Let me preface this entire thing with one basic fact: I am an asshole. I know it. You know it. I don't feel bad about it. A scorpion doesn't feel bad about who he is because it's just his nature to sting things. Now I'm not as dickish as a scorpion, but you get the idea.
In our lifetime we will meet a lot of people. Some of those people will stay with us. Some of those will actually be considered friends. In more cases though they're just people in your general orbit and you in theirs. These could be people you work with or even family members you're not particularly close to (think in-laws). They are part of your life's landscape, regardless of if you want them there or not. Now I've already talked about the various friends we have or even the loves we could potentially have. What about the other people? There are those who you feel somewhat ambivalent about and others you've found you just don't get along with. A person is really a collection of thoughts and experiences that they use to move through life. Each person is different, even if there is an overlap in experiences with someone else. So everyone is going to approach the world a little differently. With that comes eventual conflicting ideas on how things should go.
Have you ever met someone you just didn't like? If you're more than three years old then most likely the answer is yes. What is it about that person that you disliked? Sometimes it's hard to quantify why you don't like someone. On the other hand sometimes it's very easy because they seem to embody the very antithesis of everything you believe. Everything they say comes out like nails on a chalkboard. Their thought process is an asinine collection of ideas, all of which only help cement the fact that they should have been eaten at birth to save the world from their stupidity. The thing is that somewhere someone may think the same thing about you. It's a strange idea because in our own minds we always make sense. Sure there are times when we know we're wrong or behaving stupidly, but for the most part we're used to it. Our friends and family are also accustomed to our behavior, even if they don't always like it. So if that's the case with ourselves then it must also be true for the bitch at the office who drives you crazy. To her you're the one who is wrong or unreasonable. She probably has friends and family of her own who love her and think she's a great person. It's just that when the two of you get too close to each other it's like two magnets being forced apart.
I wonder if it's possible that there is more at work than just a personality clash. Sure you can have two people who just don't see eye to eye because of differing religious, political, or idealistic views. In those cases it's just a matter of pre-existing thoughts and ideas that make it next to impossible to agree. Hopefully in those situations there is enough respect on both sides to simply agree to disagree. There are those people out there though who feel compelled to make it so that you not only see their point of view, but agree with it. Those kind of people remind me of old school Christians who thought it was their duty to bring the word of God to the savages, even if those savages survived for thousands of years before hearing the name Jesus. In some cases that need to bring everyone on board to the same way of thinking was done with force. I wonder if part of it is based on insecurity. Having everyone agree with your idea helps validate what you're thinking and without it there's a lingering question that maybe, just maybe not everything you think is automatically the truth.
Just as there are allergies to various foods and medications, I wonder if there are allergies to certain types of people. We've all heard of a person who is toxic. They bring everyone around them down. Those kinds of people are obviously bad and act like a blight to the world. What I'm talking about is a bit more subtle. Maybe it's not even the person so much as it is the idea they're representing. As I've mentioned before, thoughts are a pretty powerful thing. Maybe more powerful than we realize. Those thoughts could be floating around and bumping into things. When they touch you there is an immediate reaction where your own mind recoils from it. Then again maybe it's more of a physical reaction to the actual person. There are those people in your life that feel like home, for lack of a better word. Something about them just feels right and you fit together like you were meant to be connected all along. If that's possible then the opposite must also be capable of happening. In that sense then our reaction would be beyond our control. We run into a person that we're "allergic" to then there is no hope of getting along with them. We weren't meant to be close to them and forcing it only makes things worse. It's something to think about the next time you run into that annoying blowhard that just won't stop talking. There could be more at work than just the fact that they're not your type of person.
