Grievances and Favors in a Ride-Hailing Car

A few days ago, my wife and I took a ride-hailing car to visit an old classmate of mine. When we called the car on the app, we weren't paying close attention to the options and chose a shared ride. When the car arrived, there was already a young female passenger sitting in the back. When we got in, we asked her politely to move inward so that I could take the front passenger seat and my wife could sit in the back with her. Without a word, she gave us the back seat and moved herself to the front passenger seat; we thanked her.

The rest of the ride was quiet. My classmate's home is not far from ours, about a twenty-minute ride. After ten-plus minutes, the young woman in front reached her destination first and got ready to get out. But right before alighting, she suddenly became emotionally agitated and accused both the driver and us. She argued that two of us were sharing the ride while she was alone, making the fare split unfair. Moreover, she claimed we had forced her into the front passenger seat, and that she was under no obligation to play the Good Samaritan.

We could tell her emotions were off, so we quickly tried to calm her down, telling her that if she felt it was unfair, she could show us her QR code and we would transfer the difference to her. The young woman refused; she just angrily declared she would report the driver. The driver didn't know what to do either—clearly, he realized as we did that this young woman was emotionally abnormal. The three of us together tried to soothe her.

The young woman grew more and more agitated, and was nearly in tears by the end. We soothed her as gently as we could, but she was still anxious to call and complain about the driver, feeling she had been greatly wronged and treated very unfairly by us.

She got out to make her complaint call. The driver, helpless, let her complain and continued driving us to our destination, grumbling all the way, cursing and imprecating against this female passenger to vent his anger.

I advised the driver to let it go. I told him that, in my experience, this was a "highly sensitive person"—someone far more sensitive than average, many times more sensitive than ordinary people. Because of this hypersensitivity, they actually live under enormous suffering all the time. They adapt poorly to their environment and always struggle to fit in with ordinary people.

These people are not essentially very different from us ordinary folks; it is just that the intensity of their joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness is about three to ten times that of ordinary people. What we find mildly amusing, they get excited about and dance for joy; what we find mildly unpleasant—or not even unpleasant at all—can send them into a rage. Their joys and sorrows differ from ours only in degree. In their own view, everything they feel is real, but to ordinary people, those feelings are greatly magnified. That is why they find it so hard to get along with ordinary people, and why their lives are so painful because of it.

Many people assume, without thinking, that these "highly sensitive people" are made that way by upbringing. In fact, a growing body of research shows that "highly sensitive people" already differ from ordinary fetuses in the womb. Even in utero they face a harsher survival environment and lack sufficient nutritional support during the fetal period, so from the moment they become a fertilized egg they cannot have the secure sense that ordinary people take for granted. The fright they feel at seeing an earthworm is no less than that of an ordinary person seeing a cobra flicking its tongue at them.

The world sees only the emotional side of the "highly sensitive person," unable to look deeply into the root causes of their emotionality, and finds it hard to understand or sympathize. Worse, many people choose to oppose them, which often leads to more serious problems. Many of the world's tragedies happen this way; murderers are mostly various types of "highly sensitive people."

Highly sensitive people react to external stimuli far more strongly than average and live with a constant, severe sense of crisis. They also long for contact with others, but once they try to merge with others, they instinctively develop fusion anxiety. This anxiety causes frequent conflicts with others and tense relationships; once cracks appear in a relationship, they then develop separation anxiety. So the lives of these highly sensitive people are extremely hard; they suffer greatly in this world, and a considerable number of them choose suicide or withdrawal from society.

Most of a highly sensitive person's life is spent in states of emotional dysregulation, affective dysregulation, and cognitive dysregulation. Their fragile endurance means they have no "emotional skin"; like burn victims, they get hurt at the slightest touch. They need understanding and help from others, but unfortunately they find it hard to maintain normal emotions and relationships. Their lives and work do not go smoothly, their economic situation is poor, and they rarely get enough support.

The tiny ride-hailing car and those short twenty minutes were a microcosm of human grudges and affections. I very much wanted to persuade the driver to understand and sympathize with the young woman who had accused him and me, but unfortunately I could not persuade him to adjust his mindset and cognition—because although the driver was not a highly sensitive person, he was also somewhat emotional. That day was not a good one for either him or the young woman; both remained resentful, unable to let it go.