Just Be Yourself
We love to say that, don't we? The question is, do we really mean it?
Do we really want people to be themselves? Do we really want them to see us as we truly are?
Probably not, on either count.
The playwright Jonathan Reynolds liked to quote his cousin, Lee Remick, on relationships--"the bad stuff is always there, you just push it to the background in the beginning, and eventually it moves to the foreground and that's all you can see."
And isn't this the truth? Unless you're really thick, you can usually tell what a person's qualities are--good and bad--within a short period of knowing them. But in the beginning, you only want to see the good--and they're all too willing to play it up for you. Same with yourself--if you're crazy, you know the other person really wants to see your sane qualities, and so you do your damnedest to play up your sanity and cast a shadow on your naked midnight strolls through the park with your imaginary friend.
So what happens when time passes and you get used to the other person's good qualities, and they to yours, and then those pesky bad qualities come pushing their way to the front of the line? "Look at me," says Squeezes Toothpaste From the Center. "I was here first," says Socks on the Floor. "Whatever," yells Self-Absorption, pushing through. "Shhh, I'm trying to watch t.v.," says Just Plain Lazy.
Negative is so much easier to view than positive. Which makes me wonder, why can't the good qualities grow some nads and make themselves more visible? Why are they so willing to take a backseat to the bad qualities once the relationship has been established?
Maybe fault lies with the eye of the beholder. Maybe we don't want to see the good qualities anymore because we just don't really trust them. Maybe we feel like Generous to a Fault neglected to tell us he only applies to strangers and employees of the service industry, and now we're suspicious of all of them. What are they not telling us? What are they covering up?
Why can't we trust them? Accept that no one is perfect and that every good has a bad that comes with it?
I wish I knew.
Do we really want people to be themselves? Do we really want them to see us as we truly are?
Probably not, on either count.
The playwright Jonathan Reynolds liked to quote his cousin, Lee Remick, on relationships--"the bad stuff is always there, you just push it to the background in the beginning, and eventually it moves to the foreground and that's all you can see."
And isn't this the truth? Unless you're really thick, you can usually tell what a person's qualities are--good and bad--within a short period of knowing them. But in the beginning, you only want to see the good--and they're all too willing to play it up for you. Same with yourself--if you're crazy, you know the other person really wants to see your sane qualities, and so you do your damnedest to play up your sanity and cast a shadow on your naked midnight strolls through the park with your imaginary friend.
So what happens when time passes and you get used to the other person's good qualities, and they to yours, and then those pesky bad qualities come pushing their way to the front of the line? "Look at me," says Squeezes Toothpaste From the Center. "I was here first," says Socks on the Floor. "Whatever," yells Self-Absorption, pushing through. "Shhh, I'm trying to watch t.v.," says Just Plain Lazy.
Negative is so much easier to view than positive. Which makes me wonder, why can't the good qualities grow some nads and make themselves more visible? Why are they so willing to take a backseat to the bad qualities once the relationship has been established?
Maybe fault lies with the eye of the beholder. Maybe we don't want to see the good qualities anymore because we just don't really trust them. Maybe we feel like Generous to a Fault neglected to tell us he only applies to strangers and employees of the service industry, and now we're suspicious of all of them. What are they not telling us? What are they covering up?
Why can't we trust them? Accept that no one is perfect and that every good has a bad that comes with it?
I wish I knew.
posted by Mitzi Green at 9:46 AM
1 Comments:
This is a great post Mitzi. Yourself can be so many things...there's defintie selection going on at different times....
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