I have a very wide range of interests and can befriend totally different people too.
Last year, this time I was clubbing hard with my “crazy” friend. Who was totally different from me, she had the criminal past and a was a former fraudster. And while we were totally different, we still had crazy fun together and she has said I am the only person she has had so many adventures with.
This year, I made some new friends, very good girls, they are studying hard all day everyday, we’ve been going out to Buddha Temples and seeing some sightseeings and tasting new Chinese Dishes, I’ve been enjoying it too.
I just compared and most people I am friends with, would probably never find anything in common with each other, unless I was there as a bridge. But I still get along with them all.
My best friends back in Georgia are similar, they are totally different from each other and usually can’t get along much with each other, unless I am there.
Same, I have a tendency to assimilate the interests (along with the viewpoints) of other people as well as adapt to their needs and desires.
I do tend to do it in a way that relates to some core and inflexible aspect of myself.
For example, I once had an ex who was a beautician and started to assimilate her interests in cosmetics to the point of even purchasing and reading books on how to apply cosmetics (despite never having any intentions of wearing cosmetics). Her passion towards the subject rubbed off on me but the way I assimilated her interest was through facial anatomy.
I had a visual arts background, especially loved to draw and paint portraits of people, and studied general artist anatomy, and beauticians do similarly but with extreme focus on just facial anatomy. So the main way I assimilated her interest was through that overlap and the belief that learning about her field would help me draw and understand faces better as well as being able to relate to her better. And studying cosmetics actually did help me to understand how to draw faces better.
That's the most extreme example but I can and will assimilate almost any interest that way as long as I'm with a passionate person by relating their interests to my own. As another example, my wife was a former ballet dancer and I was a former vert skater, and I found enough overlap there to study ballet to better understand my wife and also even better understand skateboarding.
The one interest I've never been able to assimilate though is many women's love for shopping. I've never been able to understand how on earth no one gets bored shopping and browsing for hours on end. I have a few like that where I just can't seem to assimilate the interest no matter what.
I also try to change my behavior depending on the environment and people with whom I'm interacting. Some people talk and act the same way no matter what environment they're in and to whom they speak; there's an authenticity to it but it can be rather inflexible at times. I'm very different and change depending on the context. It's a social skill I needed to master growing up in such a variety of countries and always being the new kid in school and often in countries where I couldn't even understand the language other people spoke very well with completely different rules for social etiquette. I had to learn to adapt quickly over and over to radically new people, cultures, and environments.
Like you, I tend to draw the most eclectic variety of friends from all over the world as a result of all of this. One of my ultimate struggles though in the past given how much I adapt to different people and environments and assimilate so many wildly different interests was an identity crisis, like who am I really? How can I tell when I have so many interests and so many wildly different friends and change my behavior so much depending on the environment? So that was a struggle to try to figure myself out, but I've found there's some inflexible core side of me (like my tendency to write the most longest-winded posts on the internet) which never changes, and it's in those inflexibilities that I figure is the key to figuring out who I am.
Wow, interesting. I can’t say I assimilate my interests with others, I stay myself with all of them. They all have to compromise to my needs too, which they often do willingly, because they just seem to enjoy spending time with me. I do enjoy spending time with them too.
I’ve never had an identity crisis, because I always knew that, I am a person who was the naughtiest child at school and a rule breaker, even though I had straight As.
So I was always kind of controversial.
Which I guess is the part of my personality. I genuinely enjoy lots of different activities and I never accommodate doing what I don’t enjoy doing.
When I am not interested in something, I say directly, but what I find interesting I totally immerse myself in that and find it very fun to do it, I guess people are drawn to that ability of having fun.
Which I think you and I share.
I always found it cool, that I had some friends in high school, who were very traditional Christian church-goers and other friends were very bad girls and I got along with both and I even made them both get along with each other.
So, I think both of these are part of me and that’s probably why I can get along with both types.
One more thing you and I share is that I am also attracted to new experiences and will not shy away to participate in their hobbies or learn about that.
That's probably my uber-nerdy side that tends to just assimilate almost everyone's interests. 😂 I think also possibly with the empathy and ENFP thing, in some ways I can have a good time just by seeing other people having a good time. Their positive "energy" rubs off on me so it's like if they're happy, I'm happy, usually.
For example, I've never been much of a nature person. I can't just sit there and watch a sunset and be so mesmerized on my own. Yet if I'm with my friends together, I can see their faces admiring the sunset and then somewhat admire the sunset more by seeing it through their eyes. I can kind of enjoy things I normally couldn't on my own in a second-hand way.
