Posts tagged with "realization"

Traces of Me

I’m just com­ing off a mod­er­ate cold I’ve had for the last week. All the clas­sic symp­toms — run­ny, stuffy nose, con­ges­tion, slight headache, yel­low phlegm — but odd­ly enough, bare­ly a hint sore throat. It’s been unpleas­ant to say the least.

A lit­tle while ago, Tiana wrote “I look in the bowl after to see how impres­sive it was. I’m pret­ty sure you do too”.

This cold has made me real­ize that I not only look in the bowl (I’m sure Freud would diag­nose us as being fix­at­ed in the anal stage of psy­cho­sex­u­al devel­op­ment), but I open my Kleenex after blow­ing in it as well, to check for dis­coloured mucus, phlegm, blood, or bits of brain that may have escaped through my nose.

Retreat

Hello, I’m an intro­vert.

When going through Psychology 1101 to cov­er a required sci­ence elec­tive, I stud­ied the char­ac­ter­is­tics of intro­ver­sion and extro­ver­sion, but the mate­r­i­al nev­er real­ly res­onat­ed with me. As I saw it, there are vary­ing degrees of both, I fit some­where on the intro­vert­ed side of the scale, and this was the extent of the appli­ca­tion of such a sub­ject.

I can force myself to be social, friend­ly, cheer­ful (what Shirley and I call being on), but I can only do this for lim­it­ed amounts of time. Usually I can keep it going just a few hours for a par­ty or gath­er­ing, or as long as a few days as required if we’re out camp­ing or snow­board­ing, but nev­er longer than this.

The rest of the time I spend in my room, away from the world, because the social inter­ac­tions of every­day life are a huge drain on me. When I’m alone, I recharge in a way I can’t explain. I’ve spent years feel­ing guilty for this behav­iour. The North American atti­tude is that there’s some­thing wrong with being qui­et or unso­cial. The most strik­ing mem­o­ry I have of this was dur­ing frosh week, when oth­ers would con­stant­ly harass me to go drink­ing, or danc­ing, or par­ty­ing with a bunch of peo­ple I had nev­er met before.

Now there’s an expla­na­tion that makes more sense to me than a sim­ple degree on a scale. In a recent arti­cle, neu­ro­science researcher Marti Olsen Laney talks about the con­nec­tions between intro­ver­sion and biol­o­gy. “It impacts all areas of their lives: how they process infor­ma­tion, how they restore their ener­gy, what they enjoy and how they com­mu­ni­cate.”

I real­ize that there’s a great­ly sig­nif­i­cant cor­re­la­tion between the way I behave and my intro­vert­ed mind­set. Introversion is an atti­tude that affects almost every aspect of my life, deeply root­ed to a phys­i­o­log­i­cal lev­el. It isn’t some­thing I should be ashamed of or embar­rassed about.

And if I can come out of my shell every now and then, I’ll be alright.

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most like­ly, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack oth­er beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I should­n’t be so hard on myself. I should­n’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It does­n’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improve­ment.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al, and all that real­ly mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s tak­en me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That does­n’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improve­ment, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give oth­ers.

Because the for­mer has always been hard­er than the lat­ter.

Scattered Veil

I’ve real­ized that I have a hard time look­ing in the eyes of peo­ple I can’t stand.

It’s as if I don’t want to be dis­hon­est to them. That no mat­ter how much I hate them, I still feel like they deserve to know the truth. At least I can be…hon­ourable about this, inde­pen­dent of how I feel about the per­son.

I hold hon­esty at a very basic lev­el of human integri­ty. I can’t believe how many peo­ple I know who pre­tend to be friends with peo­ple they can’t stand. It all seems so pho­ny, unless they’re forced to be friend­ly due to spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances (such as being mar­ried into a new fam­i­ly, mov­ing in with unknown room­mates, etc.). Sometimes the false friend­li­ness gives peo­ple the wrong idea, and they start to hang around even more, and every­thing just gets worse.

I’m glad that I find it hard to lie to some­one, although I’m also a lit­tle scared by the fact that it’s so hard for me to hide some­thing such as this. I’ve always been a ter­ri­ble inter­preter of body lan­guage, and in turn have nev­er had much luck with hiding/manipulating my own. Of course I can hide it when I real­ly want to, but it’s a lot hard­er when I don’t give a shit about the per­son. Most peo­ple, I don’t care enough about to actu­al­ly hide any­thing.

And it shows.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.