Opus 2025-046: Mixing It Up

I am really struggling with being isolated.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy being isolated; I do.  I’m an introvert.  I have very little need of contact with other people.  I find them draining and often depressing.  They can bore me or make me mad.  The problem isn’t that I feel like I need a counselor to help me with my depression and isolation.

The problem is I enjoy discussing things with people who have different viewpoints.  Actually, that’s not the problem, the problem is finding people with different viewpoints who know enough about why they have those viewpoints to talk about them.  In talking to friends in California during the election, they told me that all they saw anywhere were Harris signs.  On the converse side, in my area of Texas during the entire election season I only saw one Harris sign.  It’s kind of hard to discuss your difference of opinion with someone if you can’t find them.

There are places I could go.  I can start hanging out at Starbucks.  Something in me cringes at the thought of their over cooked coffee and under thought politics.  I could hang around a bar perhaps, but in Texas, the bar would be full of rednecks who voted for Trump.  I could go to a liberal church, but I value my soul too much and I’m not sure that people who attend those churches know enough about what they believe to have a reasonable discussion.  If they knew enough to have a reasonable discussion, then they probably would not have believed that they have.  I’ve thought of signing up for a class at a local educational unit of some kind.  My fear is that I would run screaming out of the room or else possibly throw up on the floor at what I was hearing.

So I continue to hope that somewhere along the line, I will be able to have a reasonable, in-depth, thoughtful discussion with someone who might not have like mind, but has a mind period.

Is that too much to ask for?

homo unius libri