(This isn’t a specific story, rather a general frustration I’ve developed, and I feel like an asshole about it at times. Part of me feels like I should just lighten up and simply accept people for how they are, but I mostly feel like it’s ok to have reasonable standards for people and that I should connect with more people who have the same level of empathy/consideration as I do. I also feel like the general point of my frustration is typically the root cause of the majority of the justified annoyances posted on this sub).

Anyway, I feel like many people nowadays, at least in the US, go through life either compartmentalizing everything or being completely ignorant to a lot of things, to the point where they severely lack self awareness. When respectfully and calmly mentioning things that could be improved to friends, most tend to either agree and say they’ll work on it, or attempt to work on it for a short period of time before inevitably going back to the exact way they were. It’s rare to see an instance of someone genuinely taking advice to heart from a loved one and working hard to make positive change.

Someone will probably ask “What makes you the expert on what someone should improve?” and that’s true to a degree. Most things in life are subjective. But when you’re in a long-lasting friendship or relationship with someone and you’re the type of person to offer your support, compassion, time, and empathy, along with your own experience of working hard on genuinely improving, it can become disappointing when others can’t work on themselves. Because imo, the initial reason they’re doing it can be for the sake of the person who brought it up. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. If someone’s acting in a way that’s inconsiderate and makes their friend or loved one feel uncared for and taken for granted, I think it’s common sense to try to improve so that they don’t continue to make their friend feel that way. Also, there’s a difference between nitpicking every little thing a person does/expecting them to become an entirely different person (which is either A. the person who’s nitpicking being too overly critical or B. the other person having a lot of internal issues that can only be resolved from deep within) vs. hoping they can work on 1 or 2 minor things.

In terms of the aforementioned deep internal change (which I think is undoubtedly important for certain people), a person’s childhood is inherently linked to their adulthood, and so many people have had imperfect childhoods of varying degrees, but it’s disappointing that a lot of people allow their developmental years to dictate the rest of their lives. I see so many bizarre instances of people going through life acting like everything is perfect and prioritizing the most superficial things without really confronting themselves or working on their mental health/compassion/level of empathy. Everything else always seems to conveniently come before confronting one’s own toxic/selfish traits. They fill their lives with the ultimate distractions. It cracks me up when I see these people having children despite the fact that they’re incredibly selfish. It breeds more selfishness and then the cycle continues. With all of the resources and knowledge out there, it should be much more common for people to break that cycle. I know it’s not easy and that it takes a lot of consistent work, but I think it’s undoubtedly important.