Cleaning My Room

For the past few days, I’ve had the strong urge to clean or re-organize my room. I used to see this as some sort of OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) relapse due to me letting my room get too messy or something, but that’s not it at all. Every time I have this urge, especially this time, it’s because I’ve changed somewhat, internally, and due to that change I feel as if my room no longer “fits” me, so I have to make a little adjustment to reflect my internal changes.

I don’t have the memory to think about or analyze whatever changes might have occurred to cause the previous instances like this to occur, but I can pinpoint the source this time. My need to change my room, to clean it, re-organize, even remodel, started as soon as I got home from hanging out with a new friend a couple days ago. I can already tell this person has made a significant impact on my life already, and will continue to do so; I’m just not sure in what way yet. More relevantly, though, she’s changed me, changed me or affected me enough internally that as soon as I got home from spending time with her, I wanted to take everything off the shelves, move all the furniture, and completely redo my room. That’s pretty scary.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m just using this new friend as an example here. This has happened many times in my life before (as I mentioned, I’ve had these urges before) just not as strongly. In fact, every time I meet a new person I generally have a small urge to do something similar. Every person we meet changes us. Our brain makes a million judgments and assessments a second when we’re meeting someone new, and by time it’s over, our self and our worldview has changed. Our brain takes each person we meet and puts them through a series of comparisons. The person either reaffirms our worldviews or stereotypes about the person, where they’re from, etc., or they go against it, which causes our brain to adapt how we see the world, or that kind (gender, race, class, etc.) of person.

However, it goes deeper than that. Meeting new people doesn’t just change how we see other people or the world, but they also change how we see ourselves. The way they react to how we are, any sort of comment they make that would show their thoughts on us, and whether or not they seem interested in us overall, changes how we see ourselves. This change can be minimal or on a larger scale. For example, by having literally hundreds of people at my job and school, and many more online, compliment my voice (on good days) I continue to reassure myself that my voice is something to be appreciative of, and if nothing else, people may like me because of that. On a larger scale, if someone talks in a way that continues to offend people, or make them uncomfortable, and they continue to notice that effect on people, then they may start to adjust how they talk and realize that the way they communicate is not appropriate outside of their own mind.

This change isn’t a bad thing, by any means. Now, too much change too often may cause one’s brain to become a little mushy for a bit (jokes) but it’s actually quite healthy. A lack of meeting new people, of changing and adapting our worldviews and views of our self is what leads to arrogance, overinflated egos, and the extreme side of socially inept people. We don’t want that, now do we? The change keeps the brain actively working and making more neural pathways that continue to make one a better person.

Overall, meeting new people is a wonderful thing. It changes who we are and the way we see others and the rest of the world. It keeps our personalities in check, while also developing them into more complex, more enjoyable ones as well. This new friend has certainly impacted me, even if in mysterious ways, and I hope I can continue to spend more time with her, and ideally figure out how exactly I’m being changed. (I don’t like surprises.) My already limited free time will now be consumed with cleaning, re-organizing, and restructuring. What are you doing with your life?