Are you worried about ice cubes?

Hello everybody. As a follow up to my previous post when I recounted the story of losing my temper after being ignored in a Berlin fast food restaurant and confronting the server, I'd like to talk about the mindset behind people like myself who have grown up having to deal with a lot of bullying. I would like to start with an analogy: ice cubes. If you have seen the brilliant film Babel (2006), you'll remember the scene in Morocco when Susan refuses to use the ice cubes in her cup for her drink because she didn't trust the restaurant. She throws the ice cubes onto the ground and would rather drink warm Coke. Her behaviour isn't unreasonable at all. In such countries, tap water isn't safe to drink and if you had ice cubes made from tap water in your drink, it could make you sick. Well, if the tap water was contaminated and started melting quite quickly in your drink, you could end up ingesting something dodgy that could make you ill if you do not have a strong stomach. Even locals in such countries do not drink tap water. So in a country like Singapore or the UK, where we happily drink tap water and do not get paranoid about ice cubes in drinks because we know the tap water is clean. But if you were from a country like Morocco, India or Cambodia, you could be forgiven for being careful with ice cubes even when in the UK or Singapore simply because it can be a very hard habit to break.

For those of us who have spent many years having to deal with bullies almost on a daily basis, you become very careful people and you start getting suspicious with people you have just met. It is a double edged sword - on one hand, it does make it harder to trust people as you remain a lot more suspicious of the people you meet. On the other hand, if someone is not trustworthy or simply does not possess the right qualities to be a good friend, then you're likely to suss that out quite quickly. Of course, let me be the first to admit that the vast majority of the people I meet are good (or at least harmless) and those who are bullies/troublemakers are in the minority so perhaps I don't need to be that suspicious on a daily basis. Contrast this to the situation where a child is brought up in a very safe environment and is never ever bullied, this child will then become an adult who will be so trusting and may fall prey to bad people who wish to take advantage of his naive, trusting nature because that person is totally unprepared to cope with such a situation.

So who would you rather be? The suspicious person (like Susan in Babel who chucks the ice on the floor), always looking over the shoulder and being very careful - or the person who throws caution to the wind and trusts people until that trust is broken? Well, perhaps I am talking in absolutes here because in reality, we usually settle for a compromise position somewhere between the two extremes. I hate to define the bullies in the past who have given me a hard time but I do believe that in life, it is probably incredibly useful to be careful with people. It's not like I don't trust anyone, it's more an issue of being careful whom I do trust. It's really just like my friend Gary who has a nut allergy - he has a habit of always checking the contents of the food he consumes just to make sure it doesn't contain any nuts. Having to do those checks hasn't stopped him enjoying a lot of nice food over the years, it has just become a part of his daily routine the same way some people in third world countries would check how their ice cubes were made just to be safe.

Is the ice made with clean water?

By the same token, I do have loads of good friends today - but it can take me a while before I decide if they are worthy of my friendship because I do take my time to get to know them. Now many of you will know the Disney film Frozen - Anna was so lonely and desperate for love and attention that she easily fell prey to Prince Hans after a few hours of wooing. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the character Anna - she wasn't a bad person but her character flaw was that she was just totally oblivious to the fact that she was being used and manipulated because she was way too trusting. You get the idea, people who are naive and desperate for friends can end up befriending the wrong kind of people and end up being taken advantage of. Perhaps Anna from Frozen is a bit of an extreme example, but you get the idea - I don't generally allow myself to get close to anyone until I get to know them better and I think that's probably a good idea. Some suspicion is a necessary evil in a world where you really don't know whom you could trust.

In order to find out more about people around me, I listen and observe. I shut up, I don't talk and I study them: what they say, how they dress, how they speak, how they relate to others around them. I then use those clues to try to figure out their background: what kind of family did they have, what kind of education did they have, what social class do they belong to, were they brought up in a religious family, what political party are they most likely to support, are they rich or poor, what are we likely to disagree about, just how much in common do we have? You see, this turned out to be an extremely survival mechanism for me in the army when there was so much bullying - I needed to know whom I could trust, who was harmless, who could potentially be my ally and whom I needed to guard myself against. In my last post, I talked about using the preemptive strike to ward off potential bullies - well, I may have presented myself as a rather aggressive person. In reality, I actually spend a lot of time observing people very carefully and that allows me to navigate the world around me a lot more confidently, knowing where I stand with people.

 You may claim, hey Alex, that's just common sense, we all observe those around us - nobody goes around life like a bull in a china shop, oblivious to those around them. Well, you'll be amazed at how many people do exactly what Anna from Frozen did. Let me give you a simple example of how my suspicious nature has helped me with people. You see, I like to find out more about people before getting close to them but people do not always readily volunteer information. So I would ask questions about their work, family background, education etc and okay, some very shy people may not like answering such questions but you'll be amazed how many people are so flattered by my attention and simply hand over all the information I ask for. Why? Because people naturally like talking about themselves and so they enjoy telling me stories from their childhood or something that happened to them at work etc - don't get me wrong, it's not that I am totally disinterested, but my ultimate motive is to gather enough information to evaluate if they are worthy of my trust and friendship. But they walk away from that process thinking, "oh that Alex is such a nice person, he is so interested in me. It is a pleasure speaking to him! He actually cares about what happens to me etc." You can see how my questions make them happy and it serves a vital purpose for me - it is a win-win situation.

I love asking people a lot of questions.

Having survived a lot of bullying has turned me into someone who is quite good with people and that has served me well in my career. I'd like to think that I would have developed those vital skills one way or another but I have actually seen people go through life totally oblivious about the people they are dealing with in a "don't know, don't care to find out" manner, it is almost like they have Asperger's syndrome and are incapable of developing any skills when it comes to dealing with people. There is a direct correlation between developing such 'people skills' and being bullied - the better I am with people, the less likely I am going to be bullied: thus by that token, I simply had to develop such skills very quickly in order to survive in some of the environments I had been in over the years. If I may state the obvious, having been bullied before, I don't like being bullied and did everything I could to avoid being bullied; but as a result, I developed some really useful people skills and these skills have served me very well in the last two decades.

What about you? Are you naturally quite suspicious of people? What would it take for you to get close to someone before you properly befriend them? Or are you the kind of person who can wander into a bar and start talking with a stranger over a beer or two and in little under 20 minutes, you guys are already the best of friends and are uploading wefies onto Facebook together? Have you ever trusted someone too quickly and then regretted it? Do you consider yourself a rather good judge of human character and what are your criteria in that process? Many thanks for reading.