Lately I have been stressed. As always I’ve brought this upon myself. Attempting to organise too much and tripping over myself to get things done. Not to mention the fact that my lack of any real sort of income places me in a largely dependant position which I hate so much.
Oh dear, it sounds already as if I’m trying to make excuses.
Now lets get down to business. I would love to be a nice person but nice is such a non-word…ok…I would love to stick to that rule of ‘if you don’t have something nice to say then don’t say it at all’. But I never do, I bitch and moan and say all sorts of horrible things along with most other people.
I get guilty over it…(I’m making excuses again!) but it doesn’t stop me for very long.
The worst crime that someone can commit in my book is being ‘plastic’. Of not living their life passionately and to the full. I want people to be themselves not some misunderstanding crappy-ass copy. Now I’m as pretentious as they come but gods know I try to give myself whole-heartedly to the moment and I don’t hold back. I get wound up when people don’t even try for the passion they just go for whatever mold seems to please them in an essentially grey and pashu type of way.
Giving up on a dream to get married and have babies is the one that often winds me up, being satisfied by a little life instead of flying to the stars, having relationships…and that’s the one that has always filled me with the twinge of ‘how could you’?
But, there are people who can attest to the fact that I’m genuinely excited about The Princess getting married, that I love buying The Stylish Baby gifts and also that I (shock! Horror!) take pleasure in the tiny moments in life.
As I have often said, you can’t judge what’s going on in someone’s life from the outside. But nevertheless I still do, in spades.
(We’re wandering into excuse territory with the next paragraph.)
I can never judge my own level of experience accurately. I still feel like a naive fourteen year old. It would seem to me that everyone else has done so much else with so much more understanding than I have about the world that I am always the less experienced party. I know that this isn’t the case but it is such an academic knowledge, it took hysterics provoked by FJ in Puno for me to even get that. Lately I’ve been asked for advice on such a scale (ie. by so many different people) that it astounded me, and made me quite paranoid – surely, after all, they wanted something else, my advice couldn’t genuinely be being sort after?
(Out of excuse territory).
Why I’m right and much of the rest of the world is wrong:
On Getting Married
I like it because: It involves people who passionately love each other very much and have seriously thought about the consequences of the promises they intend to make to each other and mean it.
You’re wrong to do it because: You’re just doing it because that’s what happens in life and you haven’t thought about it. You haven’t really considered the promises and actually have no intention of keeping them, it’s just about appearences.
On Having Children
I like it because: Children often annoy me, watching people develop into people is fascinating though and I can’t wait to see what a combination of your DNA does with it’s life. I mean just…wow!
You’re wrong to do it because: What? You’re telling me you’re pregnant like you couldn’t help it…you’ve put no thought into this, you didn’t use contraception because you’re just not that responsible or self-aware? And you expect me to congratulate you because you’re a mindless animal?
On Appreciating the Little Things
I like it because: Life is the most wonderful thing, the universe is full of tiny wonders and when you think and learn about them they are truly awesome. A cup of tea can be appreciated just as much as the sunrise over Macchu Picchu and it should be for all of existence can be treasured.
You’re wrong to do it because: You’re satisfied by having a cup of tea. You have no dreams, no desires to do all the amazing things you could do because you really think that having a cup of tea is the be all and end all of existence.
On Being In A Relationship
(I read Namedropper at a time when it really wrapped itself into my psyche…that’s all I’m saying)
I like it because: People who really love each other should be together and it’s a happy thing when they get together. (On a personal note: Foo and I are in love, Weasel and I love each other and there is no sense that love is confined. Honest communication means that the important people know how I feel about them and love is free.)
You’re wrong to do it because: You just want to be in a relationship, you have no respect for the person that you want you just want ‘a girl/boyfriend’/walking wallet/other half to bring to office parties. You have no idea who you are much less who they are and you can’t even see that this ‘relationship’ is lessening you both from the idealists, the superstars, the sheer raw potential that you had into pashu nothingness…how do you wonder that I hate this vampiric state of being which the world trumpets as what we should all aspire to?
I’m judgemental and grouchy and am not as accepting of irritation as I should be. My life is passionate and lived to the full but I have no validation of my art that would come with a nice cheque or other physical approval. Thus I feel like I can judge other people who are getting it more wrong, because of course, I’m so godsdamned perfect of course I’m right about this. (My lack of validation and feelings of being less than good just go and prove this – so there!)
Hope that explains why I am an enormous bitch.
You used the word pashu twice and I have no idea what it means, and google didn’t yield an answer.
I apologise, it’s a yogic word nicked by Kenneth Grant and foisted on me by too much exposure to occultists.
http://sivasakti.net/glossary/pashu.html
I’ve never been one for dreams and ambitions, and I take pleasure in living in a context that is hundreds if not thousands of years old, and I think life is not necessarily about doing new things, but about the old things done well and better. This includes having a family.
I think you’re seeing the broad strokes and missing the details, and while I and others may be following social "norms" in those broad strokes, the detail will be very different.
I also think that there is nothing wrong with living the life that comes to you, and taking pleasure in what that life brings.
‘I take pleasure in living in a context that is hundreds if not thousands of years old, and I think life is not necessarily about doing new things, but about the old things done well and better’ and that is why, Jo, you most certainly do not qualify for any of the ‘You’re wrong’ sections. My problem is not with following social norms, it’s with people who have not thought about it.
Genuine question…
Have you ever been equally angry with someone who got into:
*a poly relationship
*writing
*travelling
*creating ‘art’
…just because ‘everyone else they knew was doing it’ and without having put any thought into it?
It’s easy to criticise people who do ‘normal’ stuff as having no imagination. I had a long talk with an old friend when we met up in Manchester in March about how our lives have turned out very normal, but the truth was that once we were faced with all those multitude choices of life paths? These were the ones we really and truly wanted, and we don’t remotely feel like we’re ‘settling’.
I’ve known people who have done all of the things I listed above because it’s what they thought they ‘should’ be doing with their lives, and they have questioned me and my wish to live a simple, monogomous and home-based life – even though I bet I’ve put more thought into why it makes my happy than they have about their activities, which in the case of this specific breed of people extends no further than the desire to ‘be like everyone else around them’.
The beauty and colour of life comes not from what you do, but from what you take from it and how it enhances you as a person. The things that we do shouldn’t be divided between camps. It’s not that simple.
I liked your post – I really did. But I’d like to see you list the ‘unconventional’ choices too, I’d like to see you write about why you’re ‘right’ on Poly/Writing/Art/Travelling and why those same types horribly beige people do all of *those* things for the wrong reason too.
"Life is what happens when you’re making other plans."
Don’t blame people for what happens to them, blame them for what they make happen.