Hard People and Easy People

I’m not easy to live with

I know that it’s true

You’re no picnic either, baby

It’s one of the things I loved about you

                        From “All the Love in the World” by Don Henley

A few weeks ago, I heard someone say that her friend has “hard” kids, meaning that they were difficult to deal with on an emotional level.  That made sense to me:  some kids—and grownups—are high maintenance and some are low maintenance.

When I think about the easy and hard people in my life, I see them on a continuum.   Some are easy most of the time, and it is just certain contexts or situations that make them hard to deal with or be around.  Fewer are easy all the time.  And some are just plain hard. 

What makes a person hard?  Looking at my students, it is mostly about anxiety.  The ones who need constant attention and reassurance, and no matter how much I give, it is not enough.  They are perennially disappointed in me as their teacher, no matter how long the emails and nurturing the dialogue.  It has been a journey for me to figure out that it is their problem, not mine.  I will never fill the gap in their lives.

There’s also the unpredictability factor.  I have been in situations where I thought there was mutual understanding and respect, just to find out that no, the other person does not have the same view of the relationship.  A lot of this is about blindness based on a particular view of the self and of the world. 

Then there are those of us who project their fears onto others.  They interpret any dissonance as a personal slight.  Long ago, I had a colleague, whom I will call Amanda, who was hurt if she thought she was not invited to lunch.  I remained friends with her even when I moved a thousand miles away.  Amanda said she valued our friendship, but I always felt as if I was not living up to her expectations.  It was work to be her friend.   And when I told her I could not fly back to attend her daughter’s wedding, which was during the first weeks of school, she refused to talk to me afterward.  I did not live up to her idea of what friends do.  It was her projection, not any misdeed on my part.  It still feels bad, though.    

My principal used to say that all students brought baggage with them to our alternative school.  My colleagues and I brought our own baggage as well.  In secret, I named our school “the Island of Misfit Toys” because teachers and students were just a bit too weird to be in the mainstream.  It is disingenuous to think that we, as grownups, have left our baggage at some proverbial train station, and thus are easy, leaving our hard parts hidden in the dark recesses of our minds, or the privacy of our families and writing journals. 

Unfortunately, though, we take our baggage with us wherever we go, and it is visible to others who know how and where to look. While I did not have the language at the time, I knew Amanda was hard from the first weeks of working with her.  She felt her colleagues were conspiring against her, and her voicing of those perceptions made her anxiety and fears obvious to the rest of us.   

As for myself, I thought I hid things pretty well until I started taking yoga.   I was horrified to realize my baggage had a physical presence that was visible to my yoga instructors who gently and insistently instructed the class to drop our shoulders, soften our expressions, and unclench our jaws.  It felt like one of my dirty secrets was revealed.  Anybody who knew how to look could see the real me:  I sure ain’t easy. 

So what about you?  Where are you on the continuum of easy and hard?