David McElroy

As the phone call went on, I felt more and more annoyed.

I was talking Wednesday afternoon with a business associate and we were trying to solve a problem. We were both intent on resolving the issue and we both wanted the same outcome. But I found myself fuming.

In my frustration, I wanted to shout, “What’s wrong with you? Are you an idiot? Just let me handle this my way.”

I have no way of knowing what he was thinking — and we both remained professional and polite — but I could tell he was frustrated that I wouldn’t see things his way, too.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I could think calmly and rationally about the argument. I still wanted to blame him for not seeing things my way — since I was obviously right in my own mind — but I could be objective enough to realize what the problem was.

My friend and I approach the world with radically different assumptions about a lot of things. My assumptions seem right to me. (Of course.) I’m sure his assumptions seem right to him. What’s worse, I doubt he’s even aware of his assumptions.

And I found myself thinking — not for the first time — that most of our so-called miscommunication in personal relationships comes because each of us makes wrong assumptions about what the other person must be thinking.

So I unconsciously hold you responsible for what I assume must be in your mind. If I’m wrong — as I probably am — I might be hurt or angry at you for something you never even thought. And you might be doing the same thing to me.

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The teen-ager’s tone suggested he was sharing really big news.

“Did you hear that Bob Saget died?!” he asked me breathlessly.

I told him I’d heard that, but he apparently didn’t think I was suitably impressed. He added something about who Saget had been — that he had been a comedian and a big television star.

“And he died,” he said again, as though giving me another chance to be shocked or upset.

“Almost 8,000 people die in this country every day,” I said. “I didn’t know Saget, so his death doesn’t really affect me any more than the deaths of those other people.”

“But he was famous,” the teen repeated, confused. “He was on television.”

I’ve had variations of this conversation with many people over the years, and it still confuses me. I feel the same way almost every time a “celebrity” dies. I experienced the same thing last week when former actress Betty White died.

I don’t typically have negative feelings about such people, but their deaths rarely mean anything special to me. And every time I hear the loud outpouring from those around me — people who also didn’t know these celebrities — I’m baffled that our culture has trained us to feel something special about random celebrities.

We’ve been subtly brainwashed into believing people are special if they’re famous.

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I’ve allowed myself to be seduced by the desire to be popular.

I’ve fallen into a trap which makes me crave the attention which would tell me that people like me. That some of them love me and adore me.

I’ve been struggling for months to figure out why a little voice inside me kept saying that I’d gone completely off course with my media efforts. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had some insights that shook me up. It’s complicated and I don’t know that I can really explain it well enough. It’s the interplay of a lot of things.

It’s about the narcissistic father I grew up with. It’s about the mother who abandoned me and left me scared about whether I’m really worthy of love. It’s also about changes in technology and society. It’s about how all of that intersected with a media culture that values nothing other than popularity. Those are the things that allowed me to pursue the new cultural equivalent of love — which is a shallow counterfeit of the real thing.

I lost sight of the intellectual and psychological and creative values which are important to me. I didn’t realize that while it was happening, of course. But I let myself be seduced into trying to fight a dysfunctional culture by becoming part of the monster I wanted to kill. That can’t work. And it’s been destroying me.

Tap or click below if you’d like to hear more of my struggle to explain how I allowed myself to get so badly off course. I have to warn you, though, that it’s long — and it’s not entertaining. Most of you shouldn’t waste your time with it. Honest. Keep Reading