Month: October 2015

Can you imagine what would happen if everything that we dreamed happened?

Things would be crazy, I mean you’ve heard some of my dreams. But it would also be scary. You could have a daydream about taking revenge on someone, and then bam! It would happen.

Or you could imagine having a child, and then bam! Have a child.

It also gives us a lot more power, but what would we do with that power?

It’s just a mini thought experiment I suppose.

Imagine all your weirdest dreams being true. But then again all the consequences of having that power at your fingertips…

Dun, dun, dun.

 

I saw another movie the other day where there was one character who believe, maybe naively, in people. They believed in people who were lying about who they were, what they were doing, etc. Everyone saw this character as naive and foolish. They thought he was being foolish, believing people, seeing the best in people. They tried to make him ‘see the world’ as it is.

But what I realized is how refreshing it must be to believe people, to believe beyond doubt that people were telling the truth. And what’s more, is that it’s harder.

It is easy to disbelieve, to be a cynic, to say something can’t work. It is hard to believe in something, someone, to take people for their world, to trust them. By trusting the world, you leave yourself vulnerable (which is basically what happens to him the whole movie, he gets taken advantage of).

And that’s a scary risk, a risk that we must take if we are to trust.

For most of the movie I felt similarly to his family, ‘why is he being so naive’ ‘when will he wake up?’. But then I thought, well isn’t this how it is supposed to be?

Aren’t we all supposed to trust, love openly, leave our hearts open and ready? Isn’t it supposed to be alright that we are vulnerable?

It’s pain, hurt, betrayal that teaches us not to trust.

But I feel that we are supposed to be able to, to be able to be vulnerable, to be able to trust and love.

So what I’m saying, is maybe take a lesson from him.

Trust more, be more vulnerable, open yourself up to people, let them in. It may go wrong, you may get hurt, but it also may go right, and you may increase your faith in humanity.

I have a problem with taking things personally. I know I do. But it is hard for me to say, ‘Don’t listen to them’. I do listen to them and it hurts.

Do I care too much what people say about me? Maybe I do.

But going along the lines with my last post, those days are over (or trying to be).

Something I did wrong, that could have offended someone, woudl haunt me for days. A comment someone said would bother me (and I can name some that have).

I care about my image, not necessarily in a physical sense, but in a sense that I take my time to make sure I like how I look when I leave, how I am prepared in class, if I am on time, etc. My overall image.

When people perceive my work as something else, like vanity, it makes me sad. I just like to be prepared and put together. So if I spend time to make sure I am and people critique that or what not, it tends to upset me.

Nevermind what happens if you question something I think I know or feel. Then just forget about it, things will be personal for me. (Although I am working on this a lot and trying to remain calm, and objective, but let’s be real…)

So I am trying, striving, to care less about what people, especially those who are not close to me, think about me or what I do.

It has been both hard and easy. It is almost freeing to think, this is me and I don’t care what other people say. It takes a head strong will to close out the things and the whispers. But it is only when I have a bad day or my inner voice starts to speak, that it becomes hard. Because to not care what people think takes confidence.

But, as one very beautiful singing woman said, ‘I have confidence in confidence alone, besides what you see I have confidence in me’.

So I need to channel my inner Maria, singing through the hills and all.

I have talked already about this subject somewhat. I have always taken great, and probably too much, self worth from my grades. To me, they were my measure if I was doing well.

As an adult I can realize how bad that is. A number or a letter that defines someone’s confidence and worth. Yet that was, and more than I would like it, is today.

Grades and school have been things I have been good at for my life. I spent a lot of time on them, probably too much than I should have, in order to strive for ‘perfection’, which was foolhardy. Nevertheless, it was something that was important to me. Too much so.

It wasn’t that I was proud of my grades, my grades became me.

A subtle, but huge difference. Being thrown here in this new and totally different learning environment has brought me to my knees in this respect. My idea of a good grade, has gone up in flames comparatively to others here. The learning culture is much different, and for a fish who liked the sea, the land has been suffocating if not deadly.

But as creatures do, I have been trying to evolve. Trying to tell myself, as my teacher in high school did, that this is a learning experience. And to separate who I am from what I do.

We treat teachers with a sense of authority and expect them to be objective, but that is not the case. But underneath they are just a person. And we need to be careful of who we listen to. Just because a teacher has one opinion of you, does not mean that is the only opinion of you, or even accurate. What do they know of you? Perhaps they merely do not understand you.

I have always taken what teachers said to the highest importance, to the extent that it was a part of my self esteem. But this ‘learning experience’ has taught me that these figures of authority, or however you want to call it, are just people.

I do not want to end this entry with a ‘You do you’ or ‘Don’t listen to what people say’, so I will end it with this.

You do you. Do not let people who shake you to your core, make you question everything, rattle you. Keep doing what you love with the fervor that passion demands.

And do not listen to certain people. You will get good advice, bad advice, and just critique with no advice. Choose who you listen to, not every person’s advice is helpful, and not everyone is an expert (and if they are, that still doesn’t mean you listen to them without an individual thought in your head). People will gain your respect and trust, listen to them. Listen to the people who bother to help you, support you, and listen to you. Value the people who value you and give them your time. But know, even then, that it is okay to go against something when you need to. Because the person who you should value most is you, how you feel about yourself. To follow your dreams.

I feel it is important to be right. To know what you are saying, to feel conviction and accuracy. To have facts, proof, and evidence. To be able to defend yourself and say ‘I am right’. There is something good about it, something no one can take away if you have the evidence, the hard facts.

But I have learned, that part of being in a relationship is not to rely on being right.

Sometimes you will be right, and it won’t matter. Being right is not the most important thing, nor should it be.

Being happy, making sure someone knows they are loved, treasured, and a team.

These are the important things. And being right is not a necessary on that list.

There is one of those moments where you can stand up on your high horse and say ‘No, this is right, I am right!’ and you will be standing up there alone. Because someone who values rightness over personal relationships, validity, evidence, and being able to be on that platform will not have good interpersonal relationships.

Being right is not all there is. We are taught to have our evidence, state our argument, but sometimes that isn’t enough for real life.

There will be situations where the other person, even if you don’t agree, even if there is not a lot of evidence, needs to be right. I am not saying it is like lying, not at all. But there is a difference between being right and doing the right thing.

It is a pretty complex thing, and something I just thought of the other day with a move I saw. The one partner had focused on being right, doing the correct thing, and trying to shape their relationship towards that. It was important that they were doing the right thing (not allowing people to cut in line, etc), but they realized that it wasn’t everything and it only brought them into unhappiness because no one was left to stand with them.

So while this is not necessarily a well formed concept, I do count it as a break through and potential for change.

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of posts yesterday, but there was a problem with the server when I was trying to log in. It’s been resolved now, but now I am a bit behind, so just let me have a day to get back on my feet and I will have a new post up for tomorrow and one that I will post soon as an apology from yesterday!

 

I am so unmotivated to do work. I think it’s because I don’t really enjoy most of my work now, so it’s easy to push it away. There is no sense of anticipation or enjoy joy once it is completed. It’s easy to push things back and focus on the things that make me happy.

But I have to have a reality check and come back to the things that I have to do, regardless or fun or motivation. So I’ve spent a lot of my day working on that, which is why this blog post is not the one I have wanted to write.

So that one will be posted Wednesday!

Also when I sit down to write blogs, it just reminds me of the other work I haven’t done, so it’s not quite truly a relief. It’s getting there, slowly.

And I will find a pace soon.

I never took note of the fact that I was in an interracial relationship. It never even registered on my radar until someone mentioned it to me.

Our differences don’t matter to me and I never even noticed them. But do they matter to others? Do other people see them? And should I?

I don’t think it makes us any different. But our experiences with society are different, very different. There are differences.

I haven’t thought much about this topic, but it has been something I’ve kept in my mind since I was alerted of the fact.

To some people these differences matter and I wonder why.

This post is very short and there are no real answers. Just a question, a thought. I’m sorry it’s not satisfactory or complete, but that’s how a thought for one of these posts begin, with a question, some words on a notepad like this.

Telling people you love them can be the hardest thing. But why? The feelings are real, but there’s sometimes a moment of hesitation.

And why? Maybe because those kind of statements make someone vulnerable. Telling someone you love them makes you vulnerable.

Love is a hard emotion and it’s an emotion that opens you up. It is easier to deny feelings and not tell people how you feel. It’s hardest to tell people you love them, to open yourself up, because we’ve learned that those statements can lead to pain and rejection.

Love can lead to pain, and even though there’s not that much chance of rejection, it can still be painful. You could realize that the feelings you have are not on the same level as their feelings for you, and that hurts.

It is harder to love, you need to accept people, see their mistakes, forgive them, love them. It’s easier to just never forgive, and harder to forgive, knowing the past pain, and the possibility for future pain. Even more, that first pain, that first burn, hurts. Afterwards, perhaps it hurts more, knowing that you fell for it or got yourself into a situation where it could happen again. Trusting afterwards is even harder.

It’s harder to live with an open hand, then a closed fist.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I am a perfectionist. I don’t need to make sure the lines are straight or anything like that. What I do, though, is to expect perfection from the things I do: my grades, cleanliness (to a degree), those types of things. It’s not necessarily about things needing to be perfect, it’s a standard of behavior that I hold myself to.

The easiest way to see this is grades, A is the only thing that I strive for, and anything else is worse. I don’t have this attitude with anyone else, but me. So I never expect this of others or what not. So to a degree, I realize how strange it sounds.

It’s almost as if I expect perfect every time, the first time. This is something I really identified with Felicia Day’s biography, which I basically loved and bought the audiobook and the hard cover and had it shipped to Germany.

I realize how irrational it sounds, where is the learning? the growth? etc.

And to a degree I can understand those, because it’s rational. We need to grow, to change, and to learn. Mistakes are how we learn things. So I do understand.

But it’s taken me a really long time to get to this point, and I still have to say, my first reaction is disappointment. I don’t look at a bad grade or a mistake as a learning experience firstly. I look at it as a personal failure. I had a teacher who said that the grades were learning experiences. And they were. And it was something I had to deal with when I was younger, but I kind of thought I was over that now, matured and wiser now.

But I’ll never be perfect, the first time, or any time. Perfection is a dream, it’s irrational and unrealistic. Yet even as I say this, I know the next bad grade or mistake, I will feel as if it reflects some deep mistake and personal failing.

So all I can say is that to redefine my expectations of myself and my mistakes is a constant every day battle. It requires me to evaluate myself and separate certain actions and mistakes from my character and worth as a human being. You can make mistakes and not be a flawed human being. Human beings make mistakes.

But the mantra I need to repeat is: My mistake does not make me a flawed person.

There is a mistake and there is me and I am not my mistakes, I am the person who learns from her mistakes and does not make them again.