14 October 2007

A note from Dr. Phil

It's funny how I sometimes feel very awkward in a situation, but at the same time I am unable to pin down what it is that makes me feel this way. Is it something about how people perceive me or is it something about myself? I want to come up with all kinds of justifications: "They don't really want me here" or "wasn't it just plain stupid for me to go here and meet these people that I have nothing in common with". But there's something in these "justifications" that worries me.

I might be totally at a loss of finding a description of my awkwardness. I can't really say that I have good reasons to feel out of place. It is not that I can say that I see people glancing at me in an unpleasant way or anything like that. But I do want to say that I feel people glancing at me.
Often it happens that this feeling of being out of place suddenly disappears. I find myself in the middle of conversation and the annoying feeling of awkwardness no longer pesters me.

But when I no longer feel out of place, I am not trying to motivate or justify my feelings of joy and excitement. They are no problem that I have to deal with. One could say that my feelings are hard to pin down in terms of something I actually see. But saying that seems strange. When I feel that people are staring queerly at me, the thought whether I really do see that naturally arises. I, as it were, don't want them to look at me in that way and I am asking myself whether I am not simply feeling awkward because I have some strange expectations about the situation.

You might blame me for adopting an odd conception about what it is to "see" something. That is perhaps right. But I was trying to say something about how "the character of what I see" is questioned in some situations, but not in others.

Kind regards,
Dr. Phil

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