Learning to become more easygoing

Hi there, one of the things that I do enjoy a lot about this blogging process is the interaction I have with my readers and one reader recently brought this story to my attention - I shall summarize as he gave a lot of details: he was in Paris with a friend from Singapore when a French friend greeted his Singaporean friend with 'nihao' in a bid to impress her. However, it backfired really badly as the Singaporean lady was seriously pissed off at being mistaken as a Mandarin speaking PRC, she scolded the French guy and accused him of being racist, insisting that English was her first language so he had no business trying to speak to her in Mandarin. (I refer you to the Youtube skit below.) Heck, I bet the French guy didn't know more than a few words in Mandarin anyway and he was just trying to flirt with her, break the ice but it clearly didn't work. I've talked a lot about people with poor social skills in the past but today, I'm going to talk about this Singaporean lady who reacted with such fury in that situation. Whilst I agree that the French guy was simply being rather stupid and lacked the right social skills to successfully chat up that Singaporean lady (and who said French men were romantic eh), I did think her reaction was really over the top and some of the accusations she made (such as that of racism) were uncalled for and if she was going to go through life like that, then she's going to be really quite miserable. 

Now firstly, I thought she was utterly paranoid, she assumed the worst of the French guy who said 'nihao' to her - oh come on, he didn't say, "fuck off back to China you ugly slit-eye ching chong chopsticks slut." All he said was 'nihao'. Yes it was a dumb thing to say if he wasn't able to continue having a conversation with her in Mandarin, but there was clearly no malice involved. It was just a miscalculation, a poorly executed social encounter and the French guy had misfired on this occasion. Now if I was in that position, I would have two options: the first would be to try to educate the French guy why saying 'nihao' to a Chinese-looking person you've just met is a really bad idea (and I've written a long post about this recently). Now I would do that if I did believe that the friendship meant enough for me to try to make that effort because sometimes a friend can make a mistake and accidentally say something hurtful or tactless that causes offence, in that instance I would explain why I got upset and allow them the chance to response (usually with an apology and an explanation). But sometimes I do come to the conclusion that even if there was no malice involved, the person said the things he said because he has such appallingly bad social skills and that I really don't even know where to start - sometimes the situation is such a mess that I just have to cut my losses and simply unfriend that person. In a recent post, I talked about something that happened recently in my gym when a stupid Australian guy said something really crass about Singaporeans - he was just being an idiot and I decided to simply ignore him from now on: problem solved.

Note that when I chose to ignore that Australian guy, I didn't even let him know that he had upset me. There was no fuss, no drama and instead of having that conversation with him about why what he said about Singaporeans was so offensive, I chose to elucidate my thoughts here on my blog with my readers whilst he is not even aware that I have unfriended him and blocked him on all social media. I don't think voicing my displeasure with him would achieve anything since he clearly doesn't have the social skills to deal with conflicts like that. That's why I think that this Singaporean lady's reaction to the French guy isn't constructive: she is placing the ball in his court, "you said something that has really upset me, now I expect you to apologize and fix this!" No, I choose never to hand control over the situation to another party, oh never do that - with this Australian guy, I chose to keep my feelings fully in control and pick a reaction that didn't involve his consent or participation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to suffer fools gladly - I certainly don't do that myself, what I am saying however is that there's really no point in picking fights with fools. However, that's a rather extreme example when I chose to cut someone off - let's deal with another example where I took offence but decided to be easygoing about the incident. Now my regular readers will know that I speak Welsh and I'm very proud of the fact that I speak Welsh quite fluently - a client of mine found out through my colleagues that I speak Welsh and he said that I was the first _________ (insert racist, politically incorrect term to refer to a Chinese person) he has met that speaks Welsh. I was appalled and offended of course. It was not the kind of language you would use when trying to be polite and tactful.

Yet at the same time, this client (who is Indian by the way, he isn't even white - just for the record) isn't trying to be offensive and racist towards me, hell no - he was actually heaping praises on me for being able to speak so many languages, he was calling me a human babel fish who was super intelligent. Yet he had used such an offensive, racist term to refer to me as a Chinese person. Holy shit, how do you deal with such a situation? I was appalled by his rather poor choice of language, but on balance, I decided that there was no malice involved and there was probably evidence of some poor social skills there. He didn't consider if I would be offended or upset by his language. There was a lapse of judgement when he chose an inappropriate word when talking to me but clearly, he didn't mean to upset or offend me. There was a clear absence of malice and thus in this case, I decided to let the incident go and not berate him for it. He had been not just a good client but he was one of the few who treated me like a friend as well, I decided that perhaps in his culture, he has quite different standards as to what is politically correct and in this case, I decided to be easygoing since my skin was thick enough and I valued that relationship. Heck, in any case, I was also painfully aware that for many decades, the Chinese people in Singapore had used a lot of quite offensive terms to refer to Indian people (which I shall not name here) and so perhaps on that account, I didn't have the right to demand an Indian person to be respectful and politically correct when the tables were turned. As the great Whitney Houston once sang, "it's not right, but it's okay".

Of course when someone crosses the line, there are times when you simply need to put your foot down and do something about the situation if there is malice. There is an ongoing court case in the US right now when Vernon Unsworth is suing Elon Musk over a tweet whereby Musk called Unsworth a 'pedo guy' during the dramatic rescue of the Thai football team who were trapped in a cave in Northern Thailand. It started when Musk sent a submarine to help with the rescue but diving expert Unsworth dismissed it as a PR stunt with quite disparaging language. This turned into quite a petty argument on Twitter with Musk labeling Unsworth a 'pedo guy' - alleging that Unsworth was a pedophile. This was a clear case of extremely poor social skills, Musk may be rich and run a very successful business, but in this instance, his extremely childish response to such a conflict is to resort to name-calling instead of addressing the issue itself. Musk has a lot to lose of course, Unsworth is suing him for a lot of money and has a strong case whilst Musk is naively believing that all he needs is a good lawyer to get him through this mess unscathed (yeah, right). But regardless of the outcome, it is doing Musk a lot of negative publicity and really hurting the image of his company - at one stage Tesla's stock price fell 4% after that 'pedo guy' tweet. Whilst there's so much that we can talk about in this case and I hope Unsworth gets millions in damages from Musk, simply to prove a point that social media is not a consequence-free environment, that even someone like Elon Musk can act with impunity. The bottom line is that there are many adults (like Elon Musk) out there with shockingly bad social skills and that is fast becoming the norm in this day and age I'm afraid. 

So this is the challenge we are facing today: we are facing a world where a lot of people have very poor social skills. This because so many people do a lot of their interactions online instead of in person, children grow up with electronic devices in their hands instead of climbing trees with their friends after school. The result of this is a lot of people like Elon Musk who are not stupid but make shockingly bad decisions because of their very poor social skills. So the major distinction I make is this: I have to make a judgement whether or not the person I am dealing with has any malicious intent. If there isn't, then I have to decide whether I need to ignore this person and stop considering them as a friend, or if I cherish this relationship enough for me to want to simply choose to be 'easygoing' and forgiving, because of the absence of malice. This does sometimes mean giving people the benefit of the doubt: so let's go back to that incident involving the French guy and the Singaporean lady in Paris. Sure the French guy did something stupid, but what was the point of that Singaporean lady jumping to the worst possible conclusions about his motives? The fact is your life will become a lot more miserable if you think that everyone who says something tactless or offensive has the worst malicious intent, that their only motive is to make your life hell. That's hardly the case - the fact is we often don't know and will never find out whether or not why some people may say something hurtful or insulting to us, but to then assume the very worst of all of them in every single case would lead to you imagine that everyone actually hates you and that's not a feeling you need.

I grew up with a father who doesn't speak English and often, when people say things in front of him in English (not realizing that he doesn't understand), he would often jump to the wrong conclusions because like the Singaporean lady in Paris, he is paranoid. I remember having to explain on so many occasions, "no no no, that's not what they said, they were not talking about you at all" because obviously I can understand what was being said in English. And that's only the times when I had been there to help clear up any misunderstanding - what about all those other times when I wasn't there by my father's side and he was free to jump to the wrong conclusion, assuming the very worst of the people around him just because they were speaking in English? Goodness me. But why is this the case? So, let me give you a case study from my childhood: we were checking into a hotel in Malaysia years ago when the receptionist spoke to my dad in Mandarin then she turned to her Indian colleague and said a few things to her in English. It was a very straight forward conversation like, "can you confirm those rooms on the tenth floor are ready? Do I need to check with housekeeping?" And her colleague was like, "of course they are ready lah, I already told you earlier what, don't you trust me izzit?" Then her Chinese colleague laughed in response, it was nothing out of the ordinary if you understood English but because my father couldn't understand what was being said, he immediately got suspicious and I could see him getting visibly angry. She smiled at us when she handed us the keys but he just grabbed it out of her hands and scowled at her before storming off. Woah, I hurriedly said sorry to the receptionist and ran after my father whom by now was extremely angry. He then gave me a massive rant about how terribly rude that receptionist was and I really struggled to calm him down.

