Neon Genesis Evangelion does a great episode on the concept of The Hedgehog’s Dilemma, a phenomenon in which bristle-backed creatures are unable cuddle for warmth without hurting each other in the process.
This concept terrified me as a teenager, who lacked opportunities for intimacy and partner building. In many aspects of my own life, I’ve found myself to be destructive to not only myself unintentionally, but also towards those close to me. It’s a very difficult thing to swallow, as the results of absence are easier to detect than the faults of intimacy. With each practicing moment of engagement comes another opportunity for failure.
This dilemma subsided to the backburner of my mind in my college years. Teenage me was much more hormonally conflicted, less experienced, and more lonely. Despite this neuroticism subsiding, my social life did not pick up dramatically. In fact, it was rather the opposite, in which the neuroticism that protected my brash and socially unaware self became less of an armor and more of a cloak of hiding.
The only thing that brought me out of hiding was my purpose, or my dharma. I would ignore all of my fears and intuitions about social interaction and I would charge forward with discrete action in mind. A lot of this charging was coupled with logical research and experience, of understanding and navigating social situations, but it was still overconfidently charged nonetheless.
In a much broader topic I’ll discuss in the future, my ability to connect with others was linked with me finding my adult male identity, coming of age from an adolescent teenage male with very little status or accomplishment. It took a lot of external circumstance and experience for me to not only be comfortable around others, but to have them take a likewise interest in me. A misconception I had about the hedgehog’s dilemma is that human personality is not malleable to circumstance and that physical arbitrators stand in place of emotional or personal desires. Humans are capable of relaxing their quills and of connecting with others, despite what our social anxiety and neuroticism tells us.
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