I'm completely stubborn with my own needs and desires though. I'm the guy at a party saying, "I'm getting bored. I think I'll go sing Karaoke now, bye!" Then my friends start following me to the Karaoke even though I told them that they don't have to follow me around. I feel a bit selfish sometimes this way but oddly my friends don't seem to mind. 😅
Sounds very fun! The identity crisis thing was huge but I think mainly because I had such a jarring childhood, starting in Japan, then briefly US, then Singapore, then Hong Kong, then various parts of the US, then back to Japan, then various parts of the world, then back to Japan.
I remember in the US that I had a teacher who once sat me down after class since I never looked people directly in the eyes (considered rude in Japan). So she had me train with her to look her directly in the eyes and that helped a lot and I started doing it when I talked to people.
But then when I returned to Japan, one bartender said I was being rude to customers by looking them in the eyes too much. Oops. So then I had to adjust again and avoid eye contact, but then resume eye contact when I talk to people from the West, and I sometimes get it all mixed up. 😭
That's just a very small and easy example but I have all sorts like that which often made me question which facet of me is the truest, or if they're all true, or all false. At the end of the day I just try to share as openly and honestly as I can and that's actually part of a self-discovery process to me. I figure myself out better in the process of sharing things about myself.
That’s cute and interesting! I can imagine your confusion with such different lifestyles…
I had somewhat similar upbringing,
Not from different countries, but my mother’s family was very educated and liberal. They were very smart and successful.
My father’s family were just average people, not with much knowledge or education but more of street-smartness.
They had lots of different outlooks on life and lots of different views and even manners, I had to learn how to get along with both and not become just one of them.
I think that made me more open-minded and gave me an ability to get along with literally every type of person.
That's a very useful trait and I think it opens us up to so many new and interesting people and things to do! My mother and father were also wildly different characters which might have contributed to my tendencies, starting with my mother being American and father being Japanese but hardly ending there. My father was a very strict and traditional type while my mother was literally a hippie in her youth. 😅
The one type of person I've never been able to get along with very well are very cold types, like the metaphorical Spock in Star Trek:
They don't give me a sense of warmth and emotion to get a strong grasp on how they feel, and everything they say seems so obsessed with precision and sometimes to the point of pedantry. I start to feel like I'm talking to an encyclopedia. I tend to like the fuzziness of the imprecise figurative language since I'm more concerned with how people feel than what they know, and expressing how we feel usually can't be explained in the most technically precise way possible. So when I try to work with such types, we usually drive each other nuts.
I had one male friend like that in university, he was very smart and a genius. Always helped me with homework, in the end he opened up and I loved the fact how decent person he was and how surprised he was by my unconventional thinking. 😂😂😂 He was cute.
Of course, I became friends with him. He was always sitting alone and only talked when the lecturer asked something. I always went to sit next to him and at first, annoyed him before he started liking me and opening up to me 🤣
I've often failed in my attempts. One time we had a colleague so like that in a former team I worked in (back in my early 20s and when I was a bachelor) and so we had the naughty idea of taking him to a topless bar to see if we can bring out a more animated side to him. So we were there with the topless dancers, he ended up ordering sparkling water, and we asked him what he thinks and he pushed up his glasses and responded with the most poker-faced expression, "I was aware of the nature of female anatomy." 😅 It was a complete fail.
He could be in his own way! Actually I started to miss him more than any other colleague from that team when I switched companies. It was difficult to get much out of him emotionally but he was definitely quite the character and he was at least never mean or rude. When those cold types can be mean and rude (like ones who combine their coldness with a lot of cruel sarcasm), that's when I have the most difficult time getting along. I can get along with a variety but there is a subset that I just can't ever seem to connect with.
I had a major shy streak in my teenage years. I didn't start out shy as a boy but became especially shy in high school in the US, maybe in part since I was so overwhelmed by American culture. I remember my first day in high school and someone said, "Sup?" to me and I had no idea what that meant so I replied, "Hi, how are you?" Then the boy went, "Pssshhtt," so I figured I must have said something wrong. 😅
I thought I almost completely overcame my shyness but just in recent months after most Japanese stopped wearing masks in response to the pandemic, I feel a bit weird now in social environments and even kind of exposed showing my face to so many people. Seems like I regained some degree of shyness and have to overcome it again.
That makes a lot of sense! I seem to have at least that sort of duality and actually thought I was an introvert since I sort of live in my own mind and imagination a lot (I think that's why I tend to get lost in places like airports; I'm always a little bit out of it when I'm on my own) even though I get so excited around people and just tend to love people in general.
I was actually shocked by the MBTI and Jung test results that I test so high on extroversion since I was sure I'm an introvert or, at best, an ambivert.
