When others know exactly how you feel, they have the control. This is true for children, and this is true for adults. Your third grade crush had no power until he saw you doodling your names together inside a heart on the side of your homework. Once that happens, it’s all over.
The bullies who chased you down the hallway, calling you names in middle school, had no real sense of dominance until they saw you cry. Once you showed that you were affected by their words and taunts, they won.
Your boss only gains total control over you once he or she realizes just how badly you need a job. Before that, you were the desired skill set who had power to negotiate. Once your employer knows that you need a paycheck, any paycheck, to make rent, feed kids and pay the bills, you are at the mercy of the desire for a higher profit margin.
The only way a person can work against this imperfect transfer of power is to fight the urge to answer personal questions honestly. Most people have learned to always avoid telling others how they really feel on a given day. The most basic level of conversation results in the following:
“Hey, how are you?”
“Fine, thank you. And you?”
“Oh, I’m good, thanks.”
Sometimes you run across grammar sticklers who will say they are “well, thank you,” but the exchange remains surface level at best. This is because most people have learned to assume that no one is truly interested in how they are feeling on a particular day.
Also, depending on who is asking, there is always a chance that being honest will give away too much power.
For instance, imagine someone asks about your day, and you give a 12-minute monologue about how hungover you are and how unsatisfying the sex was last night.
Now people know enough personal details about you that they can, if should they so choose, potentially wreak havoc in your relationship, among other things.
On the other hand, if you tell people about how crazy happy you are with your lover or with your job, they now know what things are important to you.
Every classic “bad guy vs. good guy” movie can attest to the fact that when people know what matters to you, they have something to use against you.
So we end our conversations as quickly as possible, giving away as little information as possible, and we hope not to piss off anybody.
Vengeance and competition are what define human success. Power and control over one’s self is the root of staying afloat in the mad pool of people we call society.
Paige Pelonis is a sophomore journalism and international studies major and the assistant opinions editor for the Daily 49er.