Proverbs 22, Verse 1
"If you must choose, take a good name rather than great riches;
for to be held in loving esteem is better than silver and gold."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
I'm learning to accept that I'm a man of extremes.
And it's rather annoying, because I don't often practice what I preach. (Who does, right? Certainly not preachers.) When I advise others, it's often with words and tone and timbre that stink of conciliation, smoothing things over, reasoning, rationality, compromise. When talking to others about their problems and their conflict, I'm much more comfortable steering others towards that middle ground. I like the middle ground-- for others, it's fine-- it's soft and grassy, cool and clean. You can walk upon it barefoot or shod only in socks, and you'll be okay. Sure, there might be a pebble or two, but they're small and round. You won't get a blister walking along a path on the middle ground.
In my own life, though, I'd lose my way blindly crashing around through thorny bush and terror tree such that, if I ever tried to find the middle ground, I'd probably die trying to get there. And it'd be ugly. I'm either here, or quite a far ways over there. There's nobody that I tolerate, accept, who's just, you know: there. I either love you, or I'd sooner take a shit in your mailbox and kick you in the throat.
That's, well, that's me. Mister Prince Charming. Got me LOTS of dates in high school.
My extremes are often in conflict with one another. They don't make sense. For instance, take the opinions of others. Now, you'd think that someone who so rigidly categorizes people would have a pretty easy time dismissing the opinions of the mail-box-shit, throat-kick crew, and focus solely on the thoughts and feelings of the people whom I love, but you'd be wrong. I vacillate between not giving a shit what anybody thinks about anything I say or do or think or wear or eat, to being wildly obsessed with it. If I know that somebody is angry with me, or doesn't like me, well, that's pretty much all consuming for me.
I can't help it. Of course, neither can preachers, apparently.
And I'm not quite sure why it's this way with me. I was never taught to conform by my parents, never instructed to do this or that, hold my knife this way, comb my hair that way so that others wouldn't think I was a freak/gay/retarded/untoward/pro-simian/incompetent/priggish/equine. They let me do whatever I wanted and, I suppose, if there were some negative social repercussions, they expected that I would deal with it/them. If I had some bright idea to dress up like a nun with my friend and run around our elementary school's track while my father video-taped it, he was right there with the camera, no questions asked. Though, looking back on it, I'm not sure he'd know which questions to ask.
About... that.
And I wonder, sometimes, who I'd be if I were a little bit less concerned with the thoughts and feelings of others. While my parents never taught me to give that much thought, I, evidently, somehow, taught myself. I developed some idea that, if I was #1, that this was somehow bad, sinful, arrogant, unkind. Un-Christian. Yes, I worry about being un-Christian. Is that wrong? William Blake said, "The most sublime act is to put another before you." And maybe I bought into that a little too much. Maybe just hook and line would have been enough.
Because, sometimes, I feel like I'm a sinker. Dipping below the surface of others' stares and thoughts and perceptions and my perceptions of their perceptions and the hairs on the back of my neck responding to their potential looks of disdain.
I don't know.
It's exhausting. So, of course, is anxiety, and insecurity feels a lot like anxiety, and it's a component thereof many times. "What are they thinking about me? Did what I say come off like I think it did?" "Did I forget to zip up my fly?" "Did I forget to put my penis back in my pants?" "Does this open fly make my penis look fat?" You know how it is. There's a lot going on in this little hamster wheel upstairs.
And, as you know, it's a very un-Christian hamster wheel.
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