Have you ever felt that someone or something has just intruded into your life? The phone ringing when you’ve just settled on the couch with a good book… That far-flung relative of yours deciding to drop in just when the cricket match has reached an interesting stage? Or when you’re nicely settling into a nice conversation when someone suddenly comes in and changes the topic…. Or when you are lost in your reveries while sitting in class and your neighbor says, “Hey, look at this problem raa… “.
God has given us many skills. Unfortunately one skill he hasn’t given is to read other people’s thoughts. Can I butt into this conversation without being considered an intruder? Can I join this group of people at the dinner table? Will he mind if i decide to drop into his house now? Unfortunately, we don’t have the natural means to answer these kinds of questions, unless of course we know the person(s) in question REALLY well…
One can think of two ways of solving this problem – the optimistic and pessimistic. The optimist believes that he NEVER disturbs anyone. He believes that everyone has the right to listen to him. If anyone has any problem with his presence, he’ll be told so explicitly and till then he can do whatever he wants. The better optimist soon learns to read people’s minds and can, with respect to a few people, predict pretty accurately whether he is intruding or not.
The other kind of people are always of the opinion “lemme not do this as if i do i’ll be disturbing him”. A good example will be the character of Seethapati (played by Umesh) in the movie Golmal Radhakrishna (*ing Anant Nag and Chandrika, 1989 or so… ). I assume that you’ve watched the movie (if you haven’t, do so asap. it’s one of Anant Nag’s best comic performances), so I don’t need to elaborate on this kind of character.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the successful one (in networking atleast – not of the Tanenbaum type) is one who can quickly learn when he is intruding into someone’s life and when he is welcome. I have been striving for the last 5 years to reach this state but haven’t made TOO much progress. Have been just shuttling between Seethapati and extreme intruder….
As i was peacefully writing this post, in total bliss, i got this arbit phone call from ICICI about some credit cards. I told them “If you keep paining me like this, cancel my card” and slammed the phone down…