Locked Out

The great news is that finally I got rid of my wretched Blackberry work phone and moved to an iPhone 6. Contrary to my friend Al, who hates all things "i", I love i-Stuff. My personal phone is an iPhone 4s, and while I liked the first one I had, my current one has had some issues. But compared to the Blackberry, it is amazing.

But the 6......oh. Love at first sight. Well, maybe at least love at first fingerprint. I loved that little feature. I have a bazillion passwords to remember, that have to be changed every three months (or more often when I forget them), so being able to get into my phone by the touch of my fingerprint...a game changer. Well, until the day it wouldn't accept my fingerprint.....and what I knew to be my password.

It drove me nuts. I kept trying. Some if you know what happens when you try your iPhone password too much. It totally locked me out of my phone. To the point where I had to do a total factory re-set. Which I didn't have time for. So for three days I had to go without my work phone, until I had time to re-do everything. Actually it was five days....I got the phone going, but then had to re-do my company set-up. Painful.

I was around a lot of people this past weekend. One thing about being in a crowd...you analyze people. At least I do. I love the relationship dynamics and the electricity and even watching those just going through the motions. My latest revelation? There are some folks that drive me nuts. Who I just don't get. Who I will think I understand one moment, and then they simply confound me. It's like I'm putting my fingerprint on that phone sensor and getting in with no issue 100 times, but doing the exact same thing again and it locks me out. On one hand I think these folks are "my people" and yet on the other I wonder if I understand them at all. If they're "my people" I should understand them, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

I look at me from a few paces back and I suspect I may be a bit confounding myself. Sometimes I may mask my feelings. Sometimes I act like I don't care about something when I care very much. Sometimes I can't quite figure out what I am feeling and so what comes out reads as something entirely different than what it really is. Sometimes I am tired and mentally exhausted and it comes out as anger and impatience. Sometimes something innocent triggers pain and I do a dance so no one looks in my eyes and sees it there. Sometimes I am aloof, but at the core scared. Sometimes in need of attention, so clumsily try to get it. Other times in need of anonymity, so trying to blend in to the point of not being seen. Sometimes I am simply out of my depth, and try to pretend that I am not.

Knowing all this about me, it shouldn't surprise me that sometimes I can't get a good read on others. I think that on one hand we all want people to understand us, but yet a part of us may want to remain a mystery. If we let them too close, they just may see that we're all vulnerable human beings who want someone's thumbprint to open up the secret to who we are, but are scared to let them get too close.

That Blackberry of mine was not a great communication tool. I only took it out to read an occasional email. But my rebooted iPhone 6....it's doing the job for which it was intended. I want to use it and it opens up new avenues of communication. Maybe our relationships need a factory reboot... before we simply put them on a shelf. Maybe we need to focus on forgetting the past, beginning again, and see if we can do things different. It's intimidating, it can be difficult, and it is confounding...but that is the world of relationships. It is worth the investment of some time and attention....even if the pathway may seem a bit confusing. It may get us to the place where our fingerprint opens up a world of possibilities for closeness and intimacy and relationships that are genuine.