The Illusion of Perfection, Part 2
Ahh… the Illusion of Perfection. So illusory (and elusive) that people actually believe they can not only obtain perfection, but that it might matter.
I have long been called a perfectionist, by myself and others I suspect. My grade school teachers noted it in the way that I worked (or quit working) when something did not come out exactly right on the first attempt. For a long time in my professional life I was convinced, categorically that if I made a misstep in any way shape or form, all would be lost. While there are a lot of advantages (professionally) to this mindset, it does little for sanity, relationships, or general well-being.
And if all is lost, then what do you do? Really? What do you do?
If you are me you spend a lot of time kicking your own ass. This is a drag. In every way imaginable.
For some time now I have been really trying to work out what really does matter. You hear the cliché all them time that on one’s death bed one will not think back on all the work that they did not do, or the worrying that they did not do…
I think (as with many clichés) this may be the real answer.
Could it be that simple?
On April 15, 2012 something happened that has since shaped much of my attitudes about what really might matter. While this was a catalyst for me in some ways, it was something I had been grappling with for much longer. But a catastrophic event can do this to a person… send them further and faster on a train of thought. After April 15 I started thinking about how it might not be the end of the world if I did not grade 120 papers on the exact day I got them. I started to think that in some ways my inability to present perfectly comprehensive and amazing lessons everyday might be acceptable. I thought I might not wash those dishes right then, I might go to bed and let someone rub my head. I looked around and thought, it just might be okay to do nothing for a minute.
In many ways, my present working environment has contributed a great deal to my ability to see that, while perfection may be a worthy goal, it is not a required outcome in order to achieve really amazing, important, valid things. I am working these days with the most creative, flexible, dynamic groups of people I have ever worked with. Without being patronizing or pandering in any way, these folks have a really solid grip on appropriate priorities for the tasks we have at hand. Consequently, they also have a really clear understanding of how to make sure the pursuit of perfection can coexist with the pursuit of happiness (or at the very least satisfaction.)
I can’t really express how grateful I have been for this – especially recently as I grapple with intense grieving for inexplicable losses, true instability as a teacher working in a public school under the painful thumb of state budgets, insane student behavior as spring approaches and I again find myself at the helm of a group of seniors who do not know how to deal with all the emotions associated with the impending transition that high school graduation brings them whether or not they are ready for it.
When I think about all these things – and all the other shit that is strewn across the world and the human race: genocide, poverty, domestic violence, failing economies, war, the mass marketing of fear, global warming, endangered species, racism – suddenly I get a whole new view of what matters. And what does not matter.
What matters? Spending time with the people who enrich your life, whenever you can. Doing things that energize and recharge you. Minding the three gatekeepers of the mouth: The first gatekeeper asks “Is it true?” The second gatekeeper asks “Is it kind? For those who qualify for the first two, there is a final question. The third gatekeeper asks “Is it necessary?”
And what does not matter? Internet trolls, and angry little men in general. A student who is righteously indignant that I took a page out of Mr. Hand’s book and did not allow him to come late to my class with food. A stack of ungraded papers. Handouts stapled imperfectly.
Tonight I will go to the gym and be punished by my trainer and love it. Then I will walk home and cook dinner for the really kind person who came to meet me just so I didn’t have to walk alone. Then I will get to spend time chatting about the things that matter with someone who matters. I will probably do some work to prepare for tomorrow. I will manage any crises I need to, including cleaning the cat box. And I will sleep well. Grateful for the opportunity to do all these things whether I like them or not, for another day.
All is not. lost.
Clichés: from tartare to true love and points in between with piña coladas and getting caught in the rain
I had a really excellent dinner at one of my favorite restaurants last night. I go to Garçon a lot because it is super close and the food is really good – especially the soups that Arthur makes. [Also the staff is really, really, good-looking. Good looking French guys, what a cliché.]
I have been giving Arthur a bad time about taking his tuna tartare off the menu because it was one of the most yummy things ever. It’s sort of a joke because there is plenty of other great stuff on the menu, but it has become kind of a running commentary at this point. Last night he said that he hasn’t felt like putting it back on the menu because it is such a cliché.
