The Big Getting It

Talking at or past or around. It's strange how it feels. There's an effort involved. It's not only about common ways we construe successful interactions, like "understanding," or "being heard." There's an extra element. 

Getting it. 

I have started insisting on that element if I am going to spend much energy to get intimate with someone, friend or otherwise. And it's an absolute, in a lot of ways, because it can't be manufactured out of conversation. Consensus or improved understanding can, definitely. Or at least a kind of shared whiteboard with certain things in common, illuminated and in clear print. But the real thing, getting it, happens. It doesn't take labor, effort, negotiation or explanation.

It's similar to a joke in that way. There's people who get a joke, and there's people who do not. There's not really anything in between. And the people who get it need no more words, and the people who do not get it, well, no matter how much explanation, that mysterious moment of getting it will never happen. Other moments are possible. It's even possible those who did not get it will eventually laugh and say, "Oh, haha, I get it now, thanks." But the real juice, just getting it? Never going to happen. 

I am looking back on my life and realizing that I didn't really pay attention to this a lot of the time. I figured, well, it's too much to ask, that the people I pay attention to get me. And that I get them. I have long reinforced my own sense of how "weird" or "different" or even isolated I am, by staying in efforts and attempts with people who just do not get it. Social media sure presents a shit ton of chances for people to just not fucking get it. More than anything, I think that's the issue that reinforces loneliness for me, on social media. 

I'm not talking about disagreeing or engaging in other ways. Those dynamics are rooted in getting it, when they are at their best. There's the disagreement that arises out of not getting it, and then the labor of trying to reach a common language, and sometimes, with some people, that labor is worth doing. Most of the time, it's a fucking waste of time, and I engage less and less with those efforts. I operate from a whole set of axioms. It can be exhausting to try to get someone up to speed on those axioms and find out what theirs are. Sometimes worth it, sometimes not. 

Then there's getting it. I know many friends who get at least parts of it. There's my free jazz friends who get that, who at least seem to. Cactus and botany friends who get all of that. Recovery friends who seem to get that. Etc. So compartmentalized getting it is definitely possible and can be okay, even if partial. It is demonstrably true that a great many of my cactus friends do not get my radical, patriarchy dismantling politics, that is for damn sure. There are some compartments that very rarely even come close to each other, let alone lend themselves to natural understanding. 

But getting it for real is way beyond these compartments and categories. Getting it and being gotten with another person is a global experience, a 360 degree intuition. There can be moments or even entire areas where there is a lack of understanding, but that doesn't affect the overall, global getting it. My oldest friends from elementary school and college both get me in the global way, and the details sort themselves out. 

But I have tried to go for the deepest connections possible with some people who I think just did not get me, nor I them. I took partial understanding and some compartments, both ways, and told myself it was okay, the Big Getting It was not realistic anyway, and not to be expected. After all, you're weird, no one ever gets you. 

The last partnership had a lot of this. A definitely understood certain things about me, and I understood things about her. But the two of us did not get each other. And yet we tried to make a life together, and spent almost six years "working on" getting each other. 

This is exactly like trying to explain a joke for six years. 

I'm acutely aware of it now. I can't picture ever trying something so futile as that again. It's lonely, it's too much work, the joke isn't funny if it has to be explained, everything has to be limned out and explained, everything has that risk of falling flat. Big huge swaths of deeply held values can easily be abandoned or left clunking around, misunderstood. A, for example, never got how I can be simultaneously the most optimistic, compassionate, kind, tender, vulnerable and idealistic person as well as dark, cynical, into the darkest and most grotesque humor, sarcasm, and the darkest comedy. I never got how earnest she was about everything. Her intellect does not play around, and mine is always playing around. These are not trivial differences. 

Lately, I've made a point of sharing things that are important to me with people I am somewhat interested in or attracted to and observing very carefully if they get it or not. Or exploring what they love and are enthusiastic about and seeing if I get it or not. I don't have to like it, or agree with them about it being incredible, but do I get it? Do I get them? Do they indicate that they get me? This is not trivial. I've abandoned the requirement so many times that it astonishes me. I've also taken it for granted. I am not inclined that way anymore. I have known a lot of people who tried, and with whom I tried. I can see the practical benefits of trying, with certain people. But not with my intimates. No wonder I have had deep trust issues in so many of the most intimate connections I have "tried to" form. We just didn't really get it. 

If I am going to go deep with anyone from now on, itself a doubtful proposition, but if I am, I don't want to always be explaining the goddamned joke.