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How do loners cope in life?
Loners cope by observing people.
One funny thing about humans is that they tend to make more objective and neutral observations when they’re separated from the thing they’re observing. The abstract intellect just works like this: if you want to analyze something and figure out how it really works, the best way to do so is to step back and look down at it from somewhere else. Conscious analytical thought has to put things at a distance in order to understand them.
Now, human social dynamics are supposedly very complicated, and they can certainly seem complicated while you’re wrapped up in them. But if you peel yourself away from those dynamics for even a moment, it will occur to you that what is going on is really very simple. One good example is that, if you watch two people arguing, you can easily see how they are talking past each other and the reason they’re arguing is because they’re not really talking about the same thing. But the two people you’re watching are so wrapped up in the argument that neither of them realize what is immediately obvious to a bystander. Many human social dynamics work this way, so if you’re a loner, you are in a good position to see this all in action and analyze it dispassionately.
This loner has made the observation that humans seem to enjoy getting attention from other humans. In fact, they don’t just enjoy it. They need it. Some need it more than others. This is why, if you are quiet, people will do anything to get you to talk to them, including trying to annoy you and get a rise out of you; when they don’t get attention from someone else, the little monkey in their head that tracks their social status goes ape-shit and starts screaming and howling and jumping up and down and flinging poo, and the only way for them to make that little status monkey be quiet is to get attention from you. They may even spin this little story in their heads where you’re snubbing them because you think you’re better than they are, because of course whatever you’re doing must have something to do with me. I am, after all, the center of the universe, so everything must be related to me somehow. Yes, this is how they really think, although they don’t notice that they think this way. They are very good at ignoring things that are inconvenient for them.
If you’re a loner, you will eventually develop coping strategies, and these coping strategies result from observing other people long enough to know what makes them tick. You’ll dole out your attention in doses just large enough to get them to leave you alone. If they want something from you and throw a shit-fit when they don’t get it, you use what I call the broken record technique and repeatedly tell them that they can’t have what they’re asking for. That last one works due to another fact I have learned about people, which is that you can make them believe something by just saying it repeatedly. They will refuse to believe that they’re not getting what they want, so you have to tell them over and over and they’ll eventually believe it.
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