Things I've Learned

[mrissa]

One of my friends, in a locked post, listed some Things She's Learned in her time on the planet, and asked us for the same. So, in no particular order:

1. You know how they say that family are the people where, if you go there, they have to take you in? Yah, sure, okay, but also: family are the people who don't wait until they have to take you in.

2. The people who love you, don't love you because they think you're perfect. Anything you do that's based on keeping the people who love you from finding out that you're imperfect is probably a pretty shaky idea.

3. Showing up and giving a damn isn't enough for everything, but it's a good start. And it's enough for an astonishing number of things.

4. Meaning well is all very well, but meaning well and doing a little research is even better.

5. If you are more than two years out of high school, the people you went to high school with do not exist. They have been replaced by 20-year-olds (30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 70-year-olds...) with very different lives from what they had in high school. You can stay friends with them as you both change, or you can make friends with them again later, if you want to. You can be cold or cordial to the people they've become. But "showing them" is not going to work, because the "them" who are to be "shown" there does not exist any more. You may as well wish to prove yourself in the eyes of the unicorns.

6. Anything you do -- anything -- can be cast in a negative light if someone really wants to. That "someone" includes yourself. Don't be ashamed of the people, places, or things you like because someone might sneer at them. Someone sneers at everything. If you take a large enough sampling of people, you will find jerks. But they aren't your life -- you can't let them be -- and you certainly shouldn't strive to do their work for them.

That's not all I've learned, but it's a start.

Comments

[anonuum.livejournal.com]

"Being imperfect is better than being an asshole who tries to hide important things from the people who love you, by the way. In case you hadn't figured that out yet. Those *are* the choices."

Have you seen people lose conciousness in public? When they are not physically restrained, their first reaction after regaining themselves is often to attempt to escape - the hindbrain takes over and one feels the first priority is to get away from the place of failure.

I guess, worshiping the strong, in part I DO agree with you that anyone weak enough to feel so bad that the reaction is to hide away (even if not physically, but only information-wise), I am still not sure that giving in to fear makes a person immediately into an asshole.

... or, may-be you are right - anyone who becomes afraid of the people who love them is an asshole and fear is the greatest sin of them all (but would the cowards who do not allow anyone to love them in first place get better opinion from you?)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I don't think I agree with the last part.

I. "Anyone who becomes afraid of the people who love them" includes victims of abuse, and I would not call those victims assholes. (Id use much stronger terms for the abusers.) Of course you can argue that in that case it's not real love, but both the abuser and the abusee often think it is at the time so how could they judge?

II. In othe cases, people are often afraid not so much of the people who love them, but that those people will stop loving them. I agree with Mris's point 3. that this is not a good way to think, but people who are afraid are often not thinking rationally. I'm not convinced that makes them assholes.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmm; are we having a confusion about "being" an asshole, a permanent attribute, vs. "acting like" an asshole now and then? I don't think of the first formulation much, I use the second, as a description of particular behavior. It's extremely rare that somebody exhibits *so much* of the behavior that I feel any urge to apply the label to them overall.

Giving in to fear is, in itself, morally neutral, I feel. Sometimes specific behaviors that follow are not.