I have now met and interacted with enough people in my life that I am hardly ever surprised by new acquaintances. There is a great repetitiveness to conversations and to the lives of people. As far as what goes on in conversations, I might as well predict the general responses and points of views without exchanging a word. People are driven, more than anything else, by their insecurities and they will delude themselves by trying to appear strong, righteous, prim, and proper. They have never committed an evil deed in their lives, at least none that they are sorry for. They have often been unfortunate though. The world has been unfair to them. It is always others who could not understand them, who failed on their stringent standards. Everybody is always right in their own eyes and has always been so. Their delusions are side-splittingly hilarious.

In a conversation I am only ever interested in the subtext. I have heard all the boring details more times than I care for. Yes your kid is the smartest kid that there ever was. We'll see in another 20 years. Yes, you've had a terrible heartbreak. It is still only one in 150 million entirely pedestrian heartbreaks today. A hard day at the job? I get reminded of that image of the malnutritioned child and the vulture in waiting. Devoid, therefore, of either much novelty or any semblance of perspective, I find myself only ever being drawn to the subtext of conversations. Which insecurities are a person trying to dress up? How are they deluding themselves? What fears are they hiding? I'm neither sympathetic to these fears and insecurities nor dismissive of them. I'm merely interested because I have them too. This subtext is the only truly interesting part of people.