Humans Are Social Animals

"What happened to not relying on others for my own pleasure? What about them relying on me?"

"Oh don't be a child," she shoots me down and when I protest she patiently explains, There is a difference between helping and relying, just as there is a difference between volunteering and holding down a job. And besides, my dear, all I was saying was to not look to others for validation, that has nothing to do with this.

"Awareness of yourself. Contentment in yourself. All of that is only a shadow on the fullness of one's purpose."

Any attempt at a subsequent point on my side of the argument was cut off with a severe stare from her.

"Humans are a social animal, my dear. You rely on others around you for fulfillment, but the groundwork always has to come from you."

"Still having my purpose be committing to the needs of others," I start even though she is having none of it.

"Your first purpose," she says, "One of your purposes. A part of you much like your contentment is a part of you. Only one of many pillars that provide your foundation but foundational all the same and besides, you asked me what your purpose was and I answered it.

"You chose to go back in your own timeline. You chose to enter another. You chose to make this leap and that made this a kind of job for you. You're bound to these people, to these lives that were set almost in stone but unwritten by your actions. You owe it to them to be better. And to make them better too."

Some of them I could see. Some of them certainly deserved it. But others... well let's just say that I wouldn't lose much sleep if I found out that-

"Don't be a child," she cut off my thoughts in my own head and then chasitzed me once more, adeptly pointing out that, "You only have a glimpse into the surface of people and there is so much left beneath.

"You martyr yourself. You crucify your troubles and you bear them like a burden and that is valid, but only for you and only because you have the fullness of your own context. You know your own history but they know theirs.

"Are you really so naive as to think that others wouldn't see you as you see yourself?

"Do you not think that you would seem an asshole to them? That the coldness of your interactions would not be read in the most unkind light to them? People think the worst of people, that is almost an inevitability with your ilk. You, your whole damn species, are almost always unwilling to put yourself in someone elses shoes or be kind to them.

"Give them the benefit of the doubt? That's a phrase that I find a mockery because you all almost never are willing to do that.

"People looked at you as an aloof asshole. People looked at you as uncaring. The distance you put between yourself and them was thought of as aloofness, as pride. As the deadly sins that you all mock so much.

"People thought the worst of you just as you thought the worst of them. People thought the worst of people you loved. People were not willing to forgive.

"Like with Eddie..."

"But his parents," I protested, anger rising up and meeting the resentment I had for them, "They broke that boy. They made him-"

"They have contributed," she agrees, "But you only know that because you let yourself learn it."

I know the point she was making here. I understood the end game of this conversation and I didn't want to hear it.

She didn't know how he hurt me.

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