Attention Everyone:
Ask Mary Beth how she feels about the metro system in Washington, D.C.
This will stimulate conversation for the next eight minutes and forty-four seconds.
This is especially useful if she is at a boring party with you and you want to promote discussion among the guests.
The effects of this conversation on the recipient may vary. Side effects include, but are not limited to: acquiring knowledge of the union and union members, increased/decreased appreciation for the union and union members, annoyance, anger, boredom, and genuine interest. *
*1% of recipients have experienced true happiness, though whether this symptom is a result of this conversation remains unconfirmed.
If anger persists 24 hours after the discussion, contact your physician.
This is safe for pregnant women and women who are breastfeeding.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
"To thine own self be true."
It's time for a new post. It's time to write about something pithy and relavant. It's time to write about anger.
Yes, anger. That gut-boiling, rousing, unavoidable (if you're living in this city, anyway) emotion. I remember as a kid I used to get angry all the time. My siblings made me angry. Banging my toe or my elbow against hard objects made me angry. Bullies made me angry, especially when they made my sisters cry. I responded to these situations with indignation, with raised voice and that funny adrenaline rush that starts in the pit of your stomach. I felt, in all these situations, that I had the right to be angry, and so I threw myself into the emotion whole-heartedly, arms swinging, ready to stand by my conviction of rectitude or die in the fight.
And then I got to adolescence and the early, painful lessons of sociability and not always being justified in your anger. I learned that there are, indeed, two sides to every argument, and it's not always the case that one side is 100% right while the other is 100% wrong. In fact, that's almost never the case. So I started to question, and eventually to swallow, my anger, because I realized it wasn't always as just as I liked to suppose. By the time I graduated from college, I was a full-blown pacifist. Now, as a young professional, I'll give up almost any argument for the sake of maintaining peace and avoiding raised voices. I'm never confident that my position is 100% right. And as soon as the other person presents an argument with even the slightest bit of relavance, my confidence level drops and drops, until I'm almost completely sure that his side is the right one, and I just need to get over my own opinion. So I shut up and back off--but this doesn't mean that I'm not still angry.
It just means I'm constantly angry, like a pot with the lid on, and the water simmering but never going anwhere.
Day after day, I let people argue me into submission. I let people dictate my opinions and reactions to things, because I hate confrontation, because I'd rather avoid raised voices and sitting at home at the end of a long day, fully aware that so-and-so is angry with me. Because I want, more than anything else, to be liked. Even more absurd, I want to be liked even by people I don't like.
So coworkers tell me how to do my job, even after two years, and instead of smiling and letting them know--as kindly as possible, of course--that I've got it under control, I apologize and conform. Strangers on the metro or in line at the grocery store shove and glower, despite all my best efforts to stay out of their way, despite my (I hope) friendly smiles. Hardest of all are the people I do know. I have recently discovered that I cannot be everyone's friend. Nor do I wish to be. In fact, there are certain people I would love to "show the door" in my life in a very concrete way, but I'm afraid to do so. Why? Because those people would dislike me, and I don't know if I could stand that.
I've ran smack up against the real world, and I'm learning that here you have to fight for your place, or you'll get bowled over. And I don't mean this in a "survival of the fittest" sort of way, either. I just mean that you truly have to be vigiliant and firm, or you run the risk of losing your foothold in your own life. You have to work, day after day, to carve out a space for yourself in your own life. Otherwise you run the risk of letting everyone around you dictate your activities, your schedule, and your opinions--even (and most insidiously) your opinions about yourself.
Maybe I'm still an okay person, even if so-and-so is mad at me.
Maybe it's more honest to quietly excuse people from my life than to allow this anger to simmer against them day after day, until I can't say a kind word or think a kind thought about them, and my every word to them is a veiled insult or a snide comment.
And maybe, when it comes right down to it, the most important thing really is to be true to yourself. Without forgetting others and their needs, without threatening the space to which others cling so tenuously in their own lives, without breaking the prescriptions of Christian charity, maybe the old cliche has it right. Because, in the end, if you can't be true to yourself--who can you be true to?
Yes, anger. That gut-boiling, rousing, unavoidable (if you're living in this city, anyway) emotion. I remember as a kid I used to get angry all the time. My siblings made me angry. Banging my toe or my elbow against hard objects made me angry. Bullies made me angry, especially when they made my sisters cry. I responded to these situations with indignation, with raised voice and that funny adrenaline rush that starts in the pit of your stomach. I felt, in all these situations, that I had the right to be angry, and so I threw myself into the emotion whole-heartedly, arms swinging, ready to stand by my conviction of rectitude or die in the fight.
And then I got to adolescence and the early, painful lessons of sociability and not always being justified in your anger. I learned that there are, indeed, two sides to every argument, and it's not always the case that one side is 100% right while the other is 100% wrong. In fact, that's almost never the case. So I started to question, and eventually to swallow, my anger, because I realized it wasn't always as just as I liked to suppose. By the time I graduated from college, I was a full-blown pacifist. Now, as a young professional, I'll give up almost any argument for the sake of maintaining peace and avoiding raised voices. I'm never confident that my position is 100% right. And as soon as the other person presents an argument with even the slightest bit of relavance, my confidence level drops and drops, until I'm almost completely sure that his side is the right one, and I just need to get over my own opinion. So I shut up and back off--but this doesn't mean that I'm not still angry.
It just means I'm constantly angry, like a pot with the lid on, and the water simmering but never going anwhere.
Day after day, I let people argue me into submission. I let people dictate my opinions and reactions to things, because I hate confrontation, because I'd rather avoid raised voices and sitting at home at the end of a long day, fully aware that so-and-so is angry with me. Because I want, more than anything else, to be liked. Even more absurd, I want to be liked even by people I don't like.
So coworkers tell me how to do my job, even after two years, and instead of smiling and letting them know--as kindly as possible, of course--that I've got it under control, I apologize and conform. Strangers on the metro or in line at the grocery store shove and glower, despite all my best efforts to stay out of their way, despite my (I hope) friendly smiles. Hardest of all are the people I do know. I have recently discovered that I cannot be everyone's friend. Nor do I wish to be. In fact, there are certain people I would love to "show the door" in my life in a very concrete way, but I'm afraid to do so. Why? Because those people would dislike me, and I don't know if I could stand that.
I've ran smack up against the real world, and I'm learning that here you have to fight for your place, or you'll get bowled over. And I don't mean this in a "survival of the fittest" sort of way, either. I just mean that you truly have to be vigiliant and firm, or you run the risk of losing your foothold in your own life. You have to work, day after day, to carve out a space for yourself in your own life. Otherwise you run the risk of letting everyone around you dictate your activities, your schedule, and your opinions--even (and most insidiously) your opinions about yourself.
Maybe I'm still an okay person, even if so-and-so is mad at me.
Maybe it's more honest to quietly excuse people from my life than to allow this anger to simmer against them day after day, until I can't say a kind word or think a kind thought about them, and my every word to them is a veiled insult or a snide comment.
And maybe, when it comes right down to it, the most important thing really is to be true to yourself. Without forgetting others and their needs, without threatening the space to which others cling so tenuously in their own lives, without breaking the prescriptions of Christian charity, maybe the old cliche has it right. Because, in the end, if you can't be true to yourself--who can you be true to?
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