Do you think being yourself is an easy thing? I'm here to tell you it isn't. Being yourself necessitates never hiding who you are......exposing your most vulnerable feelings to everyone. That leaves you open to injury from people who may hate you or just not care a nickle for you. The alternative is never being yourself. Never exposing yourself to potential injury. It is like being onstage under a spotlight twenty-four hours a day. Being closely and continuous scrutinized is exhausting. Actually, you can do it part-time both ways, but that tends to create false impressions and misapprehension about who and what we are. Maybe there is no satisfactory answer.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sometimes we don't get close enough to ourselves to understand
I know what you are thinking. How is that possible? We live with ourselves intimately. That is not true for a lot of us. Many of us....and I mean many......do not want to examine carefully how we feel about some things....some of us don't want to even be in the same room with those things. We invent really clever (or so we think) avoidance behaviors. You know it is possible to ignore the most blatant symptoms of a heart attack by simply thinking about something else. Yes, you can ignore yourself to death.
My favorite example of not getting close enough to yourself appears in The Runaway Bride.
It had to do with how the bride liked her eggs. Each of her fiances liked their eggs differently: one scrambled, one fried, one poached, another an omelet. When it was pointed out to the bride that she appeared to like her eggs the way the whoever she was engaged to liked them, she had to admit that she really did not know how she like them. Near the end of the movie, she admits to the reporter that after fixing eggs every way she could think of, the only way she liked eggs was in Eggs Benedict.
The point is that in order to really know ourselves, we have to do the work. It is about knowing how you feel and why you feel that way.
My favorite example of not getting close enough to yourself appears in The Runaway Bride.
It had to do with how the bride liked her eggs. Each of her fiances liked their eggs differently: one scrambled, one fried, one poached, another an omelet. When it was pointed out to the bride that she appeared to like her eggs the way the whoever she was engaged to liked them, she had to admit that she really did not know how she like them. Near the end of the movie, she admits to the reporter that after fixing eggs every way she could think of, the only way she liked eggs was in Eggs Benedict.
The point is that in order to really know ourselves, we have to do the work. It is about knowing how you feel and why you feel that way.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Palm Sunday
I was at church today. Not unusual. I sing in the choir and today is Palm Sunday. The priest, the lector, the congregation and one other voice recite the passion according to Luke. We go through the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem just before Passover to his burial in a borrowed tomb. The crucifixion is where I got my revelation. It was while he was on the cross as two thieves were also being executed. One guy says to Jesus that if he is who he says he is, why doesn't he save himself and them. The other thief (We call him the Good Thief) rebukes the man and reminds him that they both deserve their death sentences, but that Jesus had done nothing. Then the Good Thief says to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come unto your kingdom." The son of God and man says directly to him, "I promise you that this day you shall be with me in Paradise." In spite of all my research, I have found NO reference to any other individual who got such a commitment. The rest of us got the criteria we have to meet to get into heaven, but he got a guarantee,
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Feelin' Good
A number of vocalists have recorded the song Feelin' Good. If you recall the words at all, you know how I feel. Life is good. No matter what happens......life is good. It may be hard to remember that sometimes, but it will come back to you. We have no real esoteric knowledge and given no hard proof, we should make the best of the here and now, have faith, and leave the next step in the hands of the Almighty. Our circumstances are generally controlled by others, but our perception of circumstance is strictly and totally controlled by us. We live largely in our minds, not to the exclusion of reality, but including our perception of reality. If religion has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that.....in spades. Barring confirmation of an afterlife experience, we should probably make the best of what we've got for our own sakes and that of our fellow-creatures stuck in this version of reality.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Advantage of Living Alone........
To live alone successfully, for there is an art to this, one must like.......no.....love..the person you live with. For those of you not really paying attention, that means you......yourself. There has to be a significant level of understanding, acceptance, tolerance, consideration and love of self. You need to have a certain level of intelligence, as well, because entertaining yourself can be a complex enterprise. It also helps to not have serious psych issues....no history of psychosis or major clinical depression (and I do not mean the blues, which everybody gets occasionally).
Living alone is a bit more expensive, so you need to handle money well and be able to live within the discipline of a budget. Maintaining your environment appropriately does require a bit of the obssessive compulsive trait (not the disease) to guarantee the kind of order that results in domestic peace and happiness. Believe me, the minimal effort required to maintain order and cleanliness is a whole lot more pleansant than the moving of mountains if you have allowed your domicile to descend into chaos. The fact that everything is done YOUR way (since you are doing it) adds no small crown of bliss to your domestic heaven.
