Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

I sