Pages
▼
Tuesday, 17 March 2026
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.
I know or have known quite a few such people. I tend to avoid getting in 'conversations' with them. Much like politicians...
ReplyDeleteI believe there are a handful of significant personality types (some good, some bad) but there is a tendency not to recognise the fact unless actual behaviour is bad. Otherwise how would collective society get along?
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine the furore if personality testing was applied to prospective parliamentary candidates? All the charities that support neurally divergent types would fiercely criticise the testing. But some political parties might manipulate the testing to their own ends...
Perhaps it is better just to judge by actions, not appearances? We should do more of that.
Bucko - that's what we did with our walking group, we avoided two people for that reason.
ReplyDeleteDJ - I agree, we should judge by actions, behaviour is what we observe. Voters don't do nearly enough of it even when it makes no sense to vote for someone who regularly lies to or misleads his or her own voters.
On the whole I'm not too interested in me. But as I've got older I have reflected on how lucky I've been, how often my father could offer a sharp analysis of a problem, how shrewd my mother was, how good some of my schoolteachers were, and so on. What I don't do is discuss all this very much - except occasionally on the internet.
ReplyDeleteLord knows why. Nobody else, except my beloved, could possibly be interested.
And her background is far more exciting - shipwreck, cannibalism, kidnapping ...
Steady on dm! You'll be having a program made about you by Ben Fogle if you don't watch out.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI encountered this phenomenon when I met up with my university friend reunion events in 2017, a large self catering holiday house in north Devon, with wives, (but not mine) and in 2024 in the Premier Inn Petersfield, just ourselves, 7 people.
ReplyDeleteOver the two meetings, I spent some time interviewing some of the individuals about their lives and how their careers had turned out, because I was intrigued and interested in them as fellow graduates, with diverse backgrounds and professions.
They were aware that I had had a very unusual career, starting as a trainee restorer at the British Museum and going on to work on restoration for The National Trust and English Heritage, appearing on television and newspapers, before changing careers and retraining as an engineer and working in diverse branches of industry, including solar energy and aerospace.
Not once did anyone ask me anything about either my career or private life. I felt like i was merely a cipher to banter off and make up the numbers; they could not have been less interested.
I felt, after that, seeing how close we had been at university and for sometime after, considerable disappointment. I resolved never to see any of them again.
dearieme - shipwreck, cannibalism and kidnapping? Sounds like a book deal with TV and film rights to be negotiated.
ReplyDeleteTammly - Ben Fogle eh? Apparently he says there is a mental health epidemic in the UK and as a media bod he ought to know.
Tammly - that sounds dispiriting, it's no surprise you gave up on them. Odd too because it surely misses the point of meeting up. Perhaps it's a more common than we care to admit when we just have to get on with people to some degree.