Going Deep

I've spent a great deal of my life being abundantly aware of what I thought of myself, but largely ignorant of what other people thought about me. I'm always aware of my intentions, preferences, and desires. The people I interact with should be aware of these things as well, implicitly, without any real input or communication from me. That perspective has been my unspoken (and largely unacknowledged) guide to personal relationships. My life is arid and desolate when it comes to me telling people what I think about them in either word or deeds. My likes and dislikes, needs and desires have been a closely held secret. I never let people know what I thought about them, that I found them interesting or liked to spend time with them. I never expressed affection. It was so much easier to remain aloof.

The rational bent of most of my posts here echo this predilection. Thoughts, thinking, ideas, are so much easier to discuss than feelings and opinions. Even all this business school stuff is about analyzing numbers and basing decisions on a careful analysis of the facts. I can't help but look at this business data and make parallels to the data I generate in the lab. Conventionally sound management is rooted in facts because facts are assumed to accurately reflect the environment. Facts are facts, but the environment contains the facts and all the assumptions and underlying behavior that went into generating that fact. There's also an entirely separate body of unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some fact. My research in the lab is all about figuring out what's the unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some observation. Business facts just seem to be taken for granted without too much thought about what it all means.

I think I've gone about as far as I can go with my highly rational approach to life. The next step in my career demands more. The next step in my life demands more from me on a deeply emotional level. What's going on behind the scenes, the real motivation for people's behavior, is far more important than what we see at the surface.