What’s up with the way the impulse in me oscilated between selfish rationalizations (“she might harm me”) and morality-related rationalizations (“it’s wrong to upset people”)?
If ‘falling through a glass floor’ in this instance is the fear of being humiliated and/or laughed at, you’re definitely not alone in this sentiment. This is probably one of the most common social fears, as it can potentially cause you to ‘fall down’ the scale of social hierarchy, right? Of course this whole Pandemic has turned everything on it’s head, so social norms come under the lens to be reexamined, and who’s to say what the new normal is in these now novel social situations?
Unironically, your canned goods shopping spree is a pretty typical response to a looming catastrophe of almost any kind; growing up poor and hungry I learned the value in a well stocked pantry later in life. Relatively speaking, I can empathize with you about the fear of seemingly disrupting the emotional and psychological status quo of one-time run-of-the-mill social interactions under extreme conditions. Trauma does bad things to people.
I tend to live in very poor, under-served, and neglected conservative areas these days—not really by choice—but I have found it to be really taxing for navigating normal life much less the ‘new normal’ of the Pandemic. All the stores I shop at seemed to resist the whole mask mandate, while disbelieving the experts about the entire Covid Pandemic. Not only was I bombarded with nonsense and conspiracy theories at every turn, I was often one of the only people in the store wearing a mask.
Over the weeks and months, I saw shop keepers start to put on masks when they saw me walking up to the front door and, believe it or not, the more I had this experience, I actually found myself starting to worry I was making other people uncomfortable with my mask wearing, and that maybe I should remove my mask.
Just for the sake of ‘fitting in’, even though I really don’t identify with my local community on a whole range of issues regarding values and such, I contemplated putting my life at risk. At times I still feel the need to change some of my preferred natural, healthy behaviors to ‘fit in’ with people I think are ill informed and irresponsible (possibly even stupid and crazy.) Go figure.
If ‘falling through a glass floor’ in this instance is the fear of being humiliated and/or laughed at, you’re definitely not alone in this sentiment. This is probably one of the most common social fears, as it can potentially cause you to ‘fall down’ the scale of social hierarchy, right? Of course this whole Pandemic has turned everything on it’s head, so social norms come under the lens to be reexamined, and who’s to say what the new normal is in these now novel social situations?
Unironically, your canned goods shopping spree is a pretty typical response to a looming catastrophe of almost any kind; growing up poor and hungry I learned the value in a well stocked pantry later in life. Relatively speaking, I can empathize with you about the fear of seemingly disrupting the emotional and psychological status quo of one-time run-of-the-mill social interactions under extreme conditions. Trauma does bad things to people.
I tend to live in very poor, under-served, and neglected conservative areas these days—not really by choice—but I have found it to be really taxing for navigating normal life much less the ‘new normal’ of the Pandemic. All the stores I shop at seemed to resist the whole mask mandate, while disbelieving the experts about the entire Covid Pandemic. Not only was I bombarded with nonsense and conspiracy theories at every turn, I was often one of the only people in the store wearing a mask.
Over the weeks and months, I saw shop keepers start to put on masks when they saw me walking up to the front door and, believe it or not, the more I had this experience, I actually found myself starting to worry I was making other people uncomfortable with my mask wearing, and that maybe I should remove my mask.
Just for the sake of ‘fitting in’, even though I really don’t identify with my local community on a whole range of issues regarding values and such, I contemplated putting my life at risk. At times I still feel the need to change some of my preferred natural, healthy behaviors to ‘fit in’ with people I think are ill informed and irresponsible (possibly even stupid and crazy.) Go figure.