Hence, Mojito

What makes you want to self-disclose to someone? Whether it is someone you just met, or someone you've known for eons? A healthy level of self-disclosure is usually necessary for growth of the individual and their relationships, at least as pointed by evidence in psychological research. Hence, you can understand why psychologists are so keen to find out what factors encourage a good level of self-disclosure, you know so we are all having good relationships and can be happy. Haha.

To be fair, self disclosure can be the most easy thing in the world, yet can also be the most challenging to others. I fall in the latter category. I share like mini-bite-size pieces over time, it tests the patience of a lot of those around me. Part of me use to do it as a testing strategy, to see if the effort is worth investing into a relationship. I will admit that that is a rather cynical way of seeing life, and that my concept of trust is that it has to be earned, not something given out freely, at least not all of it. Then I realised that self-disclosure is necessary on my part if I were to keep some vital relationships in my life, and thus I scooted over to the other end where I consciously reminded myself that I need to share more. That sharing more = better relationships. And yet, I still felt uncomfortable. I did consider for a while that it is the discomfort that comes with change, you know, trying new things, thus feeling a bit out of place. But it soon dawned upon me that the discomfort is simply because this is not how I really want to share parts of my life. This is not how I feel authentic. But like a friend said, in learning something new, we usually oscillate between two extremes before finding a point in the middle we can be comfortable with.

So anyway, the whole point of telling the above story is that over the years, people have come up with various methods of trying to get me to self-disclose more. Note, there was no aggression or forcing here, just wonky ideas my friends come up with. And quite a few of them suggest alcohol, because well, alcohol tends to reduce inhibition in our pre-frontal cortex which leads us to do stuff we usually wouldn't do, say hugging random cars HAHA (I did not do that). I have to admit it does work, drinking alcohol does lead one to reduce inhibition and do silly stuff and say silly stuff. The very act of being silly together leads to a certain level of closeness because you strip off some socially obligatory masks, you are real, or seem real.

But that's my point. Under the influence of an external substance often accompanied by bright lights, loud music, how real can real be? Is it really that our true self are only let loose with external help? Why is it that in sunshine, in light good enough to make out the details of the other person's face, do we choose to hide? The alcohol is not empowering, it's just enabling. And relying on alcohol to help take your mask off every time just won't cut it, not for me at least.

Get drunk on life instead. Lest you think I'm being disgustingly Pollyanna-ish, both drinking and having good conversations (especially those with tons of laughters) release the feel-good hormones known as endorphins (it's not a simple causal effect, but essentially endorphins exert a large influence to make us feel good). How many times have you caught yourself saying you feel high even though you are obviously not under the influence of any external substance that could have induced a large change in your biological system? Remember the great conversation over coffee? Or the late nights at mamak? So maybe teh tarik had a bit too much sugar, but ultimately, it's being with people you feel mutually comfortable with that leads you to want to take your mask off, without downing tons of teh tarik. 

In the recent year, I have been blessed with such situations. Where I feel comfortable enough to share who I am, and they feel comfortable to let me glimpse into their lives.

I've drank tons of mojito in those kinda cases; life's mojito.