Some things I’ve been mulling over about myself
I started thinking about what it means to me, to be over 30, and what I’ve learned in my relatively brief time as an adult.
- I consider unreasonable personal fears to be an affront against myself – the assault of my subconscious mind upon my waking, thinking self. I think the way I deal with them started in middle school, when (after a particularly abusive year of failing to avoid attracting the attention of bullies) I forced myself to start looking people in the eyes (or their lips, at least) instead of the floor. It sounds like a tiny change, but it was huge, and I think I became addicted to challenging my own behavior.
- Speaking of, I have a fetish for trying to see things “as they are” rather than just from my own perspective. Oh, I definitely have my own viewpoint, and I may pursue it mightily, but I fail myself when I use language to make my viewpoint more appealing. Call it “bullshitting yourself with semantics”. Do I support the murder of animals (however humanely) for my own sustenance and clothing purposes? I do.
- In that vein, I believe it is vital that we understand what circumstances are within our control, and to be honest about the reasons that we do not change those circumstances. This feeds into item 1 – am I, hypothetically speaking, not pursuing a career opportunity, dating potential, or a difficult conversation because I am afraid of rejection? Is that fear reasonable? Most important to me is not blaming my circumstance upon other people or society as a whole, and also not to kick myself out of proportion to my role.
- Everyone won’t be satisfied with every decision. When making decisions regarding other people, I need to take the long view. That means considering what it says about me as a person. For instance, providing critical advice when appropriate – am I saying it out of affection and eagerness to help, or am I annoyed and attempting to change someone’s behavior?
- It’s not my responsibility to ensure everyone knows that I know I do not attain all of my goals, all the time. Similarly, I should not agonize over people taking my perspective as my ‘arrogant hypocritical dogma’. I speak for me, and hope others find something worthwhile in it, but everyone is responsible for making, and owning, their own decisions.
I’ve come to accept that some people will be more disappointed in me for failing an established moral path than in those with no direction at all. By stating what I stand to accomplish in my life, I make it easy to point to where I fall short. My compensation is in knowing that I’ve decided, in words, written down, who I want to be, and I reach to be that person at all times.
Something I didn’t cover there, but think is important, is the utility of self-abasement.
In other words, being unhappy over a situation or a behavior is only worthwhile if it leads to productive change. Burdening myself with blame is only good when the memory of it makes me behave differently in the future.
If I do not intend to behave differently, I have decided that, for whatever reason, that behavior was worthwhile to me. STOP FEELING GUILTY ABOUT IT, THEN. Know what I mean?
It should go without saying that I care about who I am, as a person. That was my big learning experience from the teen years – rising up out of deep self-loathing and self-destructive behavior and make the decision to be a better person than I was.
In some sense, I will always be compensating for the self-centered, fearful person that I was as a child. I don’t consider that a bad thing. I guess I’m even grateful I have that for comparison.
I want to write a really detailed reply to this but I don’t have time now. If I don’t remember, I just want to say, I understand and agree with a lot of this. Very good post for me to read, especially right now.
Thanks, I look forward to maybe reading it. :)
Also, fun icon!
Suppose it would depend on the target you’re shooting for!
Content like this makes me so happy that I’ve stuck with LJ. Thanks for posting this. It’s awesome and I totally agree with all of the points you’ve made here. Great food for thought.
I think your ability to rise up out of that self-loathing and guilt at an early age is quite impressive and rare. I’m not sure what inspired it, but if I could go back into your life and watch it like a movie, I would take notes for my future practice as a psychiatrist. I think it would be useful. I, myself, am envious of that ability, because I struggle to attain it on a daily basis. I did not learn to even try to overcome my self-loathing until after high school, and my efforts were consistently met with powerful resistance. Perhaps it is because it was considered socially acceptable for me to debase myself in certain ways, both as a female, and because of just how overweight I was as a child, or maybe it was just because my mother is the same way, who knows? I can’t say what it would’ve taken for me to have been able to make that change earlier in my life. I really do wish I knew, though. Maybe then, I could help other children to have a healthy sense of self while their psyche is still in a relatively malleable state.
from pure_doxyk:
Did you see my most recent post? You’re one of the few people I think might, y’know, read the whole thing. :D
Their reply was:
Totally, and I totally did. I was reminded of a lot of things I started doing myself — not until college, unfortunately — when I realized that philosophy was *not* something to study or memorize, but only really useful as an active quest to find and make use of truths. And while philosophy tends to aggrandize “objective” truths, I’ve often found that the most profound, important ones are personal: i.e. “Am I avoiding this out of fear? Is it a valid fear?”, and “Do I really feel this way? If so, why won’t I say it in plain language?”
It’s dangerous territory — far more dangerous than arguing loftily about whether theoretical people have something we’ve chosen to define as free will — but everything I’ve ever learned from it has been exceptionally rewarding.
Hell, it’s why — I’ll even say entirely why — I’m not medicated for depression anymore. Turns out that contact with reality is incredibly good for one’s self-esteem.
Also, your posts kick ass. ;)
These are good thoughts. One of the things that recent RaceFail-related discussion has highlighted for me is that some of the decisions I made in College that I defended in my head with phrases like “I was never invited there” are really related to a fear of rejection that I have not previously acknowledged.
must have missed this one the first time around. i also have been considering – if only in the back of my mind – the meaning of 30ness.
for me, it seems like no big difference, though i am cognizant of having, say, 10 more years of experience living than i did 10 years ago. i feel more officially justified in thinking of myself as older, though still not really identifying or especially behaving as a grown-up. that i’ve noticed, anyhow.
the stuff about fears as an assault of the unconscious mind against the conscious is something i can relate to. still, it raises the question of how a brain that’s essentially trying to kill itself can keep functioning. it would be better if brains could be more unified in their purposes. wonder whether it would make a difference to the unconscious to be made more consciously part of the decision making process, so that it would be more like consulting a peer about a mutually important decision than taking tyrannical control over an enslaved entity. wonder also what it would take to achieve that better communication between brain parts.
the stuff about the censure of others is invariably hard to deal with. good that you have a stronger focus, to keep attention on what *you do* want to do rather than what *others do or don’t* want you to do.
Yes, these certainly aren’t things that I would say I was bestowed upon reaching 30, so much as hard lessons through individual experiences in my 20s, or occasionally slow revelations from experiences througout my life.
The thing is, my unconscious or subconscious mind sometimes (not always) reacts to a situation or person without any information at all beyond past experiences that may be entirely unrelated. Which is sometimes called baggage. I trust it to provide me with something, but it is up to my waking mind to not ignore that info, but to synthesize it into what else I know.
It is best not to rationalize away a creepy situation if that means you aren’t taking the measures you need to protect yourself, but it is important not to toss away a potentially valuable relationship because they’re red-headed and the kid who beat you up in 2nd grade was, too.
I think it provides information that is sometimes vital, sometimes useless or damaging when taken without context. I think of it much like my sense of sight or touch, or my scattershot but occasionally dead-on memory – one factor in making a decision.
I think trying to attain better communication between parts is a great thing – teaching your subconscious mind what, in its feelings/reactions is true and what is false is important.
I like to think that following through with something your subconscious fears that your conscious mind knows it shouldn’t is a great start to that – you’re building physical experiences that your subconscious can draw on the next time.