Text 115, 173 rader
Skriven 2005-05-23 16:57:14 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
Kommentar till text 112 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
Ärende: (Some) People... 1A.
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05-17-05 13:12, Ardith Hinton told James Bradley about People... 1A.
How do, Ardith?
JB> Sure, there are friends and relatives that you can tell
JB> how you feel, but mostly decorum has one keeping it to
JB> ones self.
AH> Uh-huh. And one of the purposes of this echo is
AH> to be a place where you can let it all hang out, if that's
AH> what you need to do.... :-)
<Letting gut flop out>
I forget who I was mentioning to, about how spring makes me straighten my gate
whenever a cutie passes, and then I pay for my bravado with the repercussions.
When walking, I have to crook my back, so my nerve doesn't fire on every step.
Akin to a middle-aged man sucking his diaphragm into his lung cavity, I tend to
straighten up the back, kick up my bad leg, and fall into a mass when the
appealing member of the opposite sex has disappeared from sight.
JB> If a friend is one of the later, they can be bad for
JB> your own blood pressure, so you have to evaluate the
JB> worth of their friendship.
AH> I hear what you're saying, but I'd put it a bit
AH> differently. That's because my reasoning style is
AH> different... not because I think you should do it my way!
AH> Please bear with me if I engage in "psychobabble" here....
AH> :-))
Why do you think I keep typing to you, Ardith? If someone can enlighten a
situation with an opposing - well, let's say different - point of view, I'm all
ears! Your points are not always the easiest to for me to wrap my head around,
and that is what I find challenging, and equally rewarding.
AH> I'm an only child & a divergent thinker. This means I've
AH> learned to look inward for guidance. I often find myself having to
AH> "translate" when other people say things like "Only children are
AH> spoiled brats," for example. I don't think I'm a spoiled brat. By
AH> the time I was in grade five & one of my teachers said this
AH> in front of the whole class, I was able to say to myself
What a defamatory thing for a teacher, let alone a person to say!
Generalizations like this would never be allowed today.
AH> "Oh, I guess you come from a large family!" Later on I
AH> noticed that a lot of people seem to believe others have
AH> easier lives than they do. And several weeks ago I finally
(sic.)
AH> managed to get a certain individual to show me that...
AH> although she repeats the same sentence in knee-jerk
AH> fashion, as others do with verses memorized from the
AH> Bible... what she means is that she still feels resentful
AH> about something which happened in her home town thirty
AH> years ago & which has *nothing to do with me*. I can
AH> usually figure out what's really going on in such
AH> situations when I'm not under too much stress, but when I'm
AH> struggling just to keep my head above water I can't deal
AH> with it & it's not my nature to grade things unless I have
AH> to. So I'd be more inclined to say "This relationship
AH> isn't working for me right now."
AH> The advantage of saying the relationship isn't working for
AH> you right now is twofold. First, you're acknowledging &
AH> accepting responsibility for the way you feel & recognizing
AH> that it's trying to tell you something. Second, you don't
AH> have to make any irrevocable decisions at the present time.
AH> These people must be able to relate to you in some ways &
AH> vice versa, otherwise you wouldn't have been friends in the first
AH> place! I see that the above individual tends to look outward where I
AH> would look inward, for example, but she also seems to have
AH> difficulty putting her feelings into words at times. The
AH> latter is something I can relate to. One way & another
AH> I've been feeling I'm constantly under attack from her...
AH> with some justification, I believe. I don't think she's
AH> seeing me. OTOH, she's just begun to tell me what's really
AH> bugging her & I missed a chance to be supportive because I
AH> was upset about her inability to clue in to what I'd been
AH> trying to say earlier. Perhaps we both have some changes
AH> to make.... :-)
Hmmm... I suppose I should have *something* revolutionary to say, but it sounds
like a healthy *evolution* to me. She has to grasp that her hurt has nothing to
do with you, and it *did* happen thirty years ago. You have to somehow get
across that you're not always available to fix her, when you have your hands
full of your own trials.
Realistically, how to lift the needle on a broken record can be tricky, can't
it? I have a family full of broken records, so I can relate. O-8
Maybe that teacher that inadvertently called you spoiled, needs to see some
divergent examples? <LOL> I have a good case of "Prodigal son" going here that
would turn her head 180^. <BWEG>
JB> Shoot... Nobody wants to walk on egg shells, just
JB> because some sorry sod can't take a hint.
AH> I'm very interested in your choice of metaphor there
AH> because some of our other friends have used it too. Looking at the
AH> situation from the point of view of the eggshell, I'm tired
ROTF!!! Ya, I'd never seen it from that POV!
AH> of being stomped on! I guess they've made some progress if
AH> they can say "I don't like walking on eggshells" instead of
AH> telling me I (should) feel a certain way. Maybe what
AH> they're trying to tell me is that I take offence easily,
AH> but they don't seem to realize I feel the same way about
AH> them. I don't like having to weigh every word any more
AH> than they do... (sigh).
Sometimes you're the bug, and sometimes you're the windshield?
Maybe you hit a nerve here, that everyone complains about walking on eggshells,
because nobody wants to *be* the eggshells?
JB> I can be a handful too, so I don't expect everyone to
JB> have a halo, just an openness to their own failings.
AH> Same here! Your comments about egg shells & about the
AH> importance of what a person does following Another D*mn Learning
AH> Experience reminded me of an incident from my teens. Our
AH> next door neighbour had hired somebody to bulldoze the area
AH> where he wanted to put a septic tank, and my father was fit
AH> to be tied because the man had taken out a surveyor's bench
AH> mark. I wasn't present during the ensuing conversation.
AH> However, the thought strikes me that all of us screw up
AH> sometimes & the bulldozer operator could have reacted in
AH> either of two ways:
AH> 1) He could have asked what a surveyor's bench mark was,
AH> if he didn't already
AH> know, and why it was important to my father. He could
AH> have apologized for his
AH> ignorance and/or carelessness & resolved not to make the
AH> same error again. He
AH> could have offered to make amends as best he could. Or...
AH> 2) He could have pooled his own ignorance with that of
AH> his buddies, who would
AH> no doubt agree with him that the old geezer who got so
AH> uptight over a piece of
AH> rusty iron must be totally off his rocker, and then he
AH> needn't learn anything.
LOL! Instead of a type "A", "B", or whatever personality, you've clouded the
issue with a type "1" and type "2". I've heard a synopsis that a "Dumb Newfie"
is perpetuated because if a Newfie commissions a boat to be built, the builder
will point out the faults he encountered while building it, the buyer will
insist the boat is worth the original quote, and an outsider will call the both
"Dumb Newfies." "Only in Canada, eh? ...Pity!" <LOL>
AH> I can forgive a lot when I don't have to be
AH> "wrong" so that somebody else can be "right", and when
AH> other folks show me they care how I feel.... :-)
Ya, that one-upmanship is taxing.
... Those who sling mud, lose ground.
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