Peppered in Doubt

Finding myself in the midst a classroom this past week, I was reminded that the world I see is perhaps not the same one that most other people live in. 

They say that there are characteristics that get more entrenched with age and in this case it was highlighted in neon.  I have an inability to simply conform.  I have a seriously hard time doing it if it doesn’t make sense to me. 

You know those situations when you become acutely aware that the way you view the world is not the same as what the average person sees.  When everyone is going left, and there you are on a quest to the right.    

I wonder sometimes if we all taste the same things?  Or whether or not we all see colour the same?   

I think I am convinced that different people attune to different information in the same circumstances.  What I find relevant and what someone else finds relevant are perhaps very different things. 

I suppose too that any information we receive is also passed over an internal processing system and in my case it always comes right back to ‘why.’   

I suppose God already knows what has crossed my mind so why not be honest about it and say it out loud.  A part of me doesn’t really think that there is too much difference. 

Another part of me recognises that the differences can be very real, with far reaching consequences.

But what seems to get me in trouble the most, is the speed at which I see the consequences of something.  Sometimes I wonder if other people see it , if I am alone, or if I simply just make this crap up for the fun of it and irritate myself. 

Whatever the case, this seems to be the operational point from which I start; the root cause of my change addiction and my inability to simply keep quiet and watch things happen.    

My mother, bless her, still rolls her eyes at me and says, “must you always try and change the whole world?”

“Well..., yes, Mom”.    

I mean this is my Mom.  Surely by now, she should know that there are things that just simply need changing!  If anyone has known me my entire life, she should know...

To be honest there are days when I sometimes wish I could simply wait and see things unfold as they happen like I perceive the majority of people seem to be doing. 

And perhaps that perspective is wrong.    

What I do know, is that often I see decisions that are made that people are uncomfortable with, that are justified externally with layers of intellect but internally peppered with enormous seeds of doubt. 

Sometimes, I just think that it’s the doubt that should be given the platform a little more often.

Someday... Girls Might Just Grow-up

“The girls that get chosen for the basketball team are the ones who look good in their uniform” I am candidly informed by my niece (14).  Sadly, there are high schools fifteen years later (plus-minus) that still exist in a time warp even worse than the one I attended. 

Now that is still tragic.  When it is no longer about the sport and even there out on the basketball court, it is about how you look, I wonder what women will be doing in twenty years, if anything at all?  When will it be about what you can do and not what you look like?

Yep, the change addict is an ugly duckling, you’re thinking... so many words, so few pictures; there must be a reason...

Imagine if both genders functioned like this.  A whole world of very pretty but entirely useless people.  A booming beauty industry, but that is about all there is.  The pursuit of beauty the be all and end all.  Lots of plastic surgery and the endless pursuit of the fountain of youth. 

Yep, that’s it, she’s one of those, ‘nice’ girls.  You know all personality, not too much else...

If women were placed in a ‘separate development’ social construct, I fear that many would be living in shacks, well because engineering would be beyond our intellect or at least our interests, the roads would collapse and never get repaired, because well... we wouldn’t want to break a nail.

I understand that given biology, the survival co-dependency between men and women ensures that this scenario will remain a case of gross speculation and little far-fetched. 

But isn’t that what women have been sold?  Check ‘women’s magazines,’ it’s not all that far off.    

...Oh dear, even worse, the change addict must almost be a man... must be... No ‘good-looking’ woman would talk like this...   

I cannot help but ask myself is this really the fruit of the hard earned women’s suffrage movement and the generation of women who determinedly burned their bras in their quest for equal rights? So women can now vote, but their value still comes from how they look not what their accomplishments are, what they stand for or who they are. 

Amelia Earhart was the first woman who flew solo across the Atlantic, but just how good did she look in her stilettos?    

What saddens me most is that places our value as women externally.  It is based on someone else’s approval and the question is:  Why would you give somebody that sort of power over you? 

This culture of ‘haters’ needs to go.  Talk about debilitating. 

...Yep, must be a man...  

The inability to see value, talent and potential in another human being says more about the person seeing than it does about those being seen.  It says that they are unable to see intrinsic value in themselves and in order to make themselves a little bit bigger, they have the need to look down on other people and make them small. 

That attitude also guarantees nothing will be accomplished that is bigger than we are. 

And no, I am not a man, I have a biological daughter. 

Science may be good... but not yet that good! 

 

 

The Seeds of Worry - the desire for change

Between the two sayings, “Don’t worry, things will get better” and “Stupidity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results;” which one is actually true?

There is something about these statements, I find inherently frustrating.  Aside from the blatant contradictions they seem to imply, they somehow enable the person who utters them an air of condescending wisdom and intelligence and yet place the recipient in a position of passive acceptance and a state of an implied dullness of mind. 

They are not at all empowering.  And yet they sound believable, like they should at some level be true.  They simultaneously imply a pearl of wisdom that is present and yet evasive, leaving you with exactly nothing to go on.  Advice that simply cannot get better from the condescending throne of implied infinite knowledge and wisdom and yet cannot get worse given its chronic uselessness in reality and practical application.       

Could it be that “don’t worry, things will get better” is a statement that refers to the natural passing of time, which in turn, has the capacity to change things?  Or perhaps, its intent is to remind humanity that worry itself is neither conducive for change nor the happy passage of time.  And that in and of itself, worry is essentially an activity that is non-productive.

And yet on the other hand, the other statement suggests that a continuous course of same actions will yield the same result which would essentially undermine and suggests that the previous statement is perhaps a false one.

 A statement aimed at relieving the spokesperson from any responsibility in the circumstances.  “Don’t worry things will get better,” usually combined with a pacifying pat on the back.  A statement of false information.  One intended to build false hope and false expectations.  One that exonerates them from taking a course of action that would directly involve them in the course of events causing the state of worry to start with?  One intended to pardon their lack of interest and involvement in something.  Whatever that something might be.      

An excuse.

A declaration of distance. 

A polite way of saying, ‘please just do not involve me in this thing’. 

Alternatively consider the validity of the statement that “stupidity is continuing to take the same course of action and expecting different results”; is that true?  It can be.  In mathematics it’s a true statement.  Often in relationships it is also very true.  But there are times when taking an umbrella to work may be useful one day and unnecessary the next.  Thus, the same course of action yields different results.  So perhaps this statement holds true in circumstances where the variables are held constant but not always in cases where we do not control all the variables.  And life, as a rule, tends to fall in the latter category. 

And thus the time factor becomes relevant yet again. 

Time seems to be one variable we cannot control. 

Thus could it be possible, that the issue here is actually neither and the questions we are asking: the wrong ones. 

And so perhaps the question needs to be; for how long?  For how long are we willing to tolerate the state of worry or for how long are we willing to take the same results again and again by following the same course of action?

Isn't worry itself a state of ‘wanting change’ and not having the courage or the course of action within reach to pursue it?     

Is stupidity than just a higher level of commitment to a repetitive course of action? 

And so the question we need to be asking is: for how long? 

How long before we change it?