Saturday, February 14, 2004
Valentine's Day
If you're interested in where Valentine's Day came from (have you ever heard of Lupercalia and the feast day of Juno Februata?) take a look here:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/valentine1.htm
My husband got me a whole pile of stuff today... which made up for him having left the door standing open when he went out to run errands, leaving me sleeping in an open house for about 5 hours while the heater ground on and on and every spider and bug within a 100 mile radius came running in. Talk about karmic balance, sigh.
My husband and I fight all the time, but we never doubt our love for each other; it saddens me to know that many people in our modern society view the end of the infatuation phase and the start of the normal business of 2 different people wrangling over how to run their dual lives means that it's time to dump the relationship and find someone new. Take my word for it; if someone you've been with for years is willing to drive all over your county to find you that one gift item you expressed a desire for that turns out to not exist in any stores near you, hang onto him (or her) forever... even if he doesn't always close the door all the way.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/valentine1.htm
My husband got me a whole pile of stuff today... which made up for him having left the door standing open when he went out to run errands, leaving me sleeping in an open house for about 5 hours while the heater ground on and on and every spider and bug within a 100 mile radius came running in. Talk about karmic balance, sigh.
My husband and I fight all the time, but we never doubt our love for each other; it saddens me to know that many people in our modern society view the end of the infatuation phase and the start of the normal business of 2 different people wrangling over how to run their dual lives means that it's time to dump the relationship and find someone new. Take my word for it; if someone you've been with for years is willing to drive all over your county to find you that one gift item you expressed a desire for that turns out to not exist in any stores near you, hang onto him (or her) forever... even if he doesn't always close the door all the way.
Friday, February 13, 2004
How do they know?
I'm the sort of person that gets picked out of a crowd of hundreds in an airport or mall for people to ask for help. Online, people who read posts of mine, even posts that are dry and factual, or hard-edged and angry, contact me and tell me their problems, pour out their hearts. People respond to posts I wrote months, YEARS ago, or remember me from online forums all the way back to my earliest days online, and I get emails saying "I hope you're still at this email address, I really wanted to get back in touch with you..." Even people I had "fights" with seek me out long afterwards asking to be my friend and be able to talk to me about their lives again.
I'm the sort of person who is willing to invest an immense amount of time listening to people and helping them, and I know alot about psychology and such that allows me to offer facts as well as support, and maybe that makes it not too surprising that people come BACK to me if they knew me, but it's not like I wear a t-shirt that says "if you want help, talk to me" when I go out in public, and people reading in forums can't even see me, and yet even when I'm talking about some non-touchy-feely subject like what the laws are concerning mail fraud, someone will read my post and then contact me... it just happened today, and the post WAS about mail fraud, and I'd posted via my husband's account, so the woman who wrote to me assumed she was writing to a strange man, who she somehow expected to want to listen to her tale of woe (yes, I wrote to her, I advised her, and she has announced her intention to keep in touch).
Is it a coincidence that this sort of thing happens to me all the time? Of course not. Karma brings people needing help to someone who goes out of their way to help people... the person who goes out of their way to help people "draws in" people who need help. We really DO attract into our lives people who need us or who we need... but, it ALSO brings us people who represent issues we need to resolve and lessons we need to show we've learned, so be a little careful when you meet someone and it feels like fate-there are all kinds of fate.
I'm the sort of person who is willing to invest an immense amount of time listening to people and helping them, and I know alot about psychology and such that allows me to offer facts as well as support, and maybe that makes it not too surprising that people come BACK to me if they knew me, but it's not like I wear a t-shirt that says "if you want help, talk to me" when I go out in public, and people reading in forums can't even see me, and yet even when I'm talking about some non-touchy-feely subject like what the laws are concerning mail fraud, someone will read my post and then contact me... it just happened today, and the post WAS about mail fraud, and I'd posted via my husband's account, so the woman who wrote to me assumed she was writing to a strange man, who she somehow expected to want to listen to her tale of woe (yes, I wrote to her, I advised her, and she has announced her intention to keep in touch).
Is it a coincidence that this sort of thing happens to me all the time? Of course not. Karma brings people needing help to someone who goes out of their way to help people... the person who goes out of their way to help people "draws in" people who need help. We really DO attract into our lives people who need us or who we need... but, it ALSO brings us people who represent issues we need to resolve and lessons we need to show we've learned, so be a little careful when you meet someone and it feels like fate-there are all kinds of fate.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Life at the bottom of the ocean, and beyond...
A fascinating article in the March 2004 issue of Discover describes how those who study the sea were "sure" at various points in history that there was no life beyond a certain depth, with said depth in each instance being, noncoincidentally, whatever depth they themselves had explored to. It never ceases to amaze me that when a scientist discovers proof that the previous scientists were wrong about something, they typically make the exact same stupid, arrogant mistake of claiming that what THEY have discovered is really, REALLY the full truth.
Anyways, I was awed to learn that they now know that there is life down to AT LEAST half a mile below the seafloor, and that the organisms that live under the sea floor constitute nearly a third of the mass of all life on this planet. Some of these microbes consume methane, proving that life DOES exist that not only does not use oxygen but is poisoned by it; this is important when you think how many planets and large moons there are with lots of methane. (Does anyone besides me wonder how some people can be so confident about their claims that there isn't life of any sort on any other planet in the universe, when we know so little about many of the lifeforms on OUR planet, which keep turning up in places we were sure nothing could live in, and in forms not previously seen?)
