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Mar. 11th, 2002 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kuangningOne of the things that's ringing true about Habits is the concept of Emotional Bank Accounts. And pointing out that what may seem to me to be a deposit - something that would make me happy to receive it - may actually be meaningless or even counterproductive from the other person's point of view. I know I've been on both sides of that kind of situation before.
I'm a verbal person; words are my coin, I value them. And so I give them to the people who matter to me and the people who could matter to me. In my lexicon, an email out of nowhere with a few words is one of the greatest gifts ever, because it proves that someone thought about me and thought enough of me to say something - and caring words take more effort than any other. Don't believe me? When I was a kid, one of my teachers did an experiment. He had us all stand up and each of us had to say "I hate you" to someone else. It took us less than a minute... a class of maybe 25 kids. Then he had us say "I love you"... just one word changed. It took close to ten minutes.
I remember what it felt like, standing there, trying to decide to whom it would be safest to say those words. Who wouldn't tease me for it, who wouldn't use it against me, who wouldn't cause me to be a target because of it. Because even though he told us that it wouldn't matter and that they were just words we had to say, we knew better. (In the end, I picked a safe choice... one of the quieter girls. Not one of the ones who had many friends with whom she could giggle about it later, not someone disliked, because that would open me up to ridicule, and definitely not one of the boys, because that would link my name to his for the rest of the year.)
... It was a very long time after that before I said those words again. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of the line of thinking behind my choice then, either. But it brought home the lesson: WORDS COUNT. And they still do, though they come more easily now. The emotional currency hasn't changed, it's just that I'm a little richer now than I was then.
What's your coin? How do you show someone that you care about them, or what should someone do, to show you that they care about you?
I'm a verbal person; words are my coin, I value them. And so I give them to the people who matter to me and the people who could matter to me. In my lexicon, an email out of nowhere with a few words is one of the greatest gifts ever, because it proves that someone thought about me and thought enough of me to say something - and caring words take more effort than any other. Don't believe me? When I was a kid, one of my teachers did an experiment. He had us all stand up and each of us had to say "I hate you" to someone else. It took us less than a minute... a class of maybe 25 kids. Then he had us say "I love you"... just one word changed. It took close to ten minutes.
I remember what it felt like, standing there, trying to decide to whom it would be safest to say those words. Who wouldn't tease me for it, who wouldn't use it against me, who wouldn't cause me to be a target because of it. Because even though he told us that it wouldn't matter and that they were just words we had to say, we knew better. (In the end, I picked a safe choice... one of the quieter girls. Not one of the ones who had many friends with whom she could giggle about it later, not someone disliked, because that would open me up to ridicule, and definitely not one of the boys, because that would link my name to his for the rest of the year.)
... It was a very long time after that before I said those words again. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of the line of thinking behind my choice then, either. But it brought home the lesson: WORDS COUNT. And they still do, though they come more easily now. The emotional currency hasn't changed, it's just that I'm a little richer now than I was then.
What's your coin? How do you show someone that you care about them, or what should someone do, to show you that they care about you?
