In which Loveliness and Shyness are Contemplated

What is it, Dear Reader, that makes someone really, properly, Lovely? Not just lovely, you understand, but capital-L lovely? I mean, I personally think that almost all of my friends are quite lovely. You are all dreadfully nice and clever and attractive and so on, but all of us, we mere mortals, you and I, have our flaws. And people love us despite and occasionally because of those flaws, but there’s no pretending that they aren’t there at all. Even the Really Lovely people must have flaws, of course, but somehow, whenever you try to think hard about them, they slip out of focus like one of those magic eye things which were so popular in the 90s. Obviously these things are always subjective, and Stephen Fry certainly had a lot to say on the subject of loveliness and its origins (if I was actually connected to the internet at the moment, or even as tech-savvy as an average 35 year old, I would here hyperlink to a Youtube clip of that skit in “A Bit Of Fry And Laurie” Season 1, where he has a monologue about his loveliness and gorgeousness, but I’m not and I don’t, so you’ll have to use your imaginations). But the thing is, there’re a very few select people, the capital-L Lovely ones, about whom everyone seems to agree so reliably that it really begins to seem like they possess some kind of objective quality of Loveliness.

In my mind, these people are always to be thought of as Louise-Harrises, since the first one I met, and the one I’ve known for the longest, was named Louise Harris. If you’ve met her (and practically everyone seems to have done so, somehow) then you’ll know what I mean. That thing where she comes up in a conversation or anecdote and everyone goes “Yes! Oh she’s so lovely, isn’t she? So lovely!”. You never seem to hear a story to the discredit of a LouiseHarris, they seem to be forever giving people thoughtful little gifts, and sewing birthday sashes, and dressing impeccably, and liking the nicest sorts of music and things, in every story, all the while being charmingly down-to-earth and modest and so on. And they really seem to like everyone almost as much as everyone automatically likes them.

I don’t know how common LouiseHarrises are in general, and it’s possible that I’ve merely been very lucky, but I can bring 3 to mind even just off the top of my head. Obviously there’s the eponymous Louise, but also Charming Caitlin, who always has a similar effect on people (“How can anyone so perfectly nice and so impressively intelligent and motivated and such also have eyelashes like that? How is that even fair?” is a common theme here.) I rather suspect that the girl named Alison in my yeargroup at uni is another such individual.

[So, although the timeless magic of text means that this sentence follows with tolerable immediacy after that last one for you, Dear Reader, for me it’s been about 24 hours. During that 24 hours, I happened to hear unprovoked the confirmation of this suspicion.] A young man of my acquaintance has volunteered the opinion that this aforementioned Alison is probably the Loveliest girl in all of the yeargroup. (So not only am I right, it appears that I can influence events using only my mind, which information is handy to know.) So it looks like she probably is another LouiseHarries. Also, reassuringly, like this phenomenon actually does exist outside my head, which is reassuring. Plus, this opens up a whole new area of speculation.

I don’t know if you’re in the habit of receiving those circular emails that seem to get sent throughout the world by ladies aged between 20 and 80 who have nothing better to do, those motivational sorts of ones with poor formatting and every line of text a different colour and very often interspersed with animated gifs of hearts or kittens or suchlike. As you can tell, it has not always been possible for me to avoid them, and one of the more popular sorts of messages took the form of parable-style extended metaphors explaining to unfortunate single ladies why it was that they were so blighted. ‘Ladies,’ such emails often opine, ‘are like apples [NB: except less crunchy, surely?]; the good ones are hard to get to because they’re high up in trees, while rotten one fall to the ground and are easily picked up; one day a nice boy will bother climbing the tree to pick you.’ Leaving aside the obvious bitterness and arborial inaccuracy of such a theory, and even ignoring for the moment the pretty serious barely veiled insult to everyone who’s ever dated ever and the sexist nightmare that is embodied by this whole idea, let’s look at the outcome.

Essentially, it’s trying to say “if you’re single and not by choice, if no-one ever asks you out, it may be because they’re too intimidated by how great you are, not that they’re repelled by your awfulness” (or something). And obviously that’s sort of true (although a very unfortunate dichotomy to go about the place setting up, to say the least), and certainly bound to be true some of the time. It really seems like the Lovely people are the ideal contol group with which to investigate this question. Since they’re objectively viewed as nifty by 100% of the surveyed population, either there’s something unscientific in the method (and I’ll grant you that there are what I believe are called Demand Characteristics in phrasing a question “I think Caitlin’s really wonderful, and so does everyone else: do you agree, or is there something terribly wrong with you?”) or this shows something. See, if they’re definitely great, but also single, then that means that it’s genuinely not them that’s the problem, y’see. So everyone who’s ever read a “Here’s what’s wrong with you and why you’re alone (buy this GHD)” article in Cosmopolitan and secretly wondered can rest easy. And also possibly stop wasting their money on terrible magazines and expensive hair straighteners.

I’m not actually sure of the relationship statuses of 2 out of 3 of the LouiseHarrises I’ve come across, but I wonder, if they’re single, do they angst about it? Do you suppose that they’re aware that they’re listed as being the most desirable chick by a majority of guys (well, at least some, and any at all is frankly a win in this fraught life of ours)? That rather than being uninterested, guys are just dazzled by their apparent perfection, and would no more proposition them than they would Angelina Jolie (or whoever). I bet that even if you told them, they’d think you were just trying to be nice, or possibly that you were some kind of unspeakably creepy stalker. Poor Lovely, oblivious, things.

It’s a funny thing, shyness, especially that specific type of “you’re so great, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you by asking you out or trying to befriend you in any way” shyness which crushes the masculine admirers of these ideal girls. Sometimes I worry that the non-romantic subgenre of that makes me seem like a jerk, occasionally. There are people to whom, as soon as you meet them, you take an instant shine. Not just the LouiseHarrises, the regularly lovely people, you understand. You meet them and think “gosh, you’re pretty awesome, I’d love to be friends with you”. The thing is, I don’t want to be annoyingly encroaching and pushy, so I tend to then be careful not to make too many overtures of friendship. (Note to people with whom I have obviously and deliberately made friends: don’t feel bad, I was probably just in a pushier mood when we met.) The problem with which is that I have been known to overdo it rather and look like I’m being deliberately distant. I often feel like I’m achieving the wrong level of friendliness, really, like I’m either barring people by failing to make eye contact and smile or chat when we walk past one another, or else by making eye contact too early or smiling at people who are all “do I know you?”.

Worse, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I never seem to properly differentiate between friendliness levels. Apparently the difference is not clear to anyone outside my head between my being quite friendly but a little shy and my being perfectly self-confident but trying to as nicely as possible keep someone at arm’s distance. Essentially, as far as everyone else is concerned, it’s a continuum between “flirting outrageously”, “being pleasantly friendly” and “trying to shoot someone down without being rude”. And not like a long continuum, either. We’re talking eye-of-faith distinctions here. I hope, by the time I am old and grey, to have solved this to some extent, but in the meanwhile, no dice.

In related but better news, our year group seems to have rapidly developed from a Year-7/American-Teen-Movie level of cliquey interaction (“We are the people with iPhones, you cannot sit with us, yours is an Android p hone”) to a more pleasantly Year 11-ish level of interaction (“You and I are not friends per se but I recognise you so I will nod and smile if I see you out and about”). We’re not yet at the Year 12 level where everyone knows everyone else’s name and could comfortably chat for 20 minutes with any given classmate, but with luck we’ll make it eventually (also, it’s possible that time has added an unrealistic flavour ti my recollections of Year 12 interaction). It seems a great pity that as of the end of this year we’ll be permanently segregated into our Clinical Schools and never more see the people who’ve been assigned to different hospitals. I don’t know how that hothouse environment of only 40 classmates for both years 3 and 4 will go, and I’m sort of worried about it. Still, sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, as the misleadingly negative-sounding saying goes, and with luck it will all work out.

In the meanwhile, it’s perfectly charming to be on nod-and-smile terms with almost everyone, I actually really like it. Not least because it solves that “ought I nod-and-smile or should I just look preoccupied and hope for the best” quandary which I was talking about earlier.

Good grief, one and three-quarter thousand words. I really am dreadfully sorry!