I used to wince at the term energy, as in I like so-and-so’s energy. I saw it as some tree-hugging empath hooey. The stuff given oxygen by the same type of person who talks your ear off about chakras and astrology while on molly or mushrooms and worships Sadhguru.
I’ve had a change of heart and resultant rearranging in the way I think about spending my time. I don’t know the right word to use — perhaps it is energy. People have energy. What I mean is people have a what-it-is-like to be around.
Sometimes it’s loud, an in-your-face energy making itself constantly known. That acquaintance with ever a new story or fling, always eventful and entertaining and not entirely bound by the constraints of truth. Others a judgmental energy, imposing on you the psychological equivalent of an uninterrupted stare, mind’s eye fixated on your soul in search of our inadequacies and flaws, many and unremarkable as they are.
I’ve always been sensitive to energies; people tend to affect me strongly. I’ve also had a compulsive need to be liked which got in the way of me attending to it. Increasingly, as a byproduct of caring less about being liked and caring more about how I affect others, I’ve begun to listen more to this sense. I use it as a guide for who to be around.
I met up with a buddy M the other day. A newer friend, not one of those we go way back kinda friendships. Yet somehow his energy says otherwise, familiar and comfortable, where words come effortlessly when they want to but silence is just as welcome. That is what I like. Nothing is more enervating to a born introvert than the energy of childish exhortation from a silence begging to be filled by empty words. People call it awkward silence and try to avoid it at all costs, but I don’t believe in awkward silence and I don’t try to avoid it at all costs.
I believe in uncomfortable people. It’s clear to me when someone is comfortable in his own skin, and it’s even more clear when he’s not. I’ve never met a truly charismatic person without a commanding confidence to fill empty space. With listening, with observing, with being.
I seek this energy, this quiet & charismatic confidence. I don’t know how to find it, but I do know how to feel it. If critical thinking is the tool we all learned in school to approach things and ideas, critical feeling is its counterpart: a tool to be harnessed when confronted with people. When you begin to notice how you actually feel around people, your life changes pretty quickly. It won’t take much for you to want to spend more time with certain people and less with others.
There’s that saying that goes something like you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time around. If there’s any truth to that it’s a wonder we don’t spend more energy understanding our inputs.
Totally feel the same way - often feels difficult to articulate why an energy or vibe resonates, but as you note it often has to do with how self-assured someone is.
The importance of energy also reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote: “ I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”