With so many unknowns existing in the physical realm, is it so hard to believe that there are unknowns in the realms of energy?
Anyways, I was awed to learn that they now know that there is life down to AT LEAST half a mile below the seafloor, and that the organisms that live under the sea floor constitute nearly a third of the mass of all life on this planet. Some of these microbes consume methane, proving that life DOES exist that not only does not use oxygen but is poisoned by it; this is important when you think how many planets and large moons there are with lots of methane. (Does anyone besides me wonder how some people can be so confident about their claims that there isn't life of any sort on any other planet in the universe, when we know so little about many of the lifeforms on OUR planet, which keep turning up in places we were sure nothing could live in, and in forms not previously seen?)
With so many unknowns existing in the physical realm, is it so hard to believe that there are unknowns in the realms of energy?
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Teenage rebellion
That phrase is actually an incorrect one for what it describes, as what is occurring is NOT in fact a rebellion in the standard meaning of the word, but a normal, healthy, necessary process by which teens MUST detach themselves to a certain extent from their family of origin, transfer that attachment for a while to their peer group (hence the drive to conformity among teens), and, finally, to become independent-minded adults; the trouble starts when the parents don't want their little darlings to do the things that normal kids their age SHOULD be doing as part of growing up, and so go to battle rather than just offering guidance and support. While parents should certainly make sure that their teens don't do anything during this period that's illegal, or messes up their school records, or in any other way could have a significant negative impact on their adult lives, they need to stop the hysteria, accept the painful reality that their babies will grow up, MUST grow up, and eventually leave home, and that to do so they MUST go through this process, and save their fights with their kids for things that MATTER, rather than things that are just harmless self-expression or normal things that kids their age do (and yes, you DO need to care what other kids' parents let them do, so that you can be sure you aren't making unrealistic rules for your own kids).
That said, here's why I'm on this topic; I did NOT have a teenage rebellion phase... and, interestingly enough, neither did my husband, which is probably NOT a coincidence.
My husband was given a perfect, golden childhood by parents who worshipped him, gave him anything he wanted, and never punished him for anything; when he hit his teens and wanted to do teen stuff, he just did it, paid for and permitted by them. Although his immaturity, disorganization, laziness, etc, in adulthood are connected to his being spoiled, and he suffers now (as do *I*, sigh) for the lack of parental control then, he's a clear example of how it's totally possible for there to be no "rebellious" behavior from a teen if they're allowed to make their own choices and decisions and fit in with their peers.
MY childhood, by comparison, was pretty grim, with parents who were so restricting and controlling that I remember the little kids I babysat for having more choices, more control over their lives, fewer rules, and more flexibility and gray area about what was expected of them than I did... and this isn't something invented in a melodramatic teenaged imagination, this is something that any # of parents of kids I babysat talked to me about, that other adults such as carpool parents, neighbors and teachers talked to me about, ALL of them making the point that they'd never heard of even a far younger child having a life as regimented as mine, and thought that this was wrong, both in general and because I was an honor student who never got into any trouble, and in fact did nothing but go to school and read, and so should have been given MORE leeway, not LESS.
So, I had quite alot to "rebel against," but no rebellion occurred. I've thought about this in the past, and have seen that the things that were part of the "rebellions" of most other teens didn't exist for me; I was an only child, I had no friends, I was given no allowance or other $, I was never taken anywhere (like a mall) and dropped off to do my own thing, I wasn't allowed to get a driver's license until a week before I started college (and there was no public transportation and nothing to do within walking distance), my parents never went out at night... if you have no $, no means of transportation, no friends or siblings to help, and are never out from under parental monitoring, it makes doing anything other than what they dictate pretty darned hard. Yeah, I suppose that technically I could have walked out the front door in the middle of the night and gone and sat on a curb a few blocks away until they woke up and found me gone or some such thing, but I would have gotten no enjoyment from that sort of nonsense, it would have been stupid, childish and unsafe and I knew it, and all sorts of abuse would have resulted from it, so I never indulged in taking any sort of action just to have something to point to that I did without permission.
Another element to my lack of "misbehavior" is that I really never WAS a kid in the way you think of kids, blindly doing things that they want to do or that seem fun, never thinking of the consequences; even as a very tiny child, I grasped that, whatever I did, my parents would find out sooner or later, probably sooner, and, if they disapproved, punishment was guaranteed, not to mention abuse for the rest of my life about the incident, and that this would far, FAR outweigh any fun I might have doing some forbidden thing... and I always knew when something would be forbidden even if it was a "new thing" that they had never specifically discussed, again even as a tiny child, which always makes me amazed when I hear about kids 10 years or more older than the age *I* had things figured out who never realized in advance that the thing they were about to do was wrong, would get found out, and would get them in trouble-that "blindness" MUST be a part of normal childhood development, as 100% of kids seem to have it, and it even makes sense to have it, as it would make it easier for kids to act outside what their parents want them to do and so grow up.