The other REALLY serious advantage is the fact that you do not have to be considerate of anyone else. No one will care if you are up all night or out all night. They won't care if you leave your underwear and socks on the floor beside your bed. Neither will anyone pick them up from the floor, wash them and put them away so you can wear them again....clean....this time. You can buy whatever your heart desires at the grocery, even junk food and that strange agave sweetner you like, without worrying someone will eat it or swipe it. Then, again. no one is going to prepare a hot meal for you, make you soup when you are sick, run to the drugstore, do the laundry and grocery-shopping, clean the toilet, vacuum the floor, wash the dishes and make sure you don't run out of your favorite coffee, milk and splenda. No one will be there when you start vomiting or spiking a fever as well.
Not having to consider someone else's feelings......Wow! that is a major convenience. You don't have to listen to them tell you how special you are...how talented. They don't have to listen to your dreams or complaints, commiserate with your disappointments and celebrate your victories. No one will be there to offer moral support when life gets difficult or give advice when a problem is too complex. You don't have to run interference for anybody, but there is no one there to do it for you either. You absolutely never have to compromise. When the world or someone in it has tried to beat you into the ground, you need not worry about having to accommodate someone else who might have been a staunch ally to watch your back. You won't have to listen to someone else's confidences, but they won't be there to listen to yours.
Yessir, there are definite advantages to living alone. The question is: do they outweigh the disadvantages?
Living alone is a bit more expensive, so you need to handle money well and be able to live within the discipline of a budget. Maintaining your environment appropriately does require a bit of the obssessive compulsive trait (not the disease) to guarantee the kind of order that results in domestic peace and happiness. Believe me, the minimal effort required to maintain order and cleanliness is a whole lot more pleansant than the moving of mountains if you have allowed your domicile to descend into chaos. The fact that everything is done YOUR way (since you are doing it) adds no small crown of bliss to your domestic heaven.
The other REALLY serious advantage is the fact that you do not have to be considerate of anyone else. No one will care if you are up all night or out all night. They won't care if you leave your underwear and socks on the floor beside your bed. Neither will anyone pick them up from the floor, wash them and put them away so you can wear them again....clean....this time. You can buy whatever your heart desires at the grocery, even junk food and that strange agave sweetner you like, without worrying someone will eat it or swipe it. Then, again. no one is going to prepare a hot meal for you, make you soup when you are sick, run to the drugstore, do the laundry and grocery-shopping, clean the toilet, vacuum the floor, wash the dishes and make sure you don't run out of your favorite coffee, milk and splenda. No one will be there when you start vomiting or spiking a fever as well.
Not having to consider someone else's feelings......Wow! that is a major convenience. You don't have to listen to them tell you how special you are...how talented. They don't have to listen to your dreams or complaints, commiserate with your disappointments and celebrate your victories. No one will be there to offer moral support when life gets difficult or give advice when a problem is too complex. You don't have to run interference for anybody, but there is no one there to do it for you either. You absolutely never have to compromise. When the world or someone in it has tried to beat you into the ground, you need not worry about having to accommodate someone else who might have been a staunch ally to watch your back. You won't have to listen to someone else's confidences, but they won't be there to listen to yours.
Yessir, there are definite advantages to living alone. The question is: do they outweigh the disadvantages?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Cowardly Commentator
Someone comments on my blog in some version of Chinese. I always take what for me is a foreign language comment to one of the reliable translation sites and today I did so with a comment from March 12th. What came back from the translator was basically someone talking about auto-erotic behavior and chat rooms, etc. I am no prude, but I have a problem with this. I don't care what people do in private, as long as nobody gets hurt. What troubles me is somebody trying to hide what they are really about behind a language barrier.
It is a violation of trust, literacy and ethics. You have no power to hurt me, but you offend me mightily.
It is a violation of trust, literacy and ethics. You have no power to hurt me, but you offend me mightily.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The other side of the wall
Sometimes I feel as though I am standing on one side of a wall. Life is on the other side. I search for a door or a window, or even a crack, but I cannot find one. I hear life going on over there, I have been given visions of it, but I have no idea how to get there. I want so much to immerse myself in life, in that world....mostly his world........ to be truly accepted. I don't want to disappear into the sameness of a crowd. I want to be special to him. I want his life to be better, happier, easier because I am a part of it. Sometimes, it seems as though I am treading water in the middle of the ocean.
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