Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

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.

Dzhanechka

I feel worth­less.

She hugged him tight round the neck, her arms trem­bling, as though she was try­ing to pass her soul to him with that kiss. No, it was right and prop­er she should die!

I find that I’m begin­ning to com­pare myself with oth­ers, in order that I feel bet­ter about myself. I keep telling myself that I have no debt, no ail­ments, and bare­ly any respon­si­bil­i­ties. I’m a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate, I live in a great city in a com­fort­able apart­ment, I’ve final­ly fall­en into a great bunch of stand-up friends. Why does it feel as though I have noth­ing, that I’ve accom­plished noth­ing, that my life is noth­ing? That in my near­ly 23 years of life, I have noth­ing to show for it but a few fris­sons and a life or two affect­ed.

If only I was being too hard on myself.

Jealousy Revisited

Jealousy is not a famil­iar emo­tion to me. I’m nev­er jeal­ous of what some­one has, sim­ply because I dis­like com­par­ing oth­ers with myself in terms of what one may earn/deserve. It’s only in my rela­tion­ships which any sort of envi­ous emo­tions sur­face, and even then, such an oner­ous emo­tion hap­pens rarely to me.

Historically speak­ing, I’m gen­er­al­ly over-con­fi­dent, and such a mind­set cre­ates very wor­ry-free rela­tion­ships. It’s when I don’t have this con­fi­dence that my mind starts to won­der. In a way, this is my inse­cu­ri­ty get­ting the bet­ter of me. It feels so odd to have to fight off this emo­tion, to have to con­stant­ly remind myself and keep my feel­ings in check. It’s almost an extreme test of how far I’ve come in my goal to be a cere­bral per­son. When I try to calm myself down I can feel my mind evening out, like a melt­ing can­dle, lev­el­ing out from heat.

So far, my jeal­ousy has been eas­i­er to con­tain than I would have believed. Maybe I’m los­ing my inse­cu­ri­ties bet­ter than I know, and I’ve come fur­ther as a per­son than I real­ized. Because of my inex­pe­ri­ence with jeal­ousy, I do salute any jeal­ousy I expe­ri­ence as a mark of true love.

Perhaps some jeal­ousy is a good thing.

Modesty?

Sometimes I hear some peo­ple described in a not-so-com­pli­men­ta­ry way. Some of the descrip­tions are much worse than oth­ers, but there are ones which always stick out in my mind. Things such as “creepy”, “igno­rant”, “des­per­ate”, “arro­gant”, “obnox­ious”, “unre­li­able”, or “rib­ald” are the last things I would want to be described as, and these have stuck with me ever since I gained cere­bral con­scious­ness.

However, I real­ized recent­ly that it would both­er me if some­one thought of me as a per­son who fish­es for com­pli­ments. I sup­pose that if there was some truth to this fact it would­n’t both­er me so much. Of course, I might in actu­al­i­ty be unaware of any false, inse­cure actions I may be per­form­ing, being a gen­er­al­ly inse­cure per­son in the first place.

I’m not sure why some­thing like this would both­er me so much, as opposed to some­one telling me that I’m untrust­wor­thy. Of course, some­times the fault of believ­ing that some­one is untrust­wor­thy lies in as much as the fault­er as the fault­ee. After all, a thief sus­pects a thief.

Perhaps peo­ple mis­take my attempt at mod­esty as false mod­esty. Modesty is such an impor­tant thing for me that per­haps I over stress it and it ends up back­fir­ing.

I guess the only way I’ll find out what I’m real­ly like is if some­one I trust were to tell me.

Gauge

Self-improve­ment has been a goal I set for myself for as long as I remem­ber, a sort of nev­er-end­ing quest that I hope to find ful­fill­ment in. It makes me hap­py to know that I have peo­ple to look up to, peo­ple my age whom I know. Being able to real­ize that even these peo­ple are human has helped me set more real­is­tic goals for myself, instead of some quixot­ic ideals I could nev­er hope to accom­plish. Not every­one is the same, of course, and while I may look up to one per­son for their morals, I may look up to some­one else for their con­fi­dence.

However, I judge how well I’m doing in my goals by com­par­ing myself to peo­ple with per­son­al­i­ties I can’t stand. I try to be as san­guine as pos­si­ble, sim­ply because I know some­one who brings down every­one he hangs around with. I try to be open to oth­er peo­ples opin­ions due to the fact that I know some­one who refus­es to accept any­thing but his own con­clu­sions, as open-mind­ed as those are. I try to have fun even when I’m los­ing a game, as dif­fi­cult as that may be for me some­times, because I know some­one who becomes angry when­ev­er they lose. I try to act affec­tion­ate­ly but appro­pri­ate­ly with peo­ple I’m involved with, sim­ply because I know peo­ple who are either too des­per­ate or too cold. I try to give as much space as is need­ed in my rela­tion­ships because I know peo­ple who are exceed­ing­ly high-main­te­nance.

Whenever I see peo­ple act the way they do, I try to find the good in them. Sometimes I find both good and bad, but I focus on the good, a thing which comes eas­i­ly to me, per­haps as a result of my zeal to become a bet­ter per­son.

Sometimes I find only bad, and it gives me more to work for.