I've always accepted the things listed above as being the reason for my lack of the normal teenage "rebellion," and they DO explain most of it, but I've seen an ad several times recently that shows parents "practicing" screaming and door-slamming and such so that they could handle those things from their teenaged daughter, and it sent up an unconscious flare in me... because I didn't even do THAT as a teen. There were no "I hate yous," no arguments to try to get permission to be allowed to sit at a different table from them at McDonald's or be in a separate store in the mall, no attempts to alter my appearance such that they'd be uncomfortable being seen with me, no attempts to assert independence-NOTHING. I didn't suddenly achieve intelligence, strength of character, independent thought, etc, as an adult, so why, WHY did I NEVER show any evidence of normal teenaged pulling-away?
I was thinking a couple of hours ago about a conversation with a family friend, who has a hard time grasping that my mother and I don't like each other, and so rarely see or speak to each other, and that thought lead to one about how, unlike everyone else I know, I never had the desire or need to be given parental love or approval even as a kid, much less now, and so have far greater freedom of action than most people because I honestly don't CARE what my mother thinks, now that her thoughts have no control over my life (my father lives far away and we've had no contact for many years), and how easy it was for me to do a full 180 with my life the moment I was married and out of her control, instantly achieving the sort of complete elimination of the control and even INFLUENCE of my mother that most people never get until their parents DIE, and then it hit me... I never did any of the things that kids do to separate themselves emotionally from their parents because I NEVER WAS EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!
I'm sure I loved them as a little kid in the uncritical, desperate way that all little kids love their adult caretakers, even abusive ones, but from a very young age I was capable of cold analytical thought, and of looking around me and seeing what MY situation was compared to that of other kids, and of concluding that, although I was a good girl, virtually a model child, I wasn't getting any of the attention, affection, praise, gifts, treats and freedoms that the other kids were getting, and, while a normal child in that situation usually internalizes that sort of thing and comes to believe that they themselves MUST be "bad" to merit that sort of treatment, *I* knew right from the start that I was a MUCH better kid than the norm (adults OUTSIDE of my family always told me so), and that therefore my PARENTS had to be "bad" for not acting like the other kids' parents.
And I was RIGHT.
We never had a real family unit, held together by bonds of love and all the standard stuff; my parents decided right from the start that the way to raise a child was with endless, inflexible rules, endless forbiddens, no freedom of choice for me, and the certainty of virtually INFINITE abuse over anything seen as "wrong" in me, such that I would, by default, do no wrong, make no mistakes, cause no problems, because they'd made it virtually impossible at every level for me to do so. While they did in fact succeed in making me into the model child on the surface, one who brought home A's, kept her clothes clean and never caused any trouble, what they didn't see, and probably wouldn't have cared about if they HAD, was that this process made us into prison wardens and prisoner, NOT parents and child, and my childhood and young adulthood were spent as if I were truly in prison, never doing anything outside of attend school (and, later on, work) besides sit in my room and read, or sit in the "family room" and watch TV. We didn't go on vacations, or outings, or do ANYTHING together, and, although my homemaker mother had plenty of spare time, and we were always at least middle-class, none of the available time or $ was spent on ME; my life resembled stories I've read about kids who were orphaned and taken in by unwilling family members FAR more than it resembled the lives of other kids, and, as a result, I never had that bond to my parents, and so no need to BREAK that bond as a teen... the teen years were just more years to drag myself through before I could get to the time when my LIFE would begin.
I'm wondering now if my countless dreams about being back in high school might have an element of "this is where your emotional development stopped, and now you have to go back to that point and try to restart and complete that process" in them. Oh, I function as an adult, in my admittedly emotionally-abnormal way, because I was basically a "little adult" from earliest childhood, and because there's no rocket science involved in paying bills, cleaning up, and so forth, but now I have to wonder if, as time passes outside of the rigid rules that I had to deal with into my 30's, some part of me wants to try and go through a sort of emotional equivalent of the GED, so that I can get "caught up" emotionally with my peers, and thus won't just be "parroting" living a normal adult life, but REALLY living, thinking and feeling as an adult.
More and more, as I watch TV and movies, read books, articles and blogs, and talk to people about their lives, I'm aware of all the things that I missed as a kid, teen, and young adult, all the fun, the going out, the parties, the dating lots of different people, the intensity of feeling, the new experiences sought out and enjoyed, and, perhaps cruelest of all, falling in love, that insane sort of infatuation where you think the other person is perfect, where you're swept away with passion and the desire to be with them every moment... I never had ANY of what I now see are important "emotional learning" experiences. By the time I got married I was past 30, past the age of the sort of wild stuff that's normal and expected of people in their 20's; I was freed from the prison of my family, but I can't get back those years or the experiences I SHOULD have been having in them.
I have an excellent life now, with a great deal of free time, control over my choices and actions, a man who cares about me, and enough $ to finally have nice things, even the sorts of frivolous things I should be too old for now; ironically, I'm the envy of most people I know these days, I who once was universally pitied. None of that changes the past, though, and the more I think things through and figure them out, the further I see that I am from the norm and the more sense it makes that I think and feel so differently than everyone else, and, although I'd never want to give up my individuality, I'm wondering more and more if it might not be possible to "re-parent" myself, to go through some version of the stages of emotional development that I missed, and to thus reclaim that part of my emotional landscape that I've never seen, reclaim my ability to have the full range of experiences and feelings, reclaim the missing piece of my humanity.....
