Something I was thinking about the other day - someone I know here, who doesn't, shall we say, always have the highest opinion of themselves (certainly not as high as what I think they would be entitled to have*)
(*Though I'm one to talk)
And they were in a fit of unhappiness one day, and I had mentioned I cared about them, and they sighed and asked me why I did: what did they have that made them so outstanding I should care about them?
And that kind of shocked me. Because I realized maybe people have different "default levels" for thinking of someone as a friend? I admit I am not someone to get super-chummy super-fast (got burned a few times as a teen by someone who seemed friendly, got some information out of me, later used it against me). But my default really is: I like the person unless they have been demonstrably cruel to me or to someone else weaker/lower-status than them.
I mean, yes, given my tendency towards a "Golden Retriever" sort of personality, that is very on-brand for me. But for me to actively DISLIKE you, you do have to have been mean to me, or regularly be rude to people who are below you in the pecking order*
(*I am thinking of one former admin here)
And I think I kind of flailed my hands and said "I like you because you've never been mean to me" and it sounds like a pathetically low bar when you say it out loud, but: people don't have to earn my friendship, I guess. I think favorably of people unless they give me reason not to.
(Though again, I've been burned by that once or twice, even as an adult: there is someone I thought of as a friend who....used me a little bit. Oh, not the way you might be thinking, it was more along the lines of my doing work and their taking credit, and that gave me a weird unhappy oogy feeling about them, but)
But yeah. I like most people...heck, I would even say, coming from my background as a Christian - I love all people. Some of them I may want to spend less time with because of who they are. But people don't have to earn my love, that's maybe a nicer way of saying it than "I like people when they are people who have never been mean to me."
But now I do wonder, if that's part of my past frustrations, and some of the difficulty I've had making close friends: maybe for some people, "liking" someone isn't the default position? Maybe some people dislike someone until they've proven themselves worthy of friendship? That seems to me a strange way to operate, but maybe that is why in some cases I've felt rebuffed by people it seemed like I'd been perfectly friendly to....and maybe why on some occasions I've tied myself in knots doing stuff to try to "make" people like me.
Heh:
But yes, I do find it frustrating when I am perfectly nice to someone and they seem to dislike me. (So: maybe more like Pinkie Pie in that one episode with Cranky Doodle). Because I tend to feel like rejection of someone's friendship is a punishment of that person...one I reserve, as I said, for people who are openly cruel in some way.
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