Caught in the vice of hoping and encouraging connections with others, yet resenting the unveiling and vulnerability such connection brings; this gentleman projects his insight. Raised in an inner-city Manchester high-rise he now works hard everyday to conform with the mainstream culture that surrounds him. Can he maintain the obscurity that has preserved his integrity to date amidst a society that constantly probes deeper into who we are?
Curious? Read on …
Have you ever been interviewed before? If so when and why
Yeah, six months ago for a similar position to the one I work in now but in a different company. I applied for a sideways step for the possibility of new experience. I guess I wanted a change and though the money wasn’t any better and the hours were the same I felt the job offered more challenge.
Most interesting fact/s about yourself
I am an anomaly; a closed entity. I am unsure as to whether being an anomaly is a good or bad thing but I just don’t like being reached by others and prefer privacy.
Even though I am only on question four I’m already feeling apprehensive! Is that bad? What I am; only on question two!?
I have always been private and a bit of a loner I guess. The older I get the more I prefer a closed network of friends to meet up with and I grow less inclined to meet new people. Unsure whether this fact about me is due to my personality or down to how I was raised, or both. Or perhaps this behaviour is simply seeking contentment, greater personal acceptance and realising that anything more in life is a bonus.
View on current societal behaviours – prominent attractions/ concerns
I have two major concerns:
Social Media – how can anyone have 4000 friends? It seems to me that some people really believe they have all these friends as they spend time sharing their personal affairs with them; what they eat even?! The truth is they don’t even know many of these ‘friends’. At work Snapchat goes on all around me. I think people are trying to live like celebrities. They’re not celebrities though; some are far from a famous lifestyle!
I think people should just live life as it is and comes at them, as they are. You can only be yourself when you’re around someone that you really know and who really knows you. Social media is fake! A fifteen year old is really a fifty year old and possibly nothing like the character they portray themselves as on the internet.
The behaviour spiralling from online connections is peculiar. Society stinks and we have progressively let it deteriorate to this extent; no morals, principles or values. Instead every interaction has become casual and it is has become normal to be bombarded with overkill information.
Back in the day I’d watch a horror film and think ‘that’s scary’. Now sex, violence and horror are easily accessible ‘out there’ and it is all casually consumed with no emotion. There is no need to seek and reach out to discover anymore.
Ignorant people – I asked people voting in support of Brexit; why? No one I asked could answer intelligently. No one had sought to understand the wider scope of the impact of voting out of the EU. One response I heard was that Brexit would support affordable housing but I can’t see that happening. The main reason in the minds I spoke to was the need to control immigration.
At times I try to speak to the white folk at work to find out if they’re racist or not. I raise the Brexit conversation to see their thinking and many times the reasons given for their vote do not sit right with me as a black male; people around me who I thought I knew have exposed sides of themselves I do not recognise.
But I do not have to go home to them, though because I spend more time at work than home, I am so aware that they contaminate me and my experience of the world.
What is you main pet-peeve?
Don’t know if it is just one thing!
One pet peeve is my manager. This is a person I do not like. He asks me what I did on my days off and I say ‘nothing much’ because I do not want him to know my life. He doesn’t actually want to know. He just writes it down in my file because the company asks him to. This makes me feel violated.
The other day I rolled across to the desk of a lady at work; Sharon she’s called. Sharon has her wedding day photograph on her desk and I remarked ‘is that you?’ I realised after I said it that I’d probably made my thoughts too obvious. Sharon has changed a lot since the picture was taken though and I remarked to that affect. However I would feel mortified if any and every one could peer at my photographs; as if the people captured in those moments were in a cage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I am not proud of my wife and kids. It’s just that I would not exhibit them to all the people who I work with.
I regularly go out with a few people from work and they know my family. I class this small group as friends and we can talk football, politics, management matters and intimates. What gets shared in the group stays in the group.
Have you experienced love? If so when and was it worth it
Definitely worth it. It made me who I am and I am a more sincere, honest and emotional person because of love. Love is a revealing of the self and who you are. I have been married ten years in January 2017 yet I still talk about true love all the time at work; with one guy in particular. He is a Scottish guy; a deep, open-minded thinker. We often talk about our experiences of love.
What would you recommend to improve social matters?
Tolerance – we could all be more tolerant with others.
Here’s a story to consider though; every morning I get up at 4:30 to get to the gym for 6:00. Outside the gym there’s always a few homeless people and one guy in particular I would often give some change to. He is usually sat outside the Co-op huddled in a sleeping bag, zipped right up to his chin. Then last year as I was leaving the gym at 8:00, I witnessed this same homeless man getting up and stepping out of the sleeping bag. His clothes were better than mine! The trainers he was wearing were criss! Never again would I give the homeless any money. I decided in that moment that instead I would give food donations. Now just today I watched a guy buy a hot drink and offer it to a homeless man on his way to work. The homeless man asked whether it was tea of coffee and then rejected the offer because he didn’t like coffee!
Perhaps the situation could be remedied by conversations taking place and making the time to talk to one another; homeless people included. We have become a nation of ‘hurry’ and ‘got to get this finished’. There is no time to say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ or otherwise. Especially in London; I think the tube can be one of the loneliest places to be as no one has tolerance or time for those sat around them. Even in Manchester, on the Metrolink trams you can be so crushed up during rush hour; you can feel inclined to ask a stranger what aftershave they’re wearing! Yet despite the claustrophobic, close-up situation you are around strangers who wouldn’t give you the time of day if you were on fire. I am a people watcher and still can’t gauge the reaction I’d get if I started a conversation. Though I want to speak to those around me I avoid them. The world is a cold place.
Or perhaps it’s a feeling of inferiority.
If you found this article interesting please feel free to comment or ask questions below. Thank you for reading.
LJ Reel
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