That said, here's why I'm on this topic; I did NOT have a teenage rebellion phase... and, interestingly enough, neither did my husband, which is probably NOT a coincidence.
My husband was given a perfect, golden childhood by parents who worshipped him, gave him anything he wanted, and never punished him for anything; when he hit his teens and wanted to do teen stuff, he just did it, paid for and permitted by them. Although his immaturity, disorganization, laziness, etc, in adulthood are connected to his being spoiled, and he suffers now (as do *I*, sigh) for the lack of parental control then, he's a clear example of how it's totally possible for there to be no "rebellious" behavior from a teen if they're allowed to make their own choices and decisions and fit in with their peers.
MY childhood, by comparison, was pretty grim, with parents who were so restricting and controlling that I remember the little kids I babysat for having more choices, more control over their lives, fewer rules, and more flexibility and gray area about what was expected of them than I did... and this isn't something invented in a melodramatic teenaged imagination, this is something that any # of parents of kids I babysat talked to me about, that other adults such as carpool parents, neighbors and teachers talked to me about, ALL of them making the point that they'd never heard of even a far younger child having a life as regimented as mine, and thought that this was wrong, both in general and because I was an honor student who never got into any trouble, and in fact did nothing but go to school and read, and so should have been given MORE leeway, not LESS.
So, I had quite alot to "rebel against," but no rebellion occurred. I've thought about this in the past, and have seen that the things that were part of the "rebellions" of most other teens didn't exist for me; I was an only child, I had no friends, I was given no allowance or other $, I was never taken anywhere (like a mall) and dropped off to do my own thing, I wasn't allowed to get a driver's license until a week before I started college (and there was no public transportation and nothing to do within walking distance), my parents never went out at night... if you have no $, no means of transportation, no friends or siblings to help, and are never out from under parental monitoring, it makes doing anything other than what they dictate pretty darned hard. Yeah, I suppose that technically I could have walked out the front door in the middle of the night and gone and sat on a curb a few blocks away until they woke up and found me gone or some such thing, but I would have gotten no enjoyment from that sort of nonsense, it would have been stupid, childish and unsafe and I knew it, and all sorts of abuse would have resulted from it, so I never indulged in taking any sort of action just to have something to point to that I did without permission.
Another element to my lack of "misbehavior" is that I really never WAS a kid in the way you think of kids, blindly doing things that they want to do or that seem fun, never thinking of the consequences; even as a very tiny child, I grasped that, whatever I did, my parents would find out sooner or later, probably sooner, and, if they disapproved, punishment was guaranteed, not to mention abuse for the rest of my life about the incident, and that this would far, FAR outweigh any fun I might have doing some forbidden thing... and I always knew when something would be forbidden even if it was a "new thing" that they had never specifically discussed, again even as a tiny child, which always makes me amazed when I hear about kids 10 years or more older than the age *I* had things figured out who never realized in advance that the thing they were about to do was wrong, would get found out, and would get them in trouble-that "blindness" MUST be a part of normal childhood development, as 100% of kids seem to have it, and it even makes sense to have it, as it would make it easier for kids to act outside what their parents want them to do and so grow up.
I've always accepted the things listed above as being the reason for my lack of the normal teenage "rebellion," and they DO explain most of it, but I've seen an ad several times recently that shows parents "practicing" screaming and door-slamming and such so that they could handle those things from their teenaged daughter, and it sent up an unconscious flare in me... because I didn't even do THAT as a teen. There were no "I hate yous," no arguments to try to get permission to be allowed to sit at a different table from them at McDonald's or be in a separate store in the mall, no attempts to alter my appearance such that they'd be uncomfortable being seen with me, no attempts to assert independence-NOTHING. I didn't suddenly achieve intelligence, strength of character, independent thought, etc, as an adult, so why, WHY did I NEVER show any evidence of normal teenaged pulling-away?
I was thinking a couple of hours ago about a conversation with a family friend, who has a hard time grasping that my mother and I don't like each other, and so rarely see or speak to each other, and that thought lead to one about how, unlike everyone else I know, I never had the desire or need to be given parental love or approval even as a kid, much less now, and so have far greater freedom of action than most people because I honestly don't CARE what my mother thinks, now that her thoughts have no control over my life (my father lives far away and we've had no contact for many years), and how easy it was for me to do a full 180 with my life the moment I was married and out of her control, instantly achieving the sort of complete elimination of the control and even INFLUENCE of my mother that most people never get until their parents DIE, and then it hit me... I never did any of the things that kids do to separate themselves emotionally from their parents because I NEVER WAS EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!
