Below are two posts I wrote in a row on Facebook today. Normally I don’t post personal things at this blog but this was an instance where I wanted to retain this thought process. Like the asexual post I did previously, this is pretty indicative of my general view on life, so it feels relevant to this blog.
I guess this is kind of me thinking aloud, and kind of coalescing thoughts from many months and years of rumination.
first post:
There are so many things I have thoughts on that I don’t write posts about, because I tend to have a complicated view of most things. So to explain my view, it would need to be a dissertation for someone else to truly understand what I’m trying to say. Most of the time, I feel like it isn’t important enough to do this because my opinion is simply one of many, and I don’t feel that it’s more valid than anyone else’s, so it seems like the expenditure of energy is unnecessary. I thought of this because there were about 4 topics I could have written an essay about today.
second post:
I tend to see both sides of the situation and generally speaking often think there are valid points on many sides of any argument (which is what complicates things). But sometimes I am confronted with the unexpected truth that my more empathetic/neutral view on things isn’t always the norm, which means sometimes I’m in a unique position to bridge a gap. My natural inclination to want to help others means I see this as a good thing, but my equally natural inclination to think I’m not good enough for anything means I constantly question if I’m doing something well enough or if someone else would be better at this. Still, it doesn’t stop me from feeling accomplished by some minor goals.
I thought of all of this because of something I’ve been working on for a while at work and mostly finished today. I was very pleased with myself, especially because it was a thing I self-assigned simply because I felt there was a need for it. I’ve done this many times in the past on many topics and I’ve always had good feedback but this particular thing is more meaningful, I think. It won’t change things in some massive way but I think ultimately in the future it has the potential to help others in some minor way. And I forget a lot that there’s any point to my existence because I figure I’m some sort of freak of nature who’s never part of the norm but who equally doesn’t matter to that same norm for that reason. I’ve always seen myself as completely forgettable and am constantly surprised when people remember me or say they were sad when I was gone or say anything nice about me.
Even these posts I’m making are abnormal for me because I generally don’t see any point in talking so much about myself and blahblah who cares? But every now and then I take that anthropological eye I use to view the world and turn it on myself and sometimes find it interesting to both acknowledge and examine what sort of person I am and what motivates me. So I hope this post doesn’t sound like some obnoxious egoistic bullshit trying to tell people I’m awesome, because I’m not and that’s not the point of this post. All I’m saying is, it’s interesting to look at yourself from a more objective standpoint than the emotionally subjective criteria I normally reserve for self-directed thoughts. I find it particularly interesting because all the times I think I suck I can’t really discount or argue the reasons, but if I as a person were someone else entirely, and if that me were disconnected from myself completely and I was viewing that new me as someone else, I think I would think she had accomplished many goals that I, as myself, still think I need to attain in the future.
It’s like I understand who I am as a human being, all the flaws especially, but I don’t put accomplishments in words that are impactful to myself. So I see myself as unimportant and forgettable and not really that interesting, but then I run into situations where, for example in relation to this thing I made recently, someone involved from the outside basically said, “Thank god we found you” and “I’m so happy you exist!” This was because of my unique position where I got what they were saying and believed in it too, but I also understood the context of my own job and believed in the thought process there as well, so I was able to do something that addressed both sides as equally valid– rather than taking the stance that one side is right and the other is wrong.
I feel like that black and white thinking is far too prevalent, especially lately in the US, and I don’t understand it. Just about every topic I know is more grey area than anything, and just about every person I know has a valid reason for thinking the things they think in the context of their own life and experience, and the validity of one person’s beliefs or understanding doesn’t have to directly undermine another’s, even if they are at opposite sides of a spectrum. Both sides can be equally valid and equally have good points without it meaning the other is incorrect or evil or wrong or lazy or ___-ist. All it means is somewhere in the process of how they got to that opinion or belief, there is a step where they will be in alignment with the person on the other side of the scale. And if people would focus more of their attention on respect and understanding and mediation, they would realize that a lot of the fighting that exists in the world doesn’t really need to exist. We’re all more alike than we realize, and if we truly tried we could find common ground. If not by ourselves, than in a group of varying beliefs where together we paint a greater picture of the whole than we ever did on the tiny little canvas of our own minds.
The Inner Workings of an Ais 