Universal Truth and Pea-Brain Experience

Well, I've got about three versions of "draft" posts cooking in my save pile, many ideas cooking in my head for additional posts (from remaining "chronically in love" -- stay tuned -- to "George the Consolation Bunny"), and they just don't seem "done" yet. My blog-time was severely curtailed by end-of-the-month deadlines, and my fingers have been itching to get back to the keys.

So, I'm going to post directly today about what's at the top of the heap in my brain.

I've noticed a phenomenon lately that I believe gets people into difficulty, and which I know has gotten me into difficulty with myself in the past: The tendency to attempt to translate individual personal experiences (especially things like disappointments, "owies", pissers, etc.) into Universal Truths.

I mean by this that often, when I've experienced something I don't like (or think I don't like) that I have extrapolated that into some pronouncement of a Big Fat What Is So. These pronouncements are usually pre- or ante-ceded by a statement like "That's just how it is."

Example: There are people who don't really seem to get what I'm doing. Sometimes they talk about me to others, and in that small-town way, I sometimes hear about it later. "Oh, Carol Steinel, she runs that Carruch-cult," etc.

I'm realizing that I've accepted this as "part of the territory" of being an outspoken person/psychic/channeler/teacher -- I pretended to come to the conclusion that "People WILL talk badly about me if I am authentic," or, more mildly, maybe "I believe people will probably say or repeat things that may be untrue if they don't have all the information."

No matter how mildly I put the statement, or how responsibly, I think I'm in deep doo-doo if I hear this tag following my statement " . . . that's just how it is."

My trouble with this is that ringing tone of resignation -- I don't like that energy in my body, and I don't want to energize that attitude in the world. I also don't want to continue creating that reality (and I realize that such a pronouncement -- so absolutely certain -- is a strong demand to the Universe about what I will expect to find in my reality).

I'm going to be watching myself on this one.

I think I began concocting these pronouncements out of a sort of weenie resistance to remaining vulnerable -- if I just expect the worst, somehow it won't hurt me -- something like that. I think that I believed that if I could somehow just adjust myself to the terrible reality of "how life is", I would become savvy and invulnerable.

Trouble is, the strategy:
A. Doesn't really work.
and
B. Isn't what I really want anyway. I don't know if it's a product of getting older or what, but I'm finding that my interest in "being cool/invulnerable/untouched" has simply seeped away from me. I feel glad about that.

I'm thinking I may have picked up this pronouncement habit in my youth. I was a little kid -- always the smallest in the class, except for one glorious six month period in my early adolescence when I got my growth spurt (and my boobs) before every one else -- I became a temporary track star -- I was also a "teacher's kid" (twice over, from maternal and paternal sides), which consigned me to a state of irreparable uncoolness -- AND I thought I was immensely homely as a child. The culmination of these elements was a playground nightmare waiting to happen.

I vaguely recall my mom telling me that what I should do when kids teased me or were mean --

(like when Curtis Wow-What-Was-His-Last-Name-I-Thought-I-Would-Never-Forget-THAT! tied me to the backstop and left me there after the end-recess bell rang -- teacher had to come out and find me -- second grade)

This is actually a photo from first grade --click to enlarge -- can't find second grade-- probably tore it up after the backstop incident. As is usually the case, all the adults in my life explained to me that Curtis actually liked me a lot -- maybe too much -- in that "special way" (which was why he hit me in the head with a snowball packed with a rock).

Wow! Now there's a template for romance! No comments from the sidelines about the impact of this on my sexual orientation, please -- (although I, too, have wondered, then discarded this as a possible factor -- there are just too many other good reasons to become a dyke -- and face it -- it is possible that some of us really were just made that way).

Dyke in a Dress Alert! Dyke in a Dress Alert!

-- but once again, I digress -- I remember that the adult advice concerning what I should do in these situations of kid-torture is pretend like I didn't care. Presumably because if I showed that I did care, I would only feed their delight in having an effect on me. (Which actually might have been so.)

I developed a "thick skin". I don't think that's a bad thing, necessarily, but I realize that it has also inhibited my ability to touch my own life as directly as I might wish.

I think it is fine to do this if I genuinely don't care. However, as with this blog, when I ran into some critique after I had thought I genuinely didn't care, I found that, in fact, I genuinely DID care.

I noticed several strategies popped up in my mind immediately: 1. Chin up, carry on, and let the slings and arrows do their worst -- I would transcend them! (can you hear the trumpet fanfare in the background? Okay, let me turn it up . . . ), 2. I would remove the blog entirely and therefore, no slings and arrows, 3. I could release the blog slowly, first to solid and sympathetic supporters, then to those whom I couldn't be sure would be supportive, then to everyone -- thereby "building up" my immunity to the slings and arrows, 4. I could put the blog up without any ability for the reader to comment. They might still email me, but it would be just a tiny bit more work for them to do so.

Then I realized that all of these strategies assumed that -- according to my own "realistic" tough-cookie mindset --if I was authentic and open with my blog, it was BOUND to result in slings and arrows -- because -- you guessed it: " . . . . that's just how it is."

What an irony for someone starting a blog about optimism.

As I said, I'll be watching this in myself. I suspect that this mindset may hang out in me in subtle ways and out-of-the-way places, tucked into the nooks and crannies of thoughts I don't usually even shine a light on.

So I'm officially amending my internal pronouncement on this, as follows:

If I post my stuff here authentically and openly, it is a possibility that some people may respond to me in a way I don't like. That's a possibility. But it is also equally possible that people may respond to me in ways that I like. (Actually, that's been my overwhelming experience so far.)

I think that steeling myself against the worst by expecting the worst hasn't ever really worked out for me, and I suspect that, at the same time that my thick-skin was supposedly protecting me, the callous formed was also decreasing my ability to truly experience, fully and sensitively, the best parts of my life.

Like the difference between experiencing a caress over the back of your heel and the small of your back.

Thanks for petting me, by the way.