I'm sure I loved them as a little kid in the uncritical, desperate way that all little kids love their adult caretakers, even abusive ones, but from a very young age I was capable of cold analytical thought, and of looking around me and seeing what MY situation was compared to that of other kids, and of concluding that, although I was a good girl, virtually a model child, I wasn't getting any of the attention, affection, praise, gifts, treats and freedoms that the other kids were getting, and, while a normal child in that situation usually internalizes that sort of thing and comes to believe that they themselves MUST be "bad" to merit that sort of treatment, *I* knew right from the start that I was a MUCH better kid than the norm (adults OUTSIDE of my family always told me so), and that therefore my PARENTS had to be "bad" for not acting like the other kids' parents.
And I was RIGHT.
We never had a real family unit, held together by bonds of love and all the standard stuff; my parents decided right from the start that the way to raise a child was with endless, inflexible rules, endless forbiddens, no freedom of choice for me, and the certainty of virtually INFINITE abuse over anything seen as "wrong" in me, such that I would, by default, do no wrong, make no mistakes, cause no problems, because they'd made it virtually impossible at every level for me to do so. While they did in fact succeed in making me into the model child on the surface, one who brought home A's, kept her clothes clean and never caused any trouble, what they didn't see, and probably wouldn't have cared about if they HAD, was that this process made us into prison wardens and prisoner, NOT parents and child, and my childhood and young adulthood were spent as if I were truly in prison, never doing anything outside of attend school (and, later on, work) besides sit in my room and read, or sit in the "family room" and watch TV. We didn't go on vacations, or outings, or do ANYTHING together, and, although my homemaker mother had plenty of spare time, and we were always at least middle-class, none of the available time or $ was spent on ME; my life resembled stories I've read about kids who were orphaned and taken in by unwilling family members FAR more than it resembled the lives of other kids, and, as a result, I never had that bond to my parents, and so no need to BREAK that bond as a teen... the teen years were just more years to drag myself through before I could get to the time when my LIFE would begin.
I'm wondering now if my countless dreams about being back in high school might have an element of "this is where your emotional development stopped, and now you have to go back to that point and try to restart and complete that process" in them. Oh, I function as an adult, in my admittedly emotionally-abnormal way, because I was basically a "little adult" from earliest childhood, and because there's no rocket science involved in paying bills, cleaning up, and so forth, but now I have to wonder if, as time passes outside of the rigid rules that I had to deal with into my 30's, some part of me wants to try and go through a sort of emotional equivalent of the GED, so that I can get "caught up" emotionally with my peers, and thus won't just be "parroting" living a normal adult life, but REALLY living, thinking and feeling as an adult.
More and more, as I watch TV and movies, read books, articles and blogs, and talk to people about their lives, I'm aware of all the things that I missed as a kid, teen, and young adult, all the fun, the going out, the parties, the dating lots of different people, the intensity of feeling, the new experiences sought out and enjoyed, and, perhaps cruelest of all, falling in love, that insane sort of infatuation where you think the other person is perfect, where you're swept away with passion and the desire to be with them every moment... I never had ANY of what I now see are important "emotional learning" experiences. By the time I got married I was past 30, past the age of the sort of wild stuff that's normal and expected of people in their 20's; I was freed from the prison of my family, but I can't get back those years or the experiences I SHOULD have been having in them.
I have an excellent life now, with a great deal of free time, control over my choices and actions, a man who cares about me, and enough $ to finally have nice things, even the sorts of frivolous things I should be too old for now; ironically, I'm the envy of most people I know these days, I who once was universally pitied. None of that changes the past, though, and the more I think things through and figure them out, the further I see that I am from the norm and the more sense it makes that I think and feel so differently than everyone else, and, although I'd never want to give up my individuality, I'm wondering more and more if it might not be possible to "re-parent" myself, to go through some version of the stages of emotional development that I missed, and to thus reclaim that part of my emotional landscape that I've never seen, reclaim my ability to have the full range of experiences and feelings, reclaim the missing piece of my humanity.....
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Surviving the flu
You'd think with all the medical advances we've made we could cure the flu, or at least effectively control the symptoms-no drug on Earth controls MINE, sadly. Luckily, one of the few herbs that have been proven to actually DO something is echinacea, which boosts the immune system to the point where it will block most bugs from taking hold, and speed recovery from those that do. In addition, they've discovered that zinc absorbed through the mucous membranes also eases cold and flu symptoms and speeds recovery; Zicam makes a zinc gel that you put in your nose to get this benefit, which works pretty well and spares you the AWFUL taste of zinc lozenges. Vitamins C and E have proven able to help with respiratory illnesses, and B-complex is always good to add to help your body deal with the stress of illness; ibuprofen reduces most of the symptoms of colds and flus directly, as they are largely caused by prostaglandins, and ibuprofen is an ANTIprostaglandin... I've taken pills until I rattle, and, although I know I'm getting through the flu FAR faster than others who have it as a result, I'm exhausted and soooooooooo ready to be healthy again.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Curiouser and curiouser
The mail carrier came to my door today with a package, and, before I got the door open, he said, "Are you still sick?" There's nothing odd about that, until you realize that I never told him or anyone in this neighborhood that I'm sick!! It turns out that he just finished being off work for THREE WEEKS with what sounds like the same flu *I* have, and somehow he picked up on MY being sick without having seen me in all that time (synchronicity strikes again)..... it was pretty wild.
