a vain moment.

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Everyone, at some point or another, wonders what people must think of them. I sometimes think I wonder more than others. Especially with all the new people I've been meeting lately.

The thing is, my rational brain is always having to remind my emotional brain that people most likely don't think of me often enough for it to even matter. After all, how often is it that I sit down and actually think, "Hmm, what opinions do I have about Person XYZ?" The answer is not very often (unless you count just now, when I actually DID sit down and think about several people, solely because I realized I really hadn't before).

And when I do begin to form opinions on other people, they're quite trivial. "He seems like a funny guy," or "She seems like she knows what she's doing," or "They're quite obnoxious." Or, more rarely, "Wow, that guy had three sets of eyes!"

But then, isn't it amazing how these silly little observations can affect our perceptions of people? Maybe I'll meet someone on a day when I'm stressed out, and someone will think "Wow, what a bitch." Or maybe I'll be in a friendly mood and someone will take it the wrong way and think that I'm just a creepy gal. I use these examples because these are judgments that I've made about other people at some point in my life. And for a period of time, this is what I thought about people I hardly knew. Things that might have prevented me from getting to know them at all. And it's not like I sat here and sorted out my feelings for these people based on whatever might have occurred. So is my rational brain not so rational at all?

Jane Austin once wrote that "Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us." So perhaps I'm simply a vain person. Because I would have people think that I'm intelligent, insightful, witty, playful, adventurous, generous, free-spirited, fun-loving, positive, intuitive, confident, cute, charming, open-minded and strong. Because I am all of those things.

But I'm also selfish, egotistic, insecure, cynical, condescending, controlling, lazy, passive aggressive, flaky, idealistic, self-indulgent, indecisive, competitive, and impressionable. And I would rather people not know any of that... at least until they know the good stuff first.

Of course, any one who was interested enough to read this far probably knows most of these things about me already.