Instant impressions

So it turns out that some people in the US office of my company believe that Singapore is a remote village in China where there are no computers, people do not speak English, and offices are up on trees with telephone cables dangling from them. Okay, that was a bit drastic, but you get the point. In fact, during a teleconference, one of my American colleagues very diplomatically asked me if I was familiar with the concept of a fax machine. Fighting all urge to say, "Fax machine? What's that? I don't have one in my tree, sorry." I assured him that we did indeed have a fax machine in the office.

It was very interesting - in the last decade, I have on many occasions found myself explaining and justifying India and all things Indian to people here who had a certain weird impression of it. The questions and statements I faced were of all kinds - whether elephants formed part of India's public transportation system, whether dowry was compulsory, whether my caste disowned me for marrying outside of it, whether Indian offices have air-conditioning, and what not. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when I realised that there are certain people out there in the world who have impressions of Singapore similar to what certain Singaporeans have of India.

And I started to think of impressions. First impressions. Last impressions. Lasting impressions. Instant impressions. Every time we say or do something, someone is forming an impression of us. Someone is judging us, thinking of us in a certain way, and we may not have the good fortune of being able to undo it. Ever.

My company has been hiring a lot of new people lately, and every time a resume from my ex-company pops up, my boss forwards it to me and asks me what my impression of the candidate was. It is a lot of pressure because what I say can invariably alter the chances of a candidate making or breaking it. At times I came across resumes where I did not really know, or had not worked closely with the candidate, but had vaguely interacted, and had somewhat of an impression of them. Too cynical. Surfs the net too much. Disturbs colleagues too much. Is frequently late. Takes faux medical leave. Fools around too much.

And it set me thinking - back then all of these people had no idea that some day I would be looking at their resumes and passing up my judgement to my manager. Was I even in a position to judge them? At times I felt that I was. It was work after all - and I would not want to hire anyone with the above traits - at least not for my team. At other times, I felt like I was forming instant impressions in my mind without giving them a real chance. And I wondered if people I have worked or interacted with have/had certain impressions of me which may not affect me now, but may prove to be a critical point in my life some day in the future. It was a very very stressful thought.

A few months ago, one of my blog readers whom I'd shared some cordial emails with, told me she had downloaded a picture of baby Aish from my blog and was using it as her desktop wallpaper. I was quite shocked as I was sure my sister would not approve of anyone using her baby's picture as their desktop wallpaper. So I asked the person to remove the picture. A few weeks later, she sent me another email asking for permission to make a collage of baby Aish's pictures. I told her that no matter how close she felt to me or Aish, her obsession with Aish was making me uncomfortable and I requested her to delete all Aish's pictures from her hard disk. Things turned ugly over a chain of emails, as I accused her of using my niece's pictures without permission, and she accused me of accusing her of stalking my niece. Till date, I can't figure out which one of us was wrong. Maybe neither was. It was just one of the things that just happen to people. But what I do know is that we went our own ways thinking each one of us was right, and forming certain impressions of each other. I would really like to patch up, but I figure we've moved on and are on totally different pages now. Trying anything would make it messier than it is, so it's best for both of us to just each other be. Of course I was partly to blame for putting up pictures of Aish on the blog. So I pulled out all the posts with pictures of her even though they were supposed to be my gift to her for her 13th birthday. Amazing how your impression of someone you have never met can be such a lasting one.

I recently had a tiff with a friend of mine who had the impression that I had a certain impression about him which in fact I did not. And I wondered if it was his impression of himself that he was trying to superimpose over my impression of him to prove himself right? It just got too confusing and I decided to shut my mouth and not make statements that could imply that I had formed an impression of someone when I hadn't. Till you completely open up with a friend, you can't tell what he is thinking. And in a formal setting like Singapore, no matter how close you think you are to someone, sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut. Henceforth, I have maintained a very formal and diplomatic relationship with this friend. It's not something I like very much, but it's better than the mental distress both of us went through.

Tonight, someone Viv knows dropped by for a quick software lesson from him. I was in my teeny weekend shorts, and I didn't bother to change. His 'student' turned up in a salwar kameez and had vibhuti lines on her forehead. Whoa, maybe I should have changed, I thought. The entire time that she was there, I wondered if she was disapproving of me and the way I was dressed. But then I also wondered if it was my imagination, and tried to avoid forming an instant impression of her. Turns out she had made an instant impression of me. As she left, she gave me a 'look' and with a proud smile said, "You should come home for dinner sometime. I cook." Holy cow. What made her think I didn't? She had barely spoken to me! At first I thought it was in my head, but even Viv said he was offended with her 'Oh-you-wear-teeny-shorts-so-you-can't-cook' tone. I wanted to grab her hand and pull her into my kitchen and dunk her face in the matar paneer I had made for Viv and myself (but could not have because her goddam software lesson was so long), but like many other moments, I resisted. Sometimes it's just better to let it go. Especially when you have nothing concrete to base your hypothesis on. There is no point trying to undo something that may or may not be there in someone's mind. And even if some people do think of you in a certain way, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to hunt these people down and how are you going to make them change their minds? How many people are you going to worry about?

That's the problem with impressions – you have no idea how and when you contribute to someone thinking of you in a certain way. Sometimes you don't even actively contribute towards what someone thinks of you. Someone somewhere is always judging you, and you can't help it. And the truth is - no matter how strong we are - all of us at one point in time or the other, do tend to get affected by the who's-thinking-what syndrome. Yes, some impressions do help us become better people and even shape our own impressions of ourselves, but if we started taking each of them seriously, we're only setting ourselves up for misery.

The strangest thing is - the ideal solution to avoid all this stress and distress is a simple one in theory, but extremely complicated to carry out in practice.

Do not care about what impression someone has of you; worry only about what impression you have of yourself.