No, this is not a plug for the canadian tv series, but about dealing with people with elephant-like memories. No detail goes unnoticed with these folks, and when you try dealing with them on one issue, another issue gets thrown in your face, and not in a 'shifting the base of the argument' type. To the other person, that would have been the basis of disagreement at the first place, the current issue just happened to surface.
I recently was on a leave from work in Chennai, and caught up with friends and family. As always, when old friends catch up arguments and discussions are bound to happen. In one such instance, I was hopelessly entangled in a dumb effort of 'mediating' an argument of sorts between two friends, which surfaced when one of them (lets say A) was hurt by certain recent developments in which he wasn't kept in the loop. On the surface of the argument, A was sounding like the sort of person who has an opinion on everything, therefore this was just nitpicking on B's genuine oversight. But when A started putting things in context we realized that there was much more to it, and his original reaction and things he said were a massive underreaction. Ofcourse, all of us supported B and ganged up to roundly critize A and still gave him a hard time for not keeping us informed of all this past stories, but that's our way of softening the blow, and a lame attempt of apologizing.
Life can be tough at times, it must be tougher for people with elephant-like memory. I realize that over time and with enough memories, the ability to move on is also largely dependent on how you deal with the situations at hand, and for people who face continuous onslaught of past and present memories, a continuum of sorts, it must be an exhausting ordeal. My respect to all the ladies and gentlemen who go through life through this path. I'd like to believe that I'm more of a cupboards, and cabinets sort of guy, whether I want to or not, events happen, thoughts and ideas linger, and eventually gets stored. The day I start opening and sorting those cabinets is the day that I decide to make a memory out of it and move on. Somewhere along with me I carry it - either in my memory, or in my actions, or in my choices. Which makes me a bundle of contradictions.
I recently was on a leave from work in Chennai, and caught up with friends and family. As always, when old friends catch up arguments and discussions are bound to happen. In one such instance, I was hopelessly entangled in a dumb effort of 'mediating' an argument of sorts between two friends, which surfaced when one of them (lets say A) was hurt by certain recent developments in which he wasn't kept in the loop. On the surface of the argument, A was sounding like the sort of person who has an opinion on everything, therefore this was just nitpicking on B's genuine oversight. But when A started putting things in context we realized that there was much more to it, and his original reaction and things he said were a massive underreaction. Ofcourse, all of us supported B and ganged up to roundly critize A and still gave him a hard time for not keeping us informed of all this past stories, but that's our way of softening the blow, and a lame attempt of apologizing.
Life can be tough at times, it must be tougher for people with elephant-like memory. I realize that over time and with enough memories, the ability to move on is also largely dependent on how you deal with the situations at hand, and for people who face continuous onslaught of past and present memories, a continuum of sorts, it must be an exhausting ordeal. My respect to all the ladies and gentlemen who go through life through this path. I'd like to believe that I'm more of a cupboards, and cabinets sort of guy, whether I want to or not, events happen, thoughts and ideas linger, and eventually gets stored. The day I start opening and sorting those cabinets is the day that I decide to make a memory out of it and move on. Somewhere along with me I carry it - either in my memory, or in my actions, or in my choices. Which makes me a bundle of contradictions.