In online news, some shitty people who had given me problems on an online forum have gotten public commentary posted about their bad behavior and the problems it has caused on that forum... from a total stranger, previously a lurker, who has no reason to stick his neck out for me or against THEM. Several people who use that forum have already contacted me to tell me that the karma that I predicted would kick the butts of the troublemakers has come home to roost, and these folks weren't even believers in karma until they met me.
My husband describes all these things as "coincidences," even though they are so frequent, and often so extreme, that even HE admits that it's not a reasonable explanation... he just can't accept any other. The only thing worse than stupidity is STUBBORN stupidity, lol.
In online news, some shitty people who had given me problems on an online forum have gotten public commentary posted about their bad behavior and the problems it has caused on that forum... from a total stranger, previously a lurker, who has no reason to stick his neck out for me or against THEM. Several people who use that forum have already contacted me to tell me that the karma that I predicted would kick the butts of the troublemakers has come home to roost, and these folks weren't even believers in karma until they met me.
My husband describes all these things as "coincidences," even though they are so frequent, and often so extreme, that even HE admits that it's not a reasonable explanation... he just can't accept any other. The only thing worse than stupidity is STUBBORN stupidity, lol.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
People do NOT want you to be perfect
(NB: "perfection" as used in this essay refers to perfection of behavior ONLY)
That's not totally correct, of course, as SOME people DO want, or at least prefer, perfection; my own family falls into that category, and as a consequence I was raised to be perfect, always doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, having thought every possible detail out thoroughly to assure that everything is optimal and above reproach. All of the effort I invested to fulfill their expectations didn't get me any love or praise, keep in mind, it just eliminated any valid areas where blame could be laid, criticism put forth, and abuse engendered... while making me seem like a freak to my peers. {sigh}
Although perfection is an onerous goal for a child, it's actually quite simple for an adult, as we know exactly what the right things are to do for nearly every situation we encounter; I'm honestly at a loss as to why everyone doesn't strive for perfection and thus make it the norm, as it would make everyone's life run more smoothly and with less stress, I just know that people do NOT do so, and thus it is NOT the norm... and people have an automatic aversion to anyone who is seen as being too far outside the norm (with the obvious exceptions being in areas like beauty and power).
If you take a chicken from a flock, splash some red paint on it and return it to the flock, the other chickens will instantly attack it and peck it to death. There are biological reasons as to why a creature that is different is killed or driven out, but the point is that, among humans as well as lower animals, if you're different you're seen with suspicion, judged as "bad," and outcast. This helps explain racism, sexism, anti-semitism, all the jokes about any person who's taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, etc, than the norm, and it applies DOUBLE to someone who it seems "should" fit in but behaves in a different way than the peer group. Counter-intuitively, it even applies to those who are BETTER than the peer group, such as by being smarter or a harder worker, if the "betterness" puts them more than a little bit ahead of the pack. Even qualities that are admired by the group, such as, say, superior athletic ability in a man who has a group of basketball buddies, will make the superior one an outsider if the superiority goes beyond what the others think is admirable into the zone of "not one of us." Perfection is the ultimate example of this; it gets an even more extreme reaction than "not a part of our group," it's more like "too far from the norm to belong to ANY group," and someone who it seems can't fit in ANYWHERE might as well be a leper for all the social success he'll have... trust me on this one.
It goes even further than "not-one-of-us-ness"; while people usually see being good at something as being, well, GOOD, PERFECTION is seen, if only subconsciously, as somehow being BAD. After many years of puzzling over this, I've concluded that the main reason for it is that for people to feel good about themselves, they have to believe that perfection isn't really possible, thus excusing THEIR lack of it; people are generally screwups to one extent or another, and want, NEED to believe that that's normal and OK. If they see someone who's perfect, and so NOT a screwup, it makes them feel inadequate, inferior, and they HATE that feeling.... and that hate transfers to the person who makes them feel that way, without any conscious thought being involved (and it's those sorts of feelings that seem most important to people when passing judgment). Another part of this equation is the self-serving belief that anyone who seems to be perfect MUST be faking, manipulating, tricking people in some way to make it LOOK like they're perfect, and no one likes to feel like they're being fooled, or likes those who they believe to be guilty of trying to fool them. If time goes on and people are forced to accept that there is NOT deception involved, they come to believe something far worse... that there is something "wrong" with the perfect person, in the same way they will see the off-kilter behaviors of a crazy person as showing that something is wrong with them (that's mainly how we JUDGE that someone's behavior is crazy, by seeing that it differs from ours). And, finally; it's human nature to look down on those we feel superior to, so everyone assumes that the perfect person MUST be looking down on them in all of their IMperfection. Even if the perfect person does NOT look down on them, they'll act as if they'd been snubbed and put down and have the "right" to snub in return... and they'll exercise that right.
An example of this comes from an episode of Twilight Zone: In the show, we see Charlie working hard at his desk, and delaying going to lunch to finish his task. Do his coworkers nod their heads in approval of Charlie's dedication? No; they loudly ridicule him as a goody two-shoes. Charlie ends up returning late from lunch; does his boss scold him? No; he declares that this lateness is the first sign of HUMANITY that Charlie has shown in 4 years. The boss then refers to the perfection of Charlie's performance at the office. Is he praising Charlie? No; he's CRITICIZING him, saying that because of this perfection he's like a wind-up doll, that he's a square peg, that he's not a part of the team and will therefore be FIRED. The perfect person is seen as not even being HUMAN, how's that for a slap in the face for all the hard work he had done? Yes, it's just a TV show, but the scenario they showed is a realistic one; I've BEEN the "perfect worker" who was declared as "not fitting in" and fired (thanks, mom and dad).
