I, Me, Myself

The other day found Mrs H and I chatting about people who seem to be the only significant character in their personal world. For such people, everyone else seems to have no background worth discovering and little in the way of an independent personality.

The simplest examples are people who may be chatty, pleasant and affable but never quite manage to talk about anything but themselves and their own circumstances. Their conversation always veers towards their own lives and it soon becomes obvious that they aren’t genuinely interested in anyone else and never will be.

For example, Mrs H and I once knew two people on a walking group who would always chat quite pleasantly for hours, but seemed incapable of chatting about anything but themselves and their own lives. We weren’t the only ones who noticed it.

Both of these pleasantly self-centred people were socially active and willingly gave their time for worthy causes, but in a curious way they seemed to do it for themselves, not for others. Yet it would be too cynical to point this out except privately to people who notice these things. People do notice though, it’s not uncommon to come across such people.

The behaviour of professional politicians seems to be much the same. We tend to assume there is a furtive schemer behind the politician, but what we see, the engagement with noble causes coupled with indifference to real people – there are similarities.