Serious question now, how do you deal with day-to-day activities. I am awful at planning, my plan is that I don’t have a plan, and there’s always a new great idea that I am impressed about so I struggle finishing things I started.
Because of that I have always found myself attracted to more grounded personalities, planners, the people who are good at self-discipline, the organizational skills and so on.
My wife is a lifesaver for me that way. I thrive on improvisation and trying new things all the time but I'm the worst at deep organization and formulating the longest-term plans and committing to them. She is an expert at it.
We kind of complement each other that way because I have the inability to organize and formulate plans, so she reminds me now when I have things like a dental appointment. However, she tends to panic when her plans start to fail. That's where I come in reassuring her that everything will be fine and come up with an instant backup plan.
I've not found a better solution than to just find people like my wife. In my workplace, I also do best under very organized and disciplined planners for project managers who are strict and impose a strong sense of structure. I don't work well under managers who have a very loose structure since I tend to lose focus and get sidetracked trying all sorts of experiments and wacky ideas being an inventor type who likes to endlessly try new ideas, but has a difficult time committing to anything.
I need someone like your wife… I am so bad at making plans and sticking to them…
I feel the safest when I don’t have any plans. I find it just so attractive when people are good at organizing and all. Seems to me that they are my perfect match.
Once I really wanted to cook a meal for my ex, I went to the kitchen early morning, I started preparing Georgian delicacy, I was thinking about life, enjoying the music, watching videos and meanwhile 2 o’clock arrived when I finished.
The meal was finger licking good, but my ex was starving.
Since then, he told me “Bao Bei, I admire your cooking skills, but for my sanity, so I don’t have to wait for 8 hours next time, please, allow me to cook for you instead.”
I get away with a bit more than I probably should as well in my workplace. I suspect a very good match for you romantically would be someone great at organization and planning.
I think with my wife and me, we end up arriving at the most interesting vacations that way. Since if it were all up to me, I'd have no plan except to arrive at a hotel and just wander around and try whatever we see along the way. If it were up to her, she'd plan out every single little thing to do from early morning until we go to bed in ways that can be a bit too restrictive. So we end up coming up with a fun middle-ground.
I just can’t explain how sexy those people are to me, who are inflexible, follow the plans, organize things and fail at improvisation. I feel like they are extremely attractive
I'm similar as well as people who demand high standards while simultaneously being very organized and visionary and uncompromising with their plans (never deviating from them).
I actually worked under James Cameron on Avatar at his house long ago in Los Angeles. He was a notoriously strict boss and also fired the previous VFX team before I showed up. Almost everyone hated working under him since he's so demanding and strict.
For example in the area I worked, our team tried to simulate a jungle scene with 10,000 little critters (teeny insects and bugs) to make the scene look more alive. He wasn't satisfied and said it was too lifeless. So we had to revisit the drawing board and find ways to optimize our algorithms and code to the point where we managed to simulate 20K creatures in real-time. He still wasn't satisfied. We had to keep repeating like this until we were on the brink of exhaustion and at our wits end and finally managed to arrive at slightly over 300,000 creatures simulated in real-time for his approval. Then he finally said that looks right. Phew! 💦
Almost everyone I was working with hated him so much and wanted to quit but I actually loved it. He was one of my favorite bosses since he was so inflexible, so uncompromising, and so organized.
I even like some degree of arrogance in people provided they're very competent. The most inflexible people usually do have some degree of ego and a certainty in their vision/plans. I find it an attractive quality provided it is backed up by extreme competence.
>> “Bao Bei, I admire your cooking skills, but for my sanity, so I don’t have to wait for 8 hours next time, please, allow me to cook for you instead.”
I got the same thing when I cook! I also can't multi-task very well and get all excited especially when I try to create a new recipe. Also like to make dishes that are forgiving so that I can taste and tweak, taste and tweak, like soups, sauces, and gravy. I'm not very good at baking which requires us to be very precise.
Not really. That's why I respect my best friend so much. We're very different in how we express who we are. He's more academic than I am, especially in regard to our Faith. We're both Christian but he's very cerebral/Appolonian and I'm more Dionysian in my approach.
Each of us appreciates the other's way of doing things to give a different perspective. I'm just not that flexible.
I get along with a lot of different people. I think it was because growing up my mom's family was conservative and my dad's family was liberal. And while we may have had disagreements we always were open to what everyone had to say and respected each other's opinions as their own.
That bespeaks much of Your heart, yet a soft heart is easily pierced.
Trust Her with Your heart but keep it guarded, Trust Her with Your Path but keep the escape open, Trust Her with Your home but be prepared to repel Her from it.
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