Another example comes to mind from a kids' movie about an android boy who was trying to fit into a human household; someone advises him that he has to make a mistake for his human mother to warm up to him, and so he does, and she does; once he has shown imperfection, she can relate to him and show him love. Yes, it's a movie, not reality, but for it to work with the given subject matter there has to be true human nature in action.
The point of all this is: it's wildly common for us to beat up on ourselves for any and all imperfections, never realizing that if we eliminated all of these "flaws" we'd be societal outcasts, and thus that the flaws are part of what allows us to exist within all the different social frameworks we encounter (work, family, neighborhood, etc). We also commonly rage at our loved ones for their imperfections, not thinking that if they suddenly became perfect that we'd be profoundly uncomfortable with them and likely end up disliking them. We try to be the perfect worker, friend, romantic partner, etc, not seeing that by closing the gap between normal and perfect we're LOSING points with others, not gaining them.
I couldn't count the # of times I'VE been told by people that they wished I WOULD screw up, so that they wouldn't feel so guilty about screwing up with ME... told that they couldn't relate to me because I wasn't living my life as they lived theirs... told that *I* couldn't possibly understand THEM for the same reason... told that they wouldn't be able to live up to my "standards," although having lived my life among normal people my standards are the same as theirs... and on and on and on, all because I was always on time and never forgot anything I was supposed to do. As much effort as I put into BECOMING perfect to satisfy my parents, I now have to work 10 times as hard to NOT be seen as perfect, to do what others are doing rather than act in an "ideal" way, to appear "average" rather than superior in any way, and all while NOT doing all this to the point where I'm failing in my responsibilities or looking like I don't have enough self-respect to take proper care of myself (which is judged nearly as harshly as being perfect).
YOU probably don't have to make that sort of psychotic effort; if you're lucky, you're like most people and don't have to make any effort at ALL in this area, you just have to learn to give yourself a break for acting in ways that make you fit in with society, and to give others a similar break. If you HAVE been trying to win people, or one special person, over by being perfect, STOP, and force yourself to accept that fouling up sometimes does NOT give people a reason to run from you, it allows them to see you as "human" and to feel closer to you (and no, this is NOT a license for those who are extreme screwups to just let it all hang out-you STILL need to straighten yourselves out, just not as much as your frustrated loved ones probably tell you). No matter what anyone says, no one in your life actually wants you to be perfect; for a normal person, that should be a relief to realize, and even for me that helps reduce my stress when I can't email someone back within 24 hours or whatever (although I still wish it was ok to be "perfect," so that I wouldn't have to keep trying to reprogram myself).
I've never heard anyone else say that a certain amount of screwing up is necessary for acceptance in society; that doesn't mean that I'm the first to think of it, but I'm pleased, if disheartened, to have seen this all by my little self.
That's not totally correct, of course, as SOME people DO want, or at least prefer, perfection; my own family falls into that category, and as a consequence I was raised to be perfect, always doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, having thought every possible detail out thoroughly to assure that everything is optimal and above reproach. All of the effort I invested to fulfill their expectations didn't get me any love or praise, keep in mind, it just eliminated any valid areas where blame could be laid, criticism put forth, and abuse engendered... while making me seem like a freak to my peers. {sigh}
Although perfection is an onerous goal for a child, it's actually quite simple for an adult, as we know exactly what the right things are to do for nearly every situation we encounter; I'm honestly at a loss as to why everyone doesn't strive for perfection and thus make it the norm, as it would make everyone's life run more smoothly and with less stress, I just know that people do NOT do so, and thus it is NOT the norm... and people have an automatic aversion to anyone who is seen as being too far outside the norm (with the obvious exceptions being in areas like beauty and power).
If you take a chicken from a flock, splash some red paint on it and return it to the flock, the other chickens will instantly attack it and peck it to death. There are biological reasons as to why a creature that is different is killed or driven out, but the point is that, among humans as well as lower animals, if you're different you're seen with suspicion, judged as "bad," and outcast. This helps explain racism, sexism, anti-semitism, all the jokes about any person who's taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, etc, than the norm, and it applies DOUBLE to someone who it seems "should" fit in but behaves in a different way than the peer group. Counter-intuitively, it even applies to those who are BETTER than the peer group, such as by being smarter or a harder worker, if the "betterness" puts them more than a little bit ahead of the pack. Even qualities that are admired by the group, such as, say, superior athletic ability in a man who has a group of basketball buddies, will make the superior one an outsider if the superiority goes beyond what the others think is admirable into the zone of "not one of us." Perfection is the ultimate example of this; it gets an even more extreme reaction than "not a part of our group," it's more like "too far from the norm to belong to ANY group," and someone who it seems can't fit in ANYWHERE might as well be a leper for all the social success he'll have... trust me on this one.
