Waste of Time

One of the mental themes that's been dogging my footsteps this semester, partially due to the limits on my personal time and partially due to the slow-growing epiphany that has been the last five months, is the concept of the mental math that affects human relationships. Specifically, and to put not too fine a point on the matter, how much individual people are worth in terms of wasted minutes.

To explain:

Start with the fact that, like it or not, life is short and time, limited. I will never get to see all the things I want to see, do all the things I want to do, pursue every interest that captures my fleeting attention, or read all the books I want to before my eventual death will overtake me and forcibly shorten my ambitions. Neither will you. Neither will anyone.

Next, take into account that every moment spent talking to another human being is, for the most part, a moment not spent doing one of those aformentioned things. In other words, all human interactions on a social scale are, effectively, a waste of incredibly valuable time.

So why do we do it? Because humans are by their very nature social beings. We like to have other people around, some more than others, to varying degrees. Most of us can't help it. Most of us want to. For us, those wasted moments are wasted because they have some form of value.

How much value is something decided on an individual basis through a process of mental algebra that is methodically and subconsciously applied to every new person we encounter. The coefficients change depending on their actions or your preferences or circumstance or anything, really...anything can be plugged in, but the equation is always the same; is this person worth the waste of my time?

Insert Susie, circa 1981, who discovered from the time she could mentally comprehend social behavior that she a) did not understand it, b) was no good at it, and c) desperately wanted to and wanted to be. I am, I was, a champion time-waster when it comes to people. I tend, tended, to prioritize them above all else. How I came to recognize this as an unhealthy pattern is a long and overwhelmingly dull story of a lifetime, so I won't bore you (or, for that matter, myself) with the writing of it. Suffice to say that the conclusion was eventually reached that yes, people are lovely, but if one wishes to get anything at all done in life, standards are useful things to apply.  It is a process I am still trying to come fully to terms with; one of the direct results of said process is that I am more  aware than might ordinarily be expected of the algebraic equation that goes into my particular brand of people-selection.

Less patient, too. After all, I can feel the minutes ticking away, one after the other after the other; those of you familiar with my writing will note a certain pattern emerging regarding the appearance and significance of clocks. This is not an accident.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, if you are a part of my life in any degree, if I stay awake when I don't particularly want to in order to spend time talking to you or seek out your company for a pretense of a reason or call you up out of the blue every once in awhile or hell, pop up on your screen for three and a half seconds of chatting,
I.
AM.
DOING.
IT.
BECAUSE.
I.
LIKE.
YOU.
Are we clear? Do I need to say it again? Here, let me say it again:

I THINK YOU ARE, AT LEAST TO SOME EXTENT, THE CAT'S PAJAMAS. THE BEE'S KNEES. OTHER RIDICULOUS STATEMENTS THAT SOMEHOW MEAN YOU ARE NEATO, NIFTY AND OTHERWISE AWESOME.

I willingly waste my time with you because there is something about you that has twitched the result of the social equation of your worth into the positive. And guess what?

If you are reading this right now, that factor is not a question of services provided, money leant, rides given or anything else except something inherent to your inner self that I find to be personally appealing. I am not using you or humoring you, you are not a hanger-on or a schoolgirl crush or a loser or a poser or someone I keep around for the mockery value or to convince myself of my own worth. I know my worth. I don't need you around to prove it. I'm quite arrogant on this point. I have also rendered myself cold-blooded in regards to the dispensation of my very limited time on this earth. If you are here, here in my life, it is because I want you to be.

Got that?

Good.

So here's the catch; you have to want me to be in your life, too. If there is one thing I have learned in gods-be-damned Chemistry, it's that the equation has to be balanced or it cannot exist. There are always situations of inequality, relationships forced by circumstance, people who are using or humoring or bullshitting. I understand that, I honestly do.

But I am not doing that.

Relationships are on the outside ridiculously complicated things, but only because we can't help but snarl the works. Boil them down, and here's what you get:

You are worth it to me.
I am worth it to you.

It's as easy as saying hello. Everything else is just noise.

And I am no longer in the habit of wasting my time with sound and fury.