Cruel to be kind
09 January 2006 at 9:18 pm

And now for something completely different.

I've found that if I don't like something about myself, I surround my people who personify that flaw worse than I. For example, if I'm feeling old, I call my friends who are older than I. If I'm feeling stupid, I use a big word in front of someone I know won't understand it. If I'm feeling unsuccessful, I befriend people who have no prospects, goals, or ambitions. The problem is, once you've been doing this for long enough, you forget how to associate with people with whom you might actually form a valid friendship.

Joanna once said of me, and I know I've said this before and recently at that, but she said that one of the things she admired about me was how I embrace my flaws. I don't. I just don't seek to change them. Instead, I surround myself with people who have no idea that they even a flaw, let alone that I do. Maybe that's the difference between them and me: is it really a flaw if you don't think it is? For example, some people my find my devotion to Aaron as a major character flaw. I don't happen to believe th t finding someone whom I can love and who can love me equally is a flaw as much as blind luck. Some people said dropping out of school was the worst thing I could possibly do, that I was making a horrible life decision, that I would be a prostitute in Tijuana before I got my degree. Now I'm back in school and graduating (fingers crossed) within the year and a hugely better person for taking a few years off to figure out why, exactly, I needed to be in school in the first place ("because my parents said I had to" didn't work for me after the age of 12).

I guess the bottom line is, I don't like to judge people but I do it anyway, and I hate to be judged but people judge me anyway. It's one thing to not like a person after figuring out what you don't like about that person and then figuring out why that person is the way they are and deciding you still don't like them and quite another to not give someone a chance without knowing where they're coming from.

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About me
Hi. Morgan, 27, of Santa Barbara, CA. I am a hypocritical admirer of rhetoric (when it is my own) and an observer of literary trends. A secret: I don't take anything very seriously, and that includes myself.