access to information, and reminding them that they were intruding. I found that to be ineffective method, as it would make the PSCs even more intrusive and insistent, sometimes even offended. PSCs need to feel in control about you, and need information to confirm what they already believe about you, so they'll break everything to confirm their suspicion. The best response is giving too much information. I think I've carried the scarlet letter of the family for too long.

One of my distant cousins (who I haven't seen in 5 years) called the other day, and started the 20 questions about what's going on with my life. While I was talking over the phone, I was still trying to figure out who he was (my parents forgot to tell me that he came to our house the previous day and took my phone number).

So my cousin's question was like, tell me everything that's going on. It's hard to do that when you're in the middle of writing a policy paper. So my response went something like this:

a. I'm okay
b. by the grace of God
c. I'm so happy to hold on to a job
d. in this economy when people are losing their jobs left and right
e. for example, the jobs in the garments industry, where one of my friends lost his job the other day (true story)
f. how is this friend going to feed his family now
g. I was just over to see his young son the other day (true as well)
h. it is so depressing
i. I was up last night thinking how lucky I am (true, but the reason was something else).
j. Is he happy with his business?
k. it must be great to be in control of his own condition
l. *Pause, and let him complain or show gratitude about his life*
m. Exchange pleasantries, and hang up with a good feeling

Some principled people would, correctly, state that it is deception. I agree. I call it keeping the peace.

I would argue that we can not go through life having meaningful interactions and epiphanies every single second of our life. You have moments where you're just passing through trying to get somewhere (Nirvana, if you will). So you fill up that dead zone with pleasantries and chit chat that make it tolerable, if not pleasurable. But there's no questioning that your destination is the only one that matters. PSCs only get in the way, and they need to be managed.

I'm sounding Machiavelian, but there you have it.