Difficult Conversations

One of the more annoying roles I played over the years was being the class representative of my batch for about 3 and a half something years. It was a thankless job which made you someone to blame for both your teachers and as well as batchmates, even for things you could never control. People come to class late? Blame me. Stipend delayed? Blame me. 

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who enjoys some peace of mind during their college years but looking back, I did learn some important life skills during that phase. The most important of them was learning how to have difficult conversations that no one else wanted to have. 

I had to talk to people in authority to get some student demands (from the reasonable to the very silly) done. This often did not end well. But you slowly build a resilience to such things. I just took it as part of the job and didn't take anything too personally (most of the time anyway). 

Once I became an intern and later as a working doctor, these skills did come in handy. Working in the ER, we have to have difficult conversations on nearly every shift. Without building some form of resilience to handle these things, one will not enjoy practicing medicine. 

Difficult Personal Conversations

While mostly a good thing in the workplace, having the ability to start difficult conversations is a +/- thing when it comes to personal life. 

I find that people of all ages want to avoid difficult conversations as much as possible, especially if it somehow involves calling them out on their behaviour. 

And this is not really something exclusive to the immaturity of youth. People like Aunt May run for the hills at the first sign of a difficult conversation and she's well into her 70s. 

This is difficult for me to sympathise with at this stage in my life. Having few fucks left to give, I can't be bothered about others feeling uncomfortable because they have to deal with some of the things they did to me. 

Guilt-trip

The problem is what happens after the difficult conversation. Everything will be spun to make it seem like I'm the bad guy for calling out the shit they had done. 

Ultimately, it again shows how people often aren't concerned about how they make others feel. At least not as much as how they feel themselves. 

The shit thing is that I'm not like most people. I derive happiness from helping others. I don't want to make others feel bad if I could help it. So this inevitably results in people making me feel bad instead of them trying to correct their errors. 

Finding Solutions

I'm not sure how to solve this because some people will take everything just a little bit more personally than you would have imagined. 

Not having such conversations is not an answer either. Solutions can only be found after talking. Staying silent will only lead to resentment down the line. 

But most of all, I wish someday I could be just as selfish as some of those around me. 

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