Huh.
I told him that lots of things become cliché for a good reason. He chuckled. But then he walked away.
Interestingly, I have been thinking about clichés a lot lately. [Though, if it were really a cliché, I suppose logic would dictate that it is not that interesting. But, nevermind.] The point is I have been considering the clichéd nature of so many elements of my life.
I want to be a writer/photographer/traveler. *yawn*
I am a single woman who teaches high school and has cats. *yawn*
I am an only child with entitlement and perfectionism issues. *yawn*
I routinely make predictably bad decisions regarding relationships. *yawn*
*yawn*yawn*yawn*yawn*
I came up with the latest version of my unwritten bestseller this week. It was like an AK-47 packed with all things trite: I visualized it looking like some sort of Palahniuk-styled paperback (think Diary), self-deprecating and humorous account of the foibles and follies of my life (hello Sedaris and Fielding), with braggadocio thinly veiled as “experience” (consider every travel author you have ever read, but Bryson and Gilbert in particular.) I wanted to call it Cliché. For real. I thought how each chapter could start like:
“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” I imagined this chapter being an ode to my long-lost tuna tartare.
Another chapter could begin:
“They say when you are in love you want to shout it from the mountaintops” and then go into some sort of humiliating anecdote about how that cliché has played out in my life. [No yelling from mountain tops, I can assure you. Not that the clichéd nature of the concept has deterred me from wanting it.]
And perhaps:
“Those who do not study history are bound to repeat it.” The myriad levels of cliché that line offers me is astounding.
There would have to be a chapter simply called “Crème brûlée” or “Tiramisù”. I think “Happy Hour” or “So, I got a tattoo” could certainly merit individual chapters. Along with “Cat Ladies”, “Burning Man”, “Yoga is my mantra”, “I know a guy”, “The Grateful Dead” [any genre of music really... I remember trying so hard to not be cliché in my music choices back in high school that I actually bought Hüsker Dü albums. Hüsker Dü was never cliché. You know why? They were not very good.]
There is a reason that things become cliché. They have some sort of merit. At least initially… and maybe that is good enough.
True love is a cliché. Does that make it lame? And crème brûlée and tiramisù are fucking delicious. Deal with it. Cats are legitimately good company. No one is going to think it sucks to have someone tell them they are better than a summer’s day. And you know every word to the goddamned Piña Colada song – although you may not know it is called Escape - and even while you hate it, you don’t turn it down. Because what comes around goes around and you can’t pass the buck forever and you probably pierced something one time that you pretend you never did and no matter how cynical the times dictate we must be, you’re still hopeful that practice makes perfect, even though you know nobody is…
You like Piña Coladas.
And getting caught in the rain.
Don’t worry. I won’t tell.
photo: Signs in chalk. October 9, 2011. 18th Street near Sanchez.
A compromising position.
I was talking to T on the phone this morning as she drove to work. A major benefit of having summers off is increased phonability. Like, for instance, yesterday as I was finishing up the last-minute of “really fun” stairclimbing at the Gym (more on this soon, you can be fucking sure) my phone buzzed with a +44 number. I will never not pick up a +44 because it is going to be either Fun Bobby, RG, J, or the goddamned Queen of England. Obviously I answered. It was not the Queen. But, thanks to modern technology and my inability to be shamed into cell phone silence after five years in Hong Kong, J came along as I finished my workout, got changed, went to Safeway and entertained the checkout lady, walked to the nail place and helped me pick a color. So, this morning as I was finishing up my coffee and contemplating the mysteries of catttitude, I was pleased to see T calling in. I figured she could hang with me while cleaned the cat box, did the dishes, watered the plants and headed to yoga.
I was not disappointed. Among other subjects, in what is always worthy conversation, we began to consider the things that are fundamentally necessary for us in a relationship. More to the point we were looking at deal breakers. Or, maybe those are the same things. It’s hard to tell.
