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lykomancerSo...
I was feeling reflective last night, talking with Tom about how I feel that, while my personality was great and helpful and useful at Northland, I don't feel that I'm the right kind of person to function in the Real World. I just feel...wrong...somehow, like an incorrectly-sized cog in a machine, grinding down into powder. My persona is too... well, too something (real, maybe)... to mesh well with common society, and I'm not interested in changing to suite the world; I don't feel that I should have to.
Tom kinda followed me, but I lost him again when I said that I thought maybe the problem lies in the fact that I have no "feminine mystery." He really didn't get that, so stumbled around for a while trying to explain.
I said, "You know that commercial that's been playing on the radio, like, every five minutes, about the 60 mile breast cancer run? It starts out with a guy saying that his wife is the most beautiful person in the world, right? ...I can't imagine anyone saying that about me (and not just because I doubt I'll ever get married). I'm not-- as the standards of the world would have it-- a beautiful person, especially once you get to know me. I'm not kind, gentle, or sensitive; I speak my mind, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes causticly; I cuss; I'm aggressive and confrontational; I snap and shout and rave and get so angry I cry and kick things. I nag and bitch, and my-oh-my, no one likes a nagging bitchy woman. I want things to be my way."
He still didn't get it.
So I tried the word "charming."
As in, "You know, women (and by this I mean "nice date-worthy girls" as opposed to " taken-em-home-and-screw-em sluts") are expected to be charming and gracious. It's an old-fashioned concept, but in some ways it's still in effect. Women are supposed to look nice and be nice and defer to others, care about when everyone else thinks and says, be reluctant to speak of themselves, and refuse to speak forcefully at all. And I just don't honor that."
Tom still doesn't get it, but I moved on.
And asked him what constituted a successful life.
Tom feels that if you find your vocation, what you are meant to do, and through that, if you manage to change even one other person's life for the better, you have lived successfully.
Fabulous.
I'm not sure what I am meant to be doing; by Tom's standard, my life is unsuccessful thus far.
And for the sake of curiosity, I'm throwing the question out to y'all:
What do you think constitutes a a successful life?
Because I realize that I myself have no idea how to define success.
I was feeling reflective last night, talking with Tom about how I feel that, while my personality was great and helpful and useful at Northland, I don't feel that I'm the right kind of person to function in the Real World. I just feel...wrong...somehow, like an incorrectly-sized cog in a machine, grinding down into powder. My persona is too... well, too something (real, maybe)... to mesh well with common society, and I'm not interested in changing to suite the world; I don't feel that I should have to.
Tom kinda followed me, but I lost him again when I said that I thought maybe the problem lies in the fact that I have no "feminine mystery." He really didn't get that, so stumbled around for a while trying to explain.
I said, "You know that commercial that's been playing on the radio, like, every five minutes, about the 60 mile breast cancer run? It starts out with a guy saying that his wife is the most beautiful person in the world, right? ...I can't imagine anyone saying that about me (and not just because I doubt I'll ever get married). I'm not-- as the standards of the world would have it-- a beautiful person, especially once you get to know me. I'm not kind, gentle, or sensitive; I speak my mind, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes causticly; I cuss; I'm aggressive and confrontational; I snap and shout and rave and get so angry I cry and kick things. I nag and bitch, and my-oh-my, no one likes a nagging bitchy woman. I want things to be my way."
He still didn't get it.
So I tried the word "charming."
As in, "You know, women (and by this I mean "nice date-worthy girls" as opposed to " taken-em-home-and-screw-em sluts") are expected to be charming and gracious. It's an old-fashioned concept, but in some ways it's still in effect. Women are supposed to look nice and be nice and defer to others, care about when everyone else thinks and says, be reluctant to speak of themselves, and refuse to speak forcefully at all. And I just don't honor that."
Tom still doesn't get it, but I moved on.
And asked him what constituted a successful life.
Tom feels that if you find your vocation, what you are meant to do, and through that, if you manage to change even one other person's life for the better, you have lived successfully.
Fabulous.
I'm not sure what I am meant to be doing; by Tom's standard, my life is unsuccessful thus far.
And for the sake of curiosity, I'm throwing the question out to y'all:
What do you think constitutes a a successful life?
Because I realize that I myself have no idea how to define success.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 03:53 am (UTC)I don't think you have to try to change anyone else's life to be successful...because if you're successful in this sense, it'll happen automatically. *shrugs* And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with material success, because whether or not that's important to you depends on your personality.
I'm incoherent tonight...sorry. >_
no subject
Date: 2004-11-11 01:50 am (UTC)One: To have more gratitude and/or good times than regrets.
And two: If you can go to sleep knowing that you haven't made the world any worse, you're doing pretty well. And I didn't even think of this one. I got it off of a comic strip.
Oh and, being hyperbolic and pretty cruel here, but if Tom's standards for things were universal or even remotely influential, nobody would ever move. At all. Literally. And if they had an itch, they would whine and cry until they fell asleep.