In that simple example, my father was so focused on how he felt when he couldn't understand what the Chinese receptionist said to her Indian colleague - from his point of view, he was reminded that he couldn't speak English, that he felt confused at not being able to understand what the two ladies were saying to each other in English. That then reminded him of all the other times he was made to feel confused, excluded and inadequate for not being able to understand English - that made him angry and thus he vented all those feelings at the receptionist. It should come as no surprise that my father is autistic - that means he lacks social skills and is only able to see things from his own point of view. He was so focused on how he was made to feel during that encounter that he neglected to think about whether or not the receptionist had any malicious intent to upset or insult him, or indeed find out from me what was being said between the two ladies in English. Perhaps I am stating the obvious here but the common mistake to avoid is to become way too focused on your own point of view, your feelings whilst neglecting all other evidence to paint a clearer picture. So what should my father have done in that situation? He should have tried to get the information he needed (such as by clarifying with me, I was there), he should have asked me what the two ladies were saying to each other and that would have cleared up any misunderstanding. But instead, he was so focused on his feelings once he felt hurt that he acted very irrationally and jumped to the wrong conclusion. My father is severely autistic and that is how he usually behaves.

There's a certain amount of training involved in this aspect of social skills 101, it is definitely something we have to learn as we mature - think about the interactions you would have with young children, they tend to have little or no social skills. I recall how I had this random encounter in my gymnastics club with this young girl - one day she ran up to me and said excitedly, "it is my sister's birthday today!" And the first thought that came to my mind was, "why are you telling me this, what makes you think I give a shit?" Clearly that girl was very excited, perhaps she was looking forward to a birthday party later that day but what she failed to take into account was the fact that I have never met her sister and even if there was a birthday party, I wasn't invited. An older, more sensible child might have considered that and thus refrained from saying something like that to me. But what did I do? I said nothing, I couldn't say the first thing that came to my mind of course, but then this other gymnastics coach stepped in and indulged this girl. "Wow, how old is your sister going to be? Are you going to have a delicious birthday cake? Did you get your sister a nice present?" As I watched that other gymnastics coach (who clearly had a lot more experience with young children than I ever had) indulge this girl, I thought, "you're just going to give her the wrong impression that people in this world are going to give a shit about whatever random thing she does and she's gonna be  disappointed when she grows up. Wouldn't it be better to use this opportunity to teach her how to gauge the response of the other person in such a situation and develop her social skills?"

Perhaps that was a rather cruel (and even intolerant) response on my part but my point is simple: some people think that the world should revolve around them and they lack the ability to feel any empathy for others. Now before I even talk about being easygoing, the most important step is to constantly be able to feel empathy for others - it may not be an easy thing to do but like so many other good habits in life, I believe it is something we can train (and even force) ourselves to do. Don't get me wrong - feeling empathy for others doesn't mean excusing bad behaviour, but it can be key in differentiating behaviour that arises from having poor social skills and those that arise from sheer malice. Being easygoing would mean excusing those who have poor social skills whilst guarding yourself against those who are malicious. It means having a much clearer idea of what you're having to deal with because you're always looking for more information to understand the situation rather than simply defaulting to assuming the very worst of people when they get things wrong. After all, we are now living in a time when having poor social skills is becoming the norm and the chances of you running into someone saying or doing something really stupid because of that is pretty darn high, so really the only option left is to learn to deal with it in a sensible manner. Note that I wasn't prepared to be nice to that young girl who told me about her sister's birthday - no, I don't think that's what being easygoing is about. Rather, it is about consciously avoiding that sense of feeling like a victim whenever these people inflict their poor social skills on me.

So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? What do you do when you encounter people with very poor social skills and do/say stupid shit then? What does it mean to be easygoing in our society today? How do you control your feelings when someone says something that offends or hurts you? Do you recall the last time you encountered someone with really poor social skills: how did you deal wit that person then?  Leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.