One thing we agreed on was that as we get older, (and I don’t actually mean this as a disparaging comment about aging, but rather a statement about how people change over time and perhaps, if they are lucky they get to know themselves a little better too) we seem to have developed more stringent, umm… let’s call them “standards.” It may be true that some people develop their “standards” with more expedience than T and I have, and I am not going to speak to advantages or disadvantages of efficiency in standards-establishment. However, throughout this conversation it seemed to me that the habit of compromising I had cultivated has done little to help me accurately evaluate any of my relationships.
It got us to the fundamental point of confusion. When does having a standard = being stuck-in-your-ways (rigid, frigid, cold, etc.)? Or, again from the more familiar opposite point of view, when does compromising in a relationship = compromising… yourself? I immediately took to the comfort of list making. What have I determined that I simply will not compromise?
Who decides if you are Second Best?
My high school coach used to call me Avis. He did this in an obvious play on one of my other nicknames, as one of his myriad ways of teasing me. At the time, all of his teasing fell into the same category for me: cruel. I was an overly sensitive teenage girl after all, so of course, I let it all get to me, in the wrong way. In hindsight (as it always happens) I see a lot more of the subtext to the seemingly harsh words Coach J had for me. I think I get it.
Or at least I thought I did.
My coach never gave me shit for coming in second unless he knew I should have won. In one sub par performance against Analy High School, a meet that mattered far more for team points than personal glory, I remember telling him that I had been the meet’s top scorer with my second place finish the 100 meter hurdles. He raised an eyebrow and said second was the first loser. I was outraged. But he was right. The girl who beat me was lame and the only reason she had beat me was that I had been all upset about Josh Ingalls not asking me to the prom and it was all I had been talking about for days. I remember being flabbergasted when Coach told me to get a prom date already and be done with it. He had known all along.
He mostly called me Avis during the basketball season. And I couldn’t stand it. Basketball teams are so small, and even if they are completely dysfunctional, they are tight-knit. Add to this that our group was really competitive in all the best and worst ways. So when he started adding the tagline to my nickname (you try harder!) I took it really personally, as if I had to try harder than the other girls because of some deficiency. It made me furious. Again, looking back, his tactics seem not only obvious, but effective. He knew I cared and that in fact I did try harder, and that I would always try harder regardless of, well, anything. He did not see this as pathetic, he saw it as tenacious, honorable, and a work ethic he could respect.
As a sixteen year-old, mired in the 80s where one could never be too rich or too thin (as Piaget borrowed Wallis Simpson’s famous quote over and over to remind us…) and the worst possible thing one could ever do was look like they were trying, I just hated it.
And what of it, being second best? What does it mean? I recently was given pause to consider this on a wholly new level. It was like being called Avis all over again. If you are someone’s second choice, does that make you second best?
Of course, my initial response to being relegated to second place is “Fuck you,” because I am klassy and tolerant like that. Like, really? I am a back up plan? But it comes back to that whole lens of subjectivity concept: why does the way I see myself have anything to do with the Avis-colored lenses of another? There is no harm in trying hard. Or harder. As long as this is not wholly to serve someone, or something, else. I am not going to try any harder to right this current situation by somehow suggesting that, in fact, I am far more likely to end up being the Hertz in this analogy. If that is the case it will become evident, and at that point, someone else may be behind the wheel.
I don’t mind being a little Avis-like. If it means you are nice, honorable and responsible, I am cool with that. I will be nice because I am, and I will not take people for granted, because I don’t. But I am not going to pander for your business. And if you decide that perhaps you made the wrong decision, someone else may have already figured that out. Most significantly, me.
Coach, I may have finally worked it out.
Thank you.
ps: Although, Coach, if you ever read this, the flies on dung simile never really made me feel all that much better. Just sayin’.
