Bauhaus

Daily journal
2020-01-20 19:28:45 (UTC)

High School Continued

[Written Friday, 27 December 2019, 23:14]

Another standard, nothing-worth-mentioning day.
So lets go on with my trek down memory lane.

So in high school I always showed up at school early, like around two hours before the school day actually started.
This gave me a lot of time for just introspection and daydreaming.
I would lean against the walkway railing outside our home class on the second floor [I actually cant remember what the proper English term. One of the few times it shows that English is not actually my home language. The class you start with every day, they take attendance and its pretty much just half an hour of free time at the start of the day] and just stare into the distance and let my thoughts go wherever.

Probably about half an hour after I showed up, one of the girls in my class would also show up. Janeska. She was nice. Probably the closest thing I had to a female friend. We shared most of our classes and subjects.
We had a few nice chats, just taking about nothing of real consequence.
Of course I ruined that relationship near the end of high school. I didn’t know how to give a gift, or how to accept a gift being refused.
Janeska wanted to go on some trip but needed a few hundred bucks for it [With today's exchange rate, it would have been around 30 USD]. I offered to give it to her. She said she couldn’t accept it. I insisted, so did she. I pushed things too far by basically putting the money down on the ground and saying in my mind I’ve already given it away, and whether she actually takes it or not doesn’t matter. A few hours later she gave me a note in class with the money, basically saying thanks but no thanks.
Since that incident we pretty much only ever greeted each other in the mornings, but nothing else. No more fun conversations to pass the time while we wait for the day to start.
The lesson I learned from that ordeal is to be very careful about the gifts I give someone. To think about how they would see it and how they might react to it. To consider that before deciding to actually give the gift.
Also that it’s easy to do more harm than good while attempting a good deed, that sometimes it may be better to do nothing at all than to try and fail to do something good.

For example, I mentioned before that I got some teaspoons as a Christmas present for the office. Before I did that, I stood in the shop thinking about how exactly giving that gift would happen. Who would I give it to? What would the people’s reactions [likely] be? Am I fine with those [imaginary] reactions? I decided I would leave it on SN's desk since she’s the general admin person for our office. I judged that people would probably think it’s funny, that it was a bit of a weird and silly thing I did, that there is little risk of any more adverse reactions. I decided I was fine with that probable outcome. Then I bought the teaspoons.
It was a quick process in this case, since it was a small, simple and inconsequential matter. But I go through the same process for [most] any other things I give people, in depth to various degrees and with lesser tolerance for uncertainties depending on the circumstances.
E.g. deciding whether to write a poem for someone, to send a funny picture to someone, or to allow someone the opportunity to read through my journal.
[For sharing here with you, dear readers, the thought process essentially went - There wont be many readers; I will almost certainly never interact with any of them in any way; So I can ignore them and they have no impact on this decision; On the other hand there is a small chance this exercise might bring me some comfort; So it's worth it]




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