Vulnerability and lack of compassion for others

I have been meaning to write about this for a really long time but my schedule hasn't allowed me any time.

Lately, for over a couple years, I have been noticing how there are this one kind of people who I just DONT understand. I run into them every now and then and every time, they leave me extremely confused. I go hours thinking about their attitudes and what makes them that way. I have a theory that I have to rediscover with every person and fortunately enough, it fits well, every time.

I am too reluctant to jump to my theory at the first sign of such "confusion," as I strongly believe that every person is different on many levels so I can not generalize them without sufficient evidence.

Let me explain what kind of people I am talking about. These are the people who on the surface will be nice yet willing to hurt you. The way they hurt others isn't outright mean but more manipulative. They are not outright in-your-face evil, which is the sad part. These people are very complicated to understand, at least for me. They are not evil yet they make you feel that way. They are also nice and have the ability to leave lasting impressions of various impressive kinds.

The problem with these people seems to be in their more than normal willingness to hurt others. Now, they don't do that because they hate you, or all humanity. They do it because well, according to them, you did or "could" do something very highly inappropriate, which could potentially hurt them. You could probably see through that sentence. If not, I will be sure to explain that later, as that is the point of this post.

If you hear people uttering various renditions of "I dont care about others feelings, I am/will do the right thing" etc, you can be reasonably sure (with discretion) that you have stumbled upon one of those people. You might also find them to be very judgmental. Lets say, very, very judgmental.

They will be willing to judge you over anything under the sun, obviously depending on who they are. The last person, who lead me to start thinking about this, announced that the only thing she finds wrong and annoying is being "stupid". Our conversation happened to be about the intrinsic meaning of life and lack thereof. The lack of the intrinsic meaning of life makes it even more necessary to give some structure to acceptable behaviors. In the person's opinion, stupidity is one such structures to follow.

(Now, in defense of the person let me mention that I am very sure this person is not stupid enough to actually believe that ones understanding of "stupidity" determines any code of conduct for others. This reply was at the most an attempt at face-saving in reply to a strong opinion I had expressed earlier. The comment was about something stupid I had done, in her opinion.)

Anyway, further conversations followed which gave more beef to my theory and thus proved it once again.

I have learned this the hard way, which now seems like common sense. Lets see if this "lesson" sticks or if my conscience keeps me from generalizing a similar situation again.

The conversation that followed educated me a little bit about the person. It provided me more evidence to support the claim that most of the people who sometimes seem worse than evil are actually very, very, very scared or badly hurt. This person has gone through a lot in her life. I dont know what exactly it is, all I know is, it was big for her. She is a smart person. She knew what she was doing, what defense mechanisms she was using and why she needs to. She is, however, too afraid to let them down. The defense mechanism, i.e. being apathetic towards other people and your emotions which allows them to hurt other people more easily, stands as their protective wall which also pierce through others quite painfully.

This reminds me of very popular archaic character of villain. Villains or the bad guys in most stories have been hurt badly. It is that pain which makes them the bad guy; too apathetic to care about others.

For me, it was a difficult position to be in. On one hand, she had been and could continue to manipulate and hurt me to protect herself. The reason why a person like that would manipulate others is to get what they want from each situation. They have had enough scary experiences to trust the world as is. This leads them to manipulate others to act in ways that either gives them more power to control situations or at the very least, act in ways that these people have experience dealing with.

On the other hand, I could see through this side of her, which awakened the nurturing part of me, for her. I wanted to ease her pain. However, I was very aware from my previous experiences that taking care of this kind of people is very difficult. They require a lot more care and attention and they can grow to depend on you quite a bit, sometimes more than you can handle. (When I realized this, another question arose: Is the right thing to do right because its right for others or yourself?)

I have been in this situation before and it can tear you apart, especially if you care about the person even the tiniest bit. It took me forever to understand my previous encounters. I never ended up figuring it all out. The reason was, these people act in ways that qualify and show through as strength. They can hurt you and you gotta save yourself from them. They have pseudo-strength, but it is very difficult to realize that when you're getting hurt yourself. What it actually is a very vulnerable inside that needs that protective mask of strength. It sounds painful to imagine. It is sad that someone could be so scared and vulnerable. But that is the truth.

Sadly, there is another truth to it. You HAVE to protect yourself as well. In this situation, I allowed the conversation to die. If you know me well, you might have discovered that I leap up to help and protect those in emotional pain. I can not watch people suffer, no matter how long I have known them. I let this conversation die because I knew I could not take the responsibility for this person, which I would have wanted to take.

I hope this experience allows me to learn that the next time I encounter a bitter, paranoid, judgmental person, I could quite safely assume that they are hurt and vulnerable (Duh moment, eh?). However, then, instead of trying to ease their pain, protect myself from them first. I can do a better job (if required) if I disarm them.

Before I end this post I would also like to bring attention the fact that we ALL are scared of one thing or the other. Some more than others. We all need protection, from ourselves and others, and those we love dearly. We are all very vulnerable and very strong, as we have the power to protect ourselves without hurting others.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed.