Strange people live on Earth

It has been really difficult for me to make a decent conversation with people of late. When a person tells me something, there is a complex thought process in my mind about keeping myself interested in what he/she is saying. I try really hard but soon realize that I am not interested in it because it is basically very serious stuff that he/she is speaking about. Very relevant to the context, of course but rendered irrelevant by my presence as the listener. Sometimes people get together and discuss their work and how hectic it is and how they are fighting these challenges. I manage a smile, not as a sign of my understanding their situation but because, when the person was speaking, I thought about something really funny. But the other person thinks vice-versa which is good for both of us until I have to make a response, by which time I am lost for what I have to say next because I was really not listening all the while to what the person was saying. I end up saying "Hmmm.." or laughing again ( this is in case I get the feeling that the person was describing something sarcastic or funny).

"Hmmm..." is reserved for when I observe profundity in the speaker's expressions. Don't mistake me. I am a logical thinker and hence can deduce that I am a really strange person and a unique one at that and a happy one for which. Being such a person will make you bored because once people learn that there is very little use of speaking to you, statements like, "Hey, Did you see the new restaurant that opened on Cunningham Road?" or "Dude, my work's really boring" will no more be directed at you and nearly all the conversation that abounds in the sound waves today are about such things or the like. You might have observed a paradox in what I say when you point out to me that I have, in my previous statement mentioned that I feel bored when people stop directing their silly conversations at me.

Well, well, this is a complex thing to explain. I may not listen to what the speaker is saying, but it doesn't mean that I don’t like this act of them speaking to me. It is really strange (to you people) that I still want them to talk. There can only be a few possible explanations that people could make for this.

1. I feel human voice is music.
2. I like to ridicule people about their interest in trivial matters.
3. I like to make fun of facial expressions of the speaker.

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that it is not because of any of the reasons that I have listed out. It is because I enjoy attention and I guess no one has guessed that as the reason. It may actually happen that you have indeed guessed the right reason and not even thought of the three points that I have mentioned as what you people may think it is because of. This again shows that my thinking is not in the same "frequency" (If I can say so) as normal people.

But, let me tell you again that I am not abnormal.
You show a child, the script of a strange language and he laughs at the curves.
You make random sounds with your mouth and people around you will laugh.

Well, I am the same. I laugh at life so much, because it doesn't make sense to me. Everything seems disorderly and strange. Therefore, I take solace in orderly things like Mathematics and Science. Philosophy, though a matter of total conjecture (and hence disorderliness) still interests me. I do not know why this is. I myself don’t understand me. One of the reasons for this is because I strangely find myself amused that I used nearly all the personal pronouns (I, me and myself) in the same sentence, in my previous sentence. This discourse has totally mind-fucked me and I would prefer to end here and go eat my lunch. If the reader is anything like me, he sure will read the whole thing but pay attention to nothing.

Friends vs Strangers

Suppose now, that you need use your computer to do a certain job. At this time another person walks to you. He could be a friend or a stranger. If it is a stranger you may not move because you got the system first but if its a friend, he may make statements like - "Hey could you please let me use the comp for 5 mins. You continue after that." and you may as well oblige. To a stranger, you are not going to move even if he wants to take just a minute. What is the logic behind all this?


Take 2 cases

Case 1: Ok, now consider that you let your friend use the computer and assume here that you need an hour to finish your work. He will probably be done in 5 mins as he says.
So your friend now waits for only 5 mins to finish his work and you have to wait for 65mins(1hr of the time taken for you to finish the work + 5 mins of waiting time by which time your friend finishes).

The total time that is used by you and your friend together would be 65 + 5 = 70 mins.

Case 2: Now suppose that you insist that you finish before you let your friend use the computer. Then, you take your 60 mins to finish. Your friend waits all this while and then after you finish, he takes an additional 5 mins to get his work done, thus totally waiting 65 mins to complete his 5 min work.

Now total time used by both together would be 60 mins(for you) + 65 mins(for your friend) = 125 mins.

So, If you let him use the computer first, you end up saving (125-70) = 55 mins of time.

But if its a stranger, you may not give him the computer, thus you end up with the situation in case 2 where u don't care about how much time he has to wait. Your work is completed in 60 mins and thats ideal for you. If u opt for case 1, with the stranger, note that you would complete your work in 65 mins, which is 5 mins more. For case 2, though you finish the work by 60 mins, there's a lot of waste in time for the stranger and you probably don't care.


Next time, if someone requests you to just hold-on for a min, so that he could finish his work, just do it(even if its a stranger). You would be saving a lot of the nation's time.