I don’t like having discussions with people. For example, many of my friends say they love to argue over some controversial topics with people, or that they like it that they are at places where they can talk to people about world affairs and debate the merits of the various sides in the issues. Or some will even go as far as to complain that they miss being around intelligent people who can hold intelligent conversations. I am not one of those people. I don’t enjoy dinner conversations about why Bush should or shouldn’t have started the Iraqi war, or why big business is bad. A great dinner conversation to me is something fun, something lighthearted, something like “did i tell you about the time I tried to slide down a hill.”

Maybe I just have a particularly hard time separating attacks on my opinions from attacks on me. I take things a little too personally when arguing with friends. I almost always get very upset because I feel like we’re just having an unnecessary heated discussion, and that we’re just hurting each others’ feelings. And I can’t understand how people who are arguing heavily about something can just drop the topic and start laughing and joking with each other again. It’s like people have an arguing mode that they can jump in and out of that’s completely separate from the rest of their bodies.

I most certainly don’t have that mode. I just plain and simple don’t like to debate with people. I don’t get any joy out of it. I don’t get blood rushing through my veins. I’d just much rather talk about what movie I saw last friday night. Most of all, I just really wish that others would see that and stop trying to drag me into debates with them just because they think “oh, shan seems intelligent enough, she must like to argue.”