It goes even further than "not-one-of-us-ness"; while people usually see being good at something as being, well, GOOD, PERFECTION is seen, if only subconsciously, as somehow being BAD. After many years of puzzling over this, I've concluded that the main reason for it is that for people to feel good about themselves, they have to believe that perfection isn't really possible, thus excusing THEIR lack of it; people are generally screwups to one extent or another, and want, NEED to believe that that's normal and OK. If they see someone who's perfect, and so NOT a screwup, it makes them feel inadequate, inferior, and they HATE that feeling.... and that hate transfers to the person who makes them feel that way, without any conscious thought being involved (and it's those sorts of feelings that seem most important to people when passing judgment). Another part of this equation is the self-serving belief that anyone who seems to be perfect MUST be faking, manipulating, tricking people in some way to make it LOOK like they're perfect, and no one likes to feel like they're being fooled, or likes those who they believe to be guilty of trying to fool them. If time goes on and people are forced to accept that there is NOT deception involved, they come to believe something far worse... that there is something "wrong" with the perfect person, in the same way they will see the off-kilter behaviors of a crazy person as showing that something is wrong with them (that's mainly how we JUDGE that someone's behavior is crazy, by seeing that it differs from ours). And, finally; it's human nature to look down on those we feel superior to, so everyone assumes that the perfect person MUST be looking down on them in all of their IMperfection. Even if the perfect person does NOT look down on them, they'll act as if they'd been snubbed and put down and have the "right" to snub in return... and they'll exercise that right.
An example of this comes from an episode of Twilight Zone: In the show, we see Charlie working hard at his desk, and delaying going to lunch to finish his task. Do his coworkers nod their heads in approval of Charlie's dedication? No; they loudly ridicule him as a goody two-shoes. Charlie ends up returning late from lunch; does his boss scold him? No; he declares that this lateness is the first sign of HUMANITY that Charlie has shown in 4 years. The boss then refers to the perfection of Charlie's performance at the office. Is he praising Charlie? No; he's CRITICIZING him, saying that because of this perfection he's like a wind-up doll, that he's a square peg, that he's not a part of the team and will therefore be FIRED. The perfect person is seen as not even being HUMAN, how's that for a slap in the face for all the hard work he had done? Yes, it's just a TV show, but the scenario they showed is a realistic one; I've BEEN the "perfect worker" who was declared as "not fitting in" and fired (thanks, mom and dad).
Another example comes to mind from a kids' movie about an android boy who was trying to fit into a human household; someone advises him that he has to make a mistake for his human mother to warm up to him, and so he does, and she does; once he has shown imperfection, she can relate to him and show him love. Yes, it's a movie, not reality, but for it to work with the given subject matter there has to be true human nature in action.
The point of all this is: it's wildly common for us to beat up on ourselves for any and all imperfections, never realizing that if we eliminated all of these "flaws" we'd be societal outcasts, and thus that the flaws are part of what allows us to exist within all the different social frameworks we encounter (work, family, neighborhood, etc). We also commonly rage at our loved ones for their imperfections, not thinking that if they suddenly became perfect that we'd be profoundly uncomfortable with them and likely end up disliking them. We try to be the perfect worker, friend, romantic partner, etc, not seeing that by closing the gap between normal and perfect we're LOSING points with others, not gaining them.
I couldn't count the # of times I'VE been told by people that they wished I WOULD screw up, so that they wouldn't feel so guilty about screwing up with ME... told that they couldn't relate to me because I wasn't living my life as they lived theirs... told that *I* couldn't possibly understand THEM for the same reason... told that they wouldn't be able to live up to my "standards," although having lived my life among normal people my standards are the same as theirs... and on and on and on, all because I was always on time and never forgot anything I was supposed to do. As much effort as I put into BECOMING perfect to satisfy my parents, I now have to work 10 times as hard to NOT be seen as perfect, to do what others are doing rather than act in an "ideal" way, to appear "average" rather than superior in any way, and all while NOT doing all this to the point where I'm failing in my responsibilities or looking like I don't have enough self-respect to take proper care of myself (which is judged nearly as harshly as being perfect).
YOU probably don't have to make that sort of psychotic effort; if you're lucky, you're like most people and don't have to make any effort at ALL in this area, you just have to learn to give yourself a break for acting in ways that make you fit in with society, and to give others a similar break. If you HAVE been trying to win people, or one special person, over by being perfect, STOP, and force yourself to accept that fouling up sometimes does NOT give people a reason to run from you, it allows them to see you as "human" and to feel closer to you (and no, this is NOT a license for those who are extreme screwups to just let it all hang out-you STILL need to straighten yourselves out, just not as much as your frustrated loved ones probably tell you). No matter what anyone says, no one in your life actually wants you to be perfect; for a normal person, that should be a relief to realize, and even for me that helps reduce my stress when I can't email someone back within 24 hours or whatever (although I still wish it was ok to be "perfect," so that I wouldn't have to keep trying to reprogram myself).
I've never heard anyone else say that a certain amount of screwing up is necessary for acceptance in society; that doesn't mean that I'm the first to think of it, but I'm pleased, if disheartened, to have seen this all by my little self.
