Sensitive young men
And the cure thereof
I was recently back in the Old Country.
I tend to notice the young people there because all the white people where I live are old.
In particular, I noticed that the young men are mostly awkward and insecure.
A few are alphas but most guys aged 18-22 walk uncertainly, their jangly stiffness giving away self-consciousness.
You can tell that they’ve put a lot of thought into their clothes, haircut, and are thinking about what others think about it.
I was just like that when I was young. Even though I tried to make it a principle to not think about outward appearances, I wondered if people noticed that I was doing it and if they interpreted it in the way I wanted them to and oh no I think she’s sneering at me oh man she is, when will the Earth hurry up and plunge into the Sun, oh dear.
The nice thing about neuroticism is that it tends to decline naturally with age, especially in men.
If you’re weird and your thoughts tend to spiral and trip you up, one solution is to wait it out.
By 30 it tends to be much better, and by middle age it’s often gone.
Look at men aged around 50. Do they look insecure?
Mostly they look tired, busy and a bit pissed off.
They wear whatever their wives bought them for Christmas. They’ve had the same haircut since 2006, from the same barber.
They don’t wonder what you think of them. They don’t notice you. If they do, they’ll call you ‘son’ and if they spot any quirks they’ll shrug it off as ‘kids today;’ nothing about you personally.
If you’re super shy and awkward, they’ll find it endearing. No one likes those who are super confident before they’re old enough to have done anything to earn it.
The evidence behind such declining neuroticism is actually pretty weak but just go with it. Let life and its events wash away your worries.
Once you’ve had a few friends and family members die, been in real danger, had your heart broken, lost a dog, crashed a car, been fired, it gets easier.
Plus people are nicer to you when you’re old. Hot girls go from dissing you to being kindly and helpful in case you fall over.
And if you’ve had to struggle for a long time to get where you are, you naturally develop that rough confidence that deters idiots from causing you trouble. You achieve that ‘seen everything, done everything, not in the mood for nonsense’ look.
You don’t even have to go out looking for character building experiences. They’ll find you, no matter how hard you try to hide.
So relax. And get a bloody haircut.