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Man in the Mirror
12 years ago
General
It started with a 'how long have I been doing this?'--and by 'this' I mean drawing furry stuff (and let's be honest, by 'stuff' I mean porn). In my hunt I went through my journals on dA.
All I have to say is: Wow, I was an asshole.
Then it struck me. Am I really any different from him? I see a lot of similarities that suggests he's still with me. A real cocky bastard, that has a natural aptitude to fit in with his surroundings... and while it's easy to say that's a great trait, on the other side of the same coin, it makes us carefree and more disassociated with the concerns of others.
In our K-12 experience, we were met with very little resistance to who we were discovering to be. And in hindsight, I find more examples of me being the bully. Which maybe that wasn't always true, because two of the people I butted heads with the most became my best friends through High School. By all rights, we should have been the one to get picked on, a lifelong geek and we were out by Junior year. Yet, I could break someone by denying someone my acceptance? And now that I think about it... I-I must be some sort of monster. There were similar events in Basic Training and AIT.
I don't want to say that my acceptance is worth anything. We all live lives, we all have our struggles: daily and otherwise. It's is worth noting that the only acceptance that's worth anything is from one person and one person alone, and that's you.
Gah, but does that mean I should just accept that I'm a monster?
I want to call this my mea culpa. I know I'm torn in half about it, because I want to justify it under the pretense that I'm on my individual journey through this life. YOLO hardly seems like a good reason to disregard everyone as an anecdote in some story. Had I known, I might have sat down the guy from the 9th grade that I made cry and tell him that the reason he has no respect from me is because he boasts about shoplifting, and I don't approve. Perhaps he might not have gone down that path where he called in a fake bomb threat on MLK ... or ended up in prison. Who knows when a word blurted or a thoughtfully formulated statement can move a person to change their life?
I know first hand that a thoughtless action can spell death plainly and clearly. And in an instant I fractured the timeline so that half of them I no longer exist in. Since then I've questioned life and death.
There I go again with trying to justify things. Yet, I need to accept that these things happen. And if I say "Yes, I accept that this is life, and good, bad, everything in between happen..." it feels like I'm writing off personal responsibility and ability to sympathize with others on similar journeys. Maybe I'm just trying to fight with my inner duality... again.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong... but in Scott Pilgrim, my interpretation of Nega-Scott was that every few years Scott sheds the negative emotions/memories that he has and Nega-Scott is formed. Which is why he has such a bad memory throughout the series. Or maybe that's a very intimate peek into my own psyche.
TL;DR
I don't have any answers. I'm just a kind of fucked up dude trying to figure out what this fucked up life has in store for me. It's not about the acceptance of others, it's the acceptance of yourself. Wait, maybe that's an answer... okay, if that's the case, then I don't know the question.
Lastly, I'm kind of an asshole and sometimes I'm a dick. It's nothing personal... unless it is.
All I have to say is: Wow, I was an asshole.
Then it struck me. Am I really any different from him? I see a lot of similarities that suggests he's still with me. A real cocky bastard, that has a natural aptitude to fit in with his surroundings... and while it's easy to say that's a great trait, on the other side of the same coin, it makes us carefree and more disassociated with the concerns of others.
In our K-12 experience, we were met with very little resistance to who we were discovering to be. And in hindsight, I find more examples of me being the bully. Which maybe that wasn't always true, because two of the people I butted heads with the most became my best friends through High School. By all rights, we should have been the one to get picked on, a lifelong geek and we were out by Junior year. Yet, I could break someone by denying someone my acceptance? And now that I think about it... I-I must be some sort of monster. There were similar events in Basic Training and AIT.
I don't want to say that my acceptance is worth anything. We all live lives, we all have our struggles: daily and otherwise. It's is worth noting that the only acceptance that's worth anything is from one person and one person alone, and that's you.
Gah, but does that mean I should just accept that I'm a monster?
I want to call this my mea culpa. I know I'm torn in half about it, because I want to justify it under the pretense that I'm on my individual journey through this life. YOLO hardly seems like a good reason to disregard everyone as an anecdote in some story. Had I known, I might have sat down the guy from the 9th grade that I made cry and tell him that the reason he has no respect from me is because he boasts about shoplifting, and I don't approve. Perhaps he might not have gone down that path where he called in a fake bomb threat on MLK ... or ended up in prison. Who knows when a word blurted or a thoughtfully formulated statement can move a person to change their life?
I know first hand that a thoughtless action can spell death plainly and clearly. And in an instant I fractured the timeline so that half of them I no longer exist in. Since then I've questioned life and death.
There I go again with trying to justify things. Yet, I need to accept that these things happen. And if I say "Yes, I accept that this is life, and good, bad, everything in between happen..." it feels like I'm writing off personal responsibility and ability to sympathize with others on similar journeys. Maybe I'm just trying to fight with my inner duality... again.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong... but in Scott Pilgrim, my interpretation of Nega-Scott was that every few years Scott sheds the negative emotions/memories that he has and Nega-Scott is formed. Which is why he has such a bad memory throughout the series. Or maybe that's a very intimate peek into my own psyche.
TL;DR
I don't have any answers. I'm just a kind of fucked up dude trying to figure out what this fucked up life has in store for me. It's not about the acceptance of others, it's the acceptance of yourself. Wait, maybe that's an answer... okay, if that's the case, then I don't know the question.
Lastly, I'm kind of an asshole and sometimes I'm a dick. It's nothing personal... unless it is.
There are VERY few people blessed enough to be simply naturally awesome, good, kind, ideal people. MOST people are horrible assholes if they're to be judged by their initial impulses and general default nature. What separates monsters from men are whether or not people learn to take command of themselves, and be better than the sum of their impulses and nature.
If you look back on yourself and don't like what you see, or feel like you should have acted differently at times, take note, and be sure to be the person you feel you should have been the next time such a situation comes around.
There are those who use the bullshit line of "I'm just being true to myself/accepting who I am" as an excuse to absolve themselves of personal accountability or responsibility to change. It's easy for assholes and monsters to accept themselves as such because assholes and monsters don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. What's hard is for people who want to be better than that, to make the decisions and the effort to choose to be more.
Though--and I blame this on my need to play devil's advocate--I'm left to postulate on a few different things:
Society wants us to be good members of it and serve for a greater good, the needs of the many over the needs of the one; but when judged by other individuals of that society, can we really see the scope of what they have truly sacrificed for the many? We've never walked the entire way with that person, how do we know what their life is like outside of those actions that we encounter in the here and now?
I think you're right that some people have much better impulse control and others need to learn more control over their impulses. I feel as though the only person we need to be better than is ourselves. And all in good time, I suppose... That whole one step at a time.
Thanks again.
On the other brain, that can be a destructive path, because some people can become reliant on that empathy and not be able to fly under their own power. Codependency can be a vicious and terrible thing.
I truly believe that in our travels to become a better person, we need to find ourselves and become a whole person. Once whole, be sure to share your love, compassion and enlightenment with others.
I've taken a bit of psych, to include bio-psychology. Hell of a time trying to keep track of the dopamine chain. Neurotransmitters and all of that. It's quite interesting. Hadn't thought to consider those things as factors, just the constant argument I have between right and left brain.
Or maybe a struggle-cuddle... that's okay too. I'm not judging.
;) both are right.