“Hey, Doc. It hurts when I go like this…”
There is so much stuff out there on the internet. Seriously. It is the curse of access. You can find an example of just about anything in the world you might want to see… or you might never want to see.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
And as the sages of the ages have taught us, with great freedom comes some responsibility. Or as Homer would say, “Doh!” As one wanders through the World Wide Web, either with awe, obsession, malice, curiosity, desire, appreciation or desperation, one must remember:
If you don’t like what you are seeing, go somewhere else.
Simple solutions are so rare.
You can thank me later.
ps: I’m going to add a caveat here. If you enjoy self-flagellation, or seek things out that you know will piss you off for other reasons, more power to you, and go for it. But if you do that and *complain* about it you really are, a special kind of idiot.
Not just an Animal Planet, it’s an Animal Universe
There is an African proverb that says: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.” I think of this proverb often. I thought I might think of it less once I was off of Lamma and no longer sleeping with my bedside artillery; but it turns out to be one of those phrases that runs through my mind with consistent regularity in a literal context as well as a figurative one. “Too small to make a difference…”
This morning I am awakened at 5 a.m. Not because my body has determined it has enough sleep. Not because I need to use the bathroom. Not because I had that extra margarita the night before. Not because anticipation of the day’s events have piqued my bio-rhythms. This morning I am awakened at 5 a.m. because Matilda is pissed off. Matilda has had a rough couple of months, or at least in my human projections she has. She lost her brother, from whom she had never ever been apart, on the day Dennis Hopper died and her human host was nowhere to be found either. She was uprooted from the only home she has ever known with little warning or preparation, because that is how I seem to do things these days – just.like.that. No longer free to roam the jungle, chase butterflies and birds, smell the frangipani or ‘help’ our neighbors in the garden, coming and going as she pleased in an environment absent of cars, televisions and wiener dogs, Matil has found herself in the suburbs. I imagine this must have seemed like somewhat of a bad dream to her, after two ferry rides, a train ride, a taxi ride a 13-hour flight and two more hours in a car to wake up somewhere far far away in every possible interpretation.
After this post, I may need to be “Committed.”
It has happened again.
I am reading a book with so much immediate and significant relevance I am wondering how it is possible that it landed in my hands at this time. Of course I know, technically, how it happened: I went to the bookstore and saw a book written by an author I enjoy, about a subject I am perplexed by, fascinated with, horrified of, uninitiated unto, and perhaps even, somehow excluded from. And I bought the book.
The subject is MARRIAGE.
Liz Gilbert writes like a blogger. Not sure if that comes across as a compliment or an insult, but as she says in her book, people used to say she wrote like a man and she was as sure that it was meant to be a compliment as she was sure that it was meant to be condescending when people described her as a chick-lit writer. In the end it is not so important. The way she tackles this particular subject and the perspective she comes at it from are perfectly brilliant. For me. Lots of people I know here in Hong Kong don’t like her style, they seem to think she is derivative or somehow generic. One friend of mine said of Eat Pray Love (among other books) “I could write that book.” Hmmm. I am not sure about that. But if there were a book I could dedicate to all of my girlfriends on all of their respective continents, regardless of marital status or ambitions, this would be it. And I would also recommend it to a number of my gentleman friends as well. Especially those about to wed. READ IT.
The premise of Gilbert’s latest book, Committed, is simple: two people who fell in love after brutal divorces swore they would never get married and were perfectly okay with that for every conceivable reason. Then, due to circumstances largely out their hands, they were faced with an ultimatum of sorts that indicated they would have to marry. And this book is the result of Gilbert’s method of coping: investigation. She really, really, really looks into marriage – its history, effect on women (and men), purpose, and the cult-like fascination that encompasses it. She is clear about her limits as an anthropologist and scholar in general, but some of the things she uncovers are really eye-opening. Which is not to say you read them and go, “Well I never!” It is more like you read them and you go, “Holy shit! Maybe I am not crazy.”
I am not married. I have never been married (though almost one and a half times.) I have, like most girls and women I know, vacillated wildly between desperate longing to get married and a cavalier not giving a shit attitude about it. But through it all, I have always been, and imagine I will always be, interested in the ongoing fascination with marriage and from where said fascination springs eternal. To this end, Gilbert’s text is immensely satisfying for me.
