.SOMETIMES RAW.

The other day at the supermarket register line I encountered some existential quandaries and saw a German magazine analyzing Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s body language. An “expert” claimed does she know that Meghan’s hand placed on Harry’s arm means she is enjoying the moment. Or that the position of Harry’s fingers indicates that he is a relaxed parent. When it comes to body language, I can recommend the book by Allen and Barbara Pease, “The Definitive Book of Body Language” that I enjoyed quite a lot. They train lawyers, journalists, salespeople, and other professionals in the art and science of body language. I would like to share some insights of the book that are helpful on a daily basis because reading body language is a superpower.

Sometimes I can see the subtle, nuanced element of human communication so I guess I studied linguistics for something. When talking to each other, people are mostly focused on the words the other person is saying. In the book, it says that our bodies reveal how we feel in ways we may not even realize. If you’re nervous, you might rock slightly, rub your lips with your finger, or play with your hair. I was surprised how many industries use the services of body language experts to read people better and recognize, for example, a customer’s reservations about making a big purchase. I love to learn more about body language because my goal is to understand people better.

What I learned while/after reading the book

The book highlights that there are a lot of factors to take into consideration when reading body language. Culture and context are really important, as are “clusters”. In body language, a cluster is two or more types of gestures a person makes at around the same time. For example, say a person is talking to someone and they crinkle their nose. Crinkling the nose is a micro-expression of disgust. That is a clue on its own, but when paired with other gestures we can extract more information about what a person is really thinking. Crinkling the nose and leaning away from someone would indicate the subject’s dislike of the person they are talking to, or of the topic. If they crinkle their nose while nodding their head, they may be trying to give the impression that they agree when really they do not.

I am not a mind reader. I think, however, that body language is a combination of art and science. To “read someone” is by no means a 100 percent certainty. But think of it this way: not all doctors are going to solve the same medical condition the same way, right? They might try different medications or procedures based on their expertise and experience. It’s important to remember that body language analysis is just my/your interpretation of the situation. Obviously, it is almost impossible to interpret someone’s body language based on a TV appearance or a photo. There is only so much information you can get from a photo or video. No clue what happened before the picture was taken, there is no context at all, but newspapers and crappy magazines do not care. To interpret someone’s body language, I need a lot more context. If it were that easy to tell if someone is lying, we would not have the Innocence Project, we would not have this high false confession rate. You could also spot someone cheating on you a lot earlier because you would have been able to see right through the deception. It is not that easy. I wish it was! It becomes more challenging if the other person sends you mixed messages and signals such as he/she doesn’t look in your eyes much and often looks over your head. But at the same time, touches your arm occasionally when you say something funny. The authors suggest to closely watch the person when they are talking. He/she might feel uncomfortable, lying or hiding something if they look everywhere but in your eyes.

I believe moving through the world is easier when I am more mindful of the body language signals I am giving off and receiving. It is helpful to be in the right mindset when talking to someone because your non-verbal cues will reflect that. The final test: Person A (whom you really like and kinda hung out with for a couple of weeks) takes you to a party. As soon as you arrive, he takes off and completely ignores you the entire evening. He does not talk to you, does not sit next to you and hangs out with his friends only. What does this tell you? (A): He really likes you and loves spending time with you or (B) His focus is clearly not you, he does not care about you.

Moving to Vienna is great for my professional and cultural life but was temporarily nightmarish for my social life. I am doing really well on my own but it is crucial to have some friends to connect with; especially without children, to overcome my social brokenness. It is not easy to start all over in a new city, a new country and leave all my friends behind. In the first couple of weeks, I felt like the human incarnation of this wired cigarette cockroach. Ready to do things but all alone.

Tired: Pizza Rat – Wired: Cigarette Cockroach

Tired: pizza rat
Wired: cigarette cockroach pic.twitter.com/HPxBLkWstX

— Tom Kretchmar (@tkretchmar) October 18, 2019

First, we walked around to explore and expand my network. I figured out subway and bus lines, cafés, bookstores (obviously). Then we moved on to museums, galleries, and playgrounds. Here, as a mother, it doesn’t just mean facilitating hangouts with basically strangers, it means being honest with myself and others about my desires to grow my connections in Vienna. The second thing I did was even more important than that: I simply let time pass. I learned how important patience is in the process of making friends.

To find new friends is one thing. How about letting go of a friendship? My friend Laura Kelly recorded a great podcast about how she broke up with her BFF. Check it out if you would like: Laura Kelly’s You Might Not Like It Podcast

I moved many times in my life and it is natural that certain friendships end. Maybe “end” is not the right word. They fade out naturally. But those who have substance will last. When is it time to end a relationship? Also, when a friendship ends, does it alter the value it had? The timing feels eery, as I am grappling with ending a friendship myself. This also meant I wasn’t sure I was equipped to speak on any of it yet. Did it matter that I hadn’t fully metabolized the experience? Or intellectualized the shit out of it until I could explain it away with the right words? “I don’t know why it bothers me so much,” I said, my chest tightening.

As contact with this friend of mine started to wane, the health of our friendship was not always clear to me. Was our drifting organic or evidence of a more serious problem? In hindsight, I should have asked because communication is key. At that time though it felt alarmist, or even self-centered. So, the not so smart thing to do is to keep trying to be normal with the person until it was clear my efforts weren’t being reciprocated. Quietly filling in the blanks through all this probably made things worse. And more pressingly, it gave my fears a lot of mental real estate, especially as they pertained to the new friendship(s) I am trying to build in Vienna.

