What are you drawn to in others?
Posted on May 16th, 2008
by 
rapunzel
rapunzel
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for May 16, 2008:
Whatever is real in them. Sometimes playing pretend can be real too unless it slips into pretentiousness, which is unreal. I admit to sometimes avoiding people who are mean - or also people who are pretentious - even though I think it's true that "the ones who are hardest to love are the ones who need it most" because it wears on me, but on a good day I can look past those things a little more. I like the variety of us all. And I like the samenesses too. We're all so interesting.
Access: Public
others
July 2008
I agree….we are an interesting lot.
I'll second that … I love observing and being with folk.
I was thinking the other day that we are like three-layered cakes; performance on top and visible, then real which is what we experience inside, then authentic on the bottom which is a sort of fruity sludge that may or may not accord with what is real…for example, if a man is conditionned not to show grief in a red/blue (Spiral Dynamics…ya got the narcolepsy thang going on yet?) culture, he will tend to substitute sadness for anger….the anger is real cos he experiences it…whilst the authentic xperience within this would be that hidden sadness….
Whatever, it's a great cake to consume or have a food fight with.
Warmly, Jon xx
What? Oh sorry, I must have dozed off.
It seems like what you're calling real I would call another aspect of performance. Performing for ourselves, an inside performance, private audience only, but still a performance.
I almost used the word authentic instead of real but then decided it had too many syllables.
I just confronted one of those buried authentic/real things that I'd been reframing and putting over there somewhere for quite awhile and substituting something else and I was blown away by the experience. And covered in cake.
“ I like the variety of us all. And I like the samenesses too. We're all so interesting.”
I agree.
& yet another agreer..agreeé..? .. especially on the 'we're all so interesting' conclusion.
It suggest to me a vantage point of openmindedness & curiosity & a detachment towards wanting to see something in particular, which in my mind is a great advantage when experiencing the feeling of being drawn to…& then maybe not so.. it could all come from your choice to dress the word interesting in italic.. - thx for your reflection… interesting ;-)
I like how we are all so interesting and layered too. About the cake: I don't like cake at all can you find something else for my brain to hold onto I am not like a cake!!!! Ewwwww.
That's funny, I don't like cake either. Or most sweet things. Except that salty chocolate…but that doesn't work for the analogy at all. Hmmm, maybe a sushi roll. I do love those.
yes, yes. the best advice anyone ever gave me about becoming a teacher was to be real. and it's true. trying to be cutesy or glib or something i'm not in the classroom (though of course every bad mood i have can't echo through the halls of the school) won't help me teach and connect to the kids.
“friendship is when people know all about you and like you anyway” — ??
real. yeah. I like realness. I like things so real they almost feel unreal, sometimes. :-)
and “the ones who are hardest to love are the ones that need it most” – argh. I am living that with a certain teenager who shall remain momentarily nameless right now. thank you for saying that. it becomes hard to remember in certain moments.