The time frame of this book places Gilbert in Southeast Asia throughout the long, hot summer of 2006. Interestingly, I was likely within earshot of her on more than one occasion as we were in exactly the same places at the same times. Weird. Add to that the detail that she and both seem to have wreaked romantic havoc on a good portion of our own lives. My BFF tells me my motto could be: “Amanda – Making bad relationship choices since 1989″ – and she’d be more correct than I want to admit. And the pattern of this chaotic, period of infatuation can be summed up thusly:
“My new love interest seemed to have a giant EXIT sign hanging over his head – and I dived right through that exit, using the love affair as an excuse to escape my collapsing [whatever you need to escape from], then claiming with an almost hysterical certainty that this person was everything I truly needed in life.
“Shocking how that didn’t work out.” (Gilbert, p. 101)
Tou-freaking-ché.
Further, Gilbert points out that psychologists call infatuation, that deluded state of madness, “narcissistic love.” Along with Gilbert, I am gonna have to say: “I call it ‘my twenties’.”
Hello.
And through her examination of marriage Gilbert uncovers with some very interesting stuff, like the Marriage Benefit Imbalance. This is the suggestion (real enough for me through an analysis of my own empirical evidence) that men get more out of marriage than women. I would add to this that in spite of the conventional wisdom assumption that women are desperate to be married, I find the opposite to be true in my (admittedly limited, though extremely variegated) experience. She has caught a lot of flack for her use of the M.B.I. as a concept. But when people complain about it and then sum up their argument this way: the main point of marriage as a social institution: to protect and raise children, it becomes clear that we are going to have to agree to disagree. I am still stuck back in that illusory place where marriage is about a partnership of two adults to do whatever the hell they want. (Could be one more reason why I am not married…) Not surprisingly, my understanding also comes from the generation of divorce so do what you want, but just remember, a lot of the time what you want is not exactly what your partner wants.
Gilbert spends a lot of time talking about the “Auntie Brigade” as well and the social pressures to have children that go along with marriage. Every woman I know is familiar with this pressure to some degree, whether it comes from their own psyche or from external sources. Not having kids seems like some kind of cultural failure on the “How to be a girl” chart of life. On the other hand, in Sunday’s South China Morning Post this week there was an article about how the single most beneficial thing a person can do to help stave off the seemingly inevitable doom of planet Earth is to not have kids. Yay me. I am suddenly so inadvertently green I can take all those plane trips and not worry about my carbon foot print anymore. Which brings me to another point. While I am no longer in the habit of ruling out life possibilities or choices, on the approach to forty things do start to look different. In a discussion of the SCMP article on Sunday, a good friend of mine, (single, forties, “Auntie,”) told me she has no interest in kids because she doesn’t want to be chasing toddlers around throughout middle age, she has other things she wants to do. She admits she was inclined to have kids in her twenties, but “things didn’t work out” with the potential F.O.B., so she has moved on – mentally, physically, etcetera. Good point. (And Green!) At the same time I have another friend here whose sole (soul?) objective is to get married. When I was telling her about my trip to Bali over New Year’s she couldn’t even talk about the trip – only wanted to talk about my companion and “Don’t you want to get married?” The non-sequitur-like nature of the conversation gave me a headache, and she never got to see the photos.
What marriage is and what it was and what it may become seem to be deeply personal. I am certainly not proclaiming a permanent, or even actual, disdain for any of it. But I do advocate for it all to be taken in some sort of perspective, like really, the proverbial ‘grain of salt.’ I do not need a husband for any concrete reason. And I am no longer convinced that partnership is somehow more valid through legal documentation. It has been a very relaxing change of heart. That doesn’t mean I won’t agree to some sort of permanent partnership should the cosmos find themselves in perfect alignment or something. On that note, the idea that “all we need is love” is also examined in the book. What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe so? Seems like there may be a little more to it than that. Go figure. Had I married the boys (men in a few cases) that I was completely and desperately in love with…
sorry… not able…………..
to……… type……..
having physical reaction akin to shock……………………….
On the other hand, I am sure I let a couple of “keepers” get away. Though, that certainly does not make me unusual. One of my favorite asides in Committed is a story of a friend of the author asking a Mongolian singer who had just completed a performance in NYC what the songs were about, because in spite of not understanding a word she had found them heart wrenching. He said, “Our songs are about the same things that everyone else’s songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse.”
Amen. [And now I know where Tom T. Hall got his material - I guess everything does come from Asia.]
Gilbert’s book, through the best parts and my least favorite bits, is really a worthwhile read especially for looking at the personal and public histories that have contributed to our understanding, née, fetish with marriage at least in my generation and demographic. She hits on divorce, gay marriage, remarriage and non-marriage from a lot of vantage points. Let me also say that the obvious double entendre in the word choice “committed” is not lost on me. We commit to things (or in the case of some of us, we categorically rebel against it) and we get committed in other instances. Loony bin, church or Justice of the Peace. In the end it turns out the choice is up to me, and that is just a-o-k. Though, one might be wise to bear in mind the sentiments of Albert Camus:
“You have the freedom to choose your actions, you don’t have the freedom to choose the consequences of your actions.”
Umm, yeah. I did that.
“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer — they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
~ Ken Kesey
One year ago I spent nearly US$1,000 on a plane ticket to fly home for a weekend to meet someone. Just for the weekend. On a whim. It was thrillingly spontaneous and totally out of character.
Going to San Francisco for the weekend – how debonair: how laden with flair.
It turned out to be a life changing experience.
One year later, I am poised on the brink of amazing things and the year behind me has been filled with experiences that, on a brief mental cataloguing, are totally amazing: Burning Man, Home, Vietnam, Bali, Japan, Thailand, Burma, Photography, Writing, Family, Birthdays, Transitions, Festivals, New Friends, Old Friends, Surprises. A review of what has become of my life seems a healthy reminder of what lies ahead.
My flight left Hong Kong at 2:10 p.m. and I landed in San Francisco at 11:35 a.m. on April 10th, 2009.
[He never showed up.]
But I have arrived.
These stories are true.
Albert Markovski: The interconnection thing is definitely for real.
Tommy Corn: It is! I didn’t think it wasn’t! It is!
Albert Markovski: I know, I can’t believe it, it’s so fantastic!
Tommy Corn: It’s amazing!
Albert Markovski: I know.
Tommy Corn: But it’s also nothing special.
I met a young lady in the summer of 2005 in a class in San Diego. We had the same name; in a way. She was funny and audacious, and dead set on going to Germany by whatever means possible. This was, you will not be surprised to discover, related directly to a young man. I stayed in touch with this young lady as I entered into a very bizarre and mildly labyrinthine new chapter of my own life. Several months later, this young lady contacted me from Taiwan. She had decided that the reality as well as the rationale behind going to Germany were not meant to be, and so she had made a dramatic shift and come to Taiwan. This was fun for me, and for her I think it was acceptable. Less than a year later this young lady met a dashing young man in Taiwan. He was from Germany. She is now a happily married momma to a beautiful baby girl, living with her German husband… in Germany.
The Universe does indeed appear to work in mysterious ways.
Okay… Okay! Okay!!! I get it! There is a lot to learn.
I realize that learning is infinite. I accept this fully. I generally even really appreciate this and advocate for embracing this as one of life’s greatest gifts.
But Holy Hell! Can a kid get a break once in a while? I am so tired of *%$*%)@!*^ learning lessons lately.
My brain is F-U-L-L.
I have no idea if the lessons have been here to learn all along and I have been too obtuse to notice, or if there is in fact, something major going on. But Oh. My. God. It is full on. I often watch my friend Adele’s amazing young son with awe as he is taking in all the world has to teach him. And he, my little B.F.F., has much to learn. He knows this and is okay with it most of the time. But there are those moments, like the moments I had today, when you can see the emotion welling up in him because it is all just too much to comprehend and yes, too much to freaking LEARN, sometimes. Of course, unlike me, he is five. He is supposed to be immersed in life lessons. Where is the justice here?
Sometimes I wish it could just be easy. For my L.B.F.F. and for me.
In the course of a few short hours today I had so much to take in. I think I managed. But it was exhausting. Flexibility, patience, chillaxing. Sometimes those are the only things you need.
And yoga, of course. Thank whoever I need to thank for that.
So yeah, in keeping with the Days of Gratitude leading up to Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the lessons, but still, man, I could use a break for just minute.
How about tomorrow?
Non-Reactive Reaction.
The word for today is ruminate:
–verb (used without object)
1. to chew the cud, as a ruminant
2. to meditate or muse; ponder–verb (used with object)
3. to chew again or over and over
4. to meditate on; ponderfrom rumen (gen. ruminis) “gullet”
Lately, I find that the visceral pleasure in cogitating on something rather than reacting has been extremely satisfying. For instance: I receive an email that I have been waiting for. I am glad to have this email. The information it contains is interesting, if not exactly what I was looking for, and ultimately puts to rest the wait for the email. I am inclined to reply. But I do not. Instead, I ruminate over the email and the implications of the email and the potential outcomes of replying, not replying. The email needs no reply, though this does not always stop me from doing so. Right now I feel perfectly satisfied to have the email in my inbox and return to it when I want to remind myself that it is there. No need to “just say hey” back.
Or consider this example: I am on a boat (yeah, really, on a boat.) I am listening to people converse and speculate over the details of something of which I am fairly sure I have more accurate information. Should I share/correct/engage? I don’t know what I should do, but I don’t do anything. I sit and ruminate. There is no reason for me to get involved, particularly because they are not really interested in accurate information, as it tends to be quite boring. I turn my iPod up.
I return to the email. I am glad it is there. Why it feels so satisfying I have no idea, but you know, whatever.
Without advocating for passivity or excessive contemplation or worse, the creation of non-reality, I think that the pleasure derived from bouncing a concept around in your head for the simple interest of it is quite cool. It is like savoring something delectable on your tongue rather than wolfing it down. Wolfing definitely has its place, but this is certainly pleasant.
A non-reactive reaction.
[photo from here.]
He thinks I am The Shit, I know because he told me so.
A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life… they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert
I don’t really write about much personal stuff on here. I mean, I know I write a lot about stuff that I like, or I am interested in, or that is important to me… but I generally do not get too personal. That should not surprise people who know me well. While outwardly quite forward, I keep the real stuff, the stuff that is fragile, dirty, imperfect, fucked up, embarrassing, tender, most precious… locked up pretty tightly. I often giggle to myself when I hear people say they know me. Very few do. I understand that this is a fundamentally flawed way to live. I also understand that it can make being close to me – err…. tedious, to say the least. I cannot say that I know where it comes from. Perhaps from being an only child with a very tightly wound up perfectionist psyche. I think it has to do with the experiences I have considered EPIC FAILURES when I have shared myself with people only to be totally disappointed in the outcome. Perhaps it is something else altogether. Sometimes when I watch my LBFF I see parts of myself so clearly in him [throwing the picture away because he made a 'mistake,' wanting to be alone and sullen because something that he did had unintended consequences that he could not control and did not like] and I so want to free him from the burden that I know these behaviors can become. But those will be his struggles, they cannot be faced by anyone else. This is one thing I know.
It is easier to be angry. Or funny. Or sarcastic. Or witty. Or pretty much anything else besides being vulnerable or lost. This becomes obvious with just a cursory look at the way people act all around us. In the news, in politics, in Hollywood… everywhere. People go to a lot of trouble to project the person they want to be to the world and the ultimate cost of that is losing who they really are down to the core. We do not consider that cost because we are looking at the sort term expenditures of appearing foolish or naive or pathetic or needy if we are more true to ourselves. This is one thing I have learned.
Amanda