From an outsider’s perspective, maybe it was obvious we were going in different directions, but from the inside, it felt like a kind of betrayal, the way even necessary change sometimes can. Friendships exist at an unusual emotional intersection in that they feel both deeply important and easy to push aside, mentally, in favor of things like love, family, and work. This incongruence can be startling when a friendship is a source of pain rather than bolstering and additive. Friendship breakups may not happen all at once or even require us to change our lives to weather them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be just as consciousness-alerting. I think, friendships are primarily driven by mutual understanding or compatibility unlike family, who are not chosen, and unlike romantic relationships, which are charged with something more primal. Moving on from those often means acknowledging a deeper change within, or within the friend. It is a personality problem and I know I cannot move on from a friendship without moving on from a pat of who I once was. I realized that it means to accept that I also cannot control how the other person feels about me.

When I first met my friend, we were going through different but compatible transitions, and this lent our connection a key of alchemy and harmony. However, when our situations changed and the connection fizzled, I was left to question if we ever had anything in common at all. A loss of a friendship can feel disarming like that which brings me to the question I raised earlier: “When a friendship ends, does it alter the value it had?” My insecurity wants me to interpret this breakup as proof the past was somehow false, or my reading of it delusional. It is probably more true that our connection was strong for a reason, even if that reason was somewhat ephemeral. This reminds me of the trope that friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. It is the kind of cliché one forgets until we stumbe upon it ourselves.

Some friendships aren’t forever, but that doesn’t make them any less important. Friendships represent parts of ourselves, and navigating them isn’t so different from figuring out who we are. [Yes, I finished “A New Earth” by Eckhart Toll]. Simply confront the other person. Ask. Talk. Sometimes it may lead to a really difficult conversation but it may primarily save the friendship you have. This then may inspire you to approach some of your other relationships with a similar kind of care. When we downplay how they make us feel, I think we miss an opportunity for a unique form of introspection. Social connection, with all the comfort, and sometimes heartache, inspire. They can be external reflections of our internal worlds. In the end, who we choose to connect and disconnect with tells us a lot about what we want, who we are, and how we have changed.

After a friendship ends, don’t feel like the wired, lonely cigarette cockroach. Go out and play with someone else.

Or is it not? Caught your attention though. Once upon a time, I walked into a famous Vienna coffee house (Café Ritter) during lunch hour, headed straight to the lone empty table and was about to sit and write, when the guy to my right grabbed the chair and pulled it closer to himself saying, “This is taken.” “Oh, okay,” I said, looking for another empty seat. I found one easily and ordered a glass of wine while I got comfortable with my book.

He hogged that chair for about one hour waiting for his date I guess, leg shaking, unlocking his phone several times to zero messages and zero buzzing and locking it again while twisting a full 90 degrees every five minutes to check the door. “She will never come,” I wanted to say but I remained silent. However, it made me nervous just sitting next to this man. There was so much commotion and movement that I thought he was going to have a heart attack. Being alone at a café is not the worst thing in the world but waiting for a date is, I guess. I love to write at cafés. There, I am a little more self-aware and self-conscious. I like to be present, to enjoy the solo time I have crafted for myself by choosing to sit and focus without anyone else. The anonymity is nice. Being away from the quiet safety of my routine at home, I can pause and take in my new environment. My brain fires in different ways and the writing comes out fresher, less inhibited. I am more open overall. This openness has never failed me. Many times I literally do nothing at all. I sit, watch people and get inspired.

“The quality of life is a proportion, always, to the capacity for delight the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Cameron

The unbearable lightness of being bored.

At this point, the hogging-chair person still waited for his date. Still on the phone. Out of a sudden, a little buzz on his phone followed by his sad face. This made me think about technology. When I grew up, there were no cell phones. Or at least no smartphones (How smart are they really?). These days, it is so easy to just send a short message and your date is sad. Our digital age is so full of distractions. It is not unusual to have two or more screens in front of us when we sit down to relax. The first thing everybody does is to put the cellphone on the table before ordering something. For many people, barely a commute goes by without plugging in headphones to listen to something or cramming in another game of Candy Crush on the train. While constant mental stimulation might be the new norm, research suggests that being alone with our own thoughts has surprising benefits. A recent study found that boredom has the potential to spark enormous productivity and creativity. I usually have my strokes of genius while lingering in the bathtub or shower. I know too well that it is easy to feel defeated in more areas than one when it comes to the daily grind. This especially rings true for me this year and I have constantly been on the prowl to find ways to make my life easier.

One of the most delightful benefits of boredom, however, is the ability to fill that brain-space with a daydream or two. Sometimes, letting your mind wander might seem like a crazy thing to do and you may feel guilty because you need to get the spreadsheets to Angela in Accounts but do it anyway because it is so good because our minds are just as powerful as the devices we distract them with. We should give ourselves time to pay attention and allow us to linger in the moment, accept the moment the way it is and cut the garbage out. Just hit the pause button once in a while throughout the day. It is okay to step away and recharge. Also, sleep. Good sleep is crucial; and awesome. Then nothing is really f****d.