On Sun, 27 Oct 2002 17:22:38 -0800 Quinn Tyler Jackson 
writes:

> Gads ... I sound the fool.

Not at all.
Purely and Quintessentially (you can find the entendre if you want)
human.

Heck, we're all driven by selfish desire -- sometimes that's the odd
satisfaction of a martyrdom complex.
There are few of us saintly enough to wish the world to play with a
purely even hand -- sure, even for the other folks, but allow me at least
a knoll up, please....

In some ways, that's a darker shade of nature -- after all, self-servance
(self-service?) is a deadly sin according to some books. So it must be
beaten out of ourselves.

If you are like me, there's a certain uneasiness with contentment, and
success. On the one hand, we have lived and given up enough to be
"entitled" (I may be a pretender, but clearly I have the stuff -- all
concrete things to point to on a CV -- to do it really, really Well), on
the other, not nearly enough. And there's this strain in us that lives in
terror that someone will call our bluff, find us out.... so we've already
put a few cracks in the boat when the grapeshot tears through our sails.

But the truth, of all of us I think, is somewhere more in the middle.

My daemon will ever be my self-doubt, and I will always be
overcompensating for it.
I feel when I passionately put forth an opinion, that even those I care
about will turn away. Mayhap because it's happened. Mayhap, because I
allow myself the hubris of thinking that my idiosyncractic view of life
is somehow too unique to be true. And yet, when I voice these deep
terrors, I find out that, "No, Barb, you feel just like the rest of us."
[And there's a strange ugly disappointment in that -- I've cast myself as
so much the odd ball, I've somehow failed by being NORMAL.]

We are all flawed vessels, I guess I mean to say (sorry, I've been ill,
and am still in that strange recuperative state where certain inhibitions
ought to apply, but are off turning green on the tea-cup ride that's my
current inner ear). And perhaps, by knowing we are not alone in our
"injuredness" -- or at least feelings of injuredness -- there can be
found healing comfort?
Or I'm just babbling -- as you well know, I do that, and will heap on a
mountain of disclaimers, lest I offend.

Sure, we're fools. 
And we build houses of cards that tumble about us.

But that's OK.

Be ok with your foolishnesses, and those things that really aren't
foolishnesses, but we want to poo-poo them away.

It's all right to have a sensitive soul -- though you pay the price of
the jerks in the world (and even some non-jerks) ripping it.
Because, even though its downside is painful, sometimes even debilitating
in the social realm, it is who we are, and allows us to see things
through, perhaps not a clearer lens, but certainly one that would
diminish us if it were lost.

Perhaps that's the course of sentient life -- to come to grips with
oneself, warts, scars, thin skin, and all......

And I'm sure I'm repeating myself, and apologize.
I do rattle on.

Foolish, Quinn? Perhaps. 
But you seem to be in good (well, I hope good) company.

Let it be, I suppose. Since it will be anyway.

Still awaiting my own sea change, but betting I should be catching a
train instead....
-Barb



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You will do foolish things. So do them with enthusiasm. --Collette

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