FRIDAY, 9 APRIL 2004
I often feel like a fraud when I am on the phone. I’m aware of the fact that I try to be friendly and pleasant, and to not give the other person offence – unless of course it is light-hearted and entertaining.
This is not who I am. How do I know this? Because I live with myself between telephone conversations, and I know the act I perform on the phone is only because I am lonely and I don’t want to alienate people at the moment.
The truth is that it is counter-productive. If you are friendly and pleasant on the phone, people expect you to be so in actual appearances, and if you are not, then you end up alienating them anyways.
I hate this kind of deceptive role-playing. If your social face is more in line with your sometimes unpleasant private face, people will respect you anyway for your honesty, even if it is sometimes a little blunt. More overall respect for you as a person is usually the result.
Each of us has a private face and a social face. It is our own responsibility to ensure that after a conversation with someone else the private face does not look the social face in … well, in the face and ask “Who the hell was that?”
This entry represents the necessary evolution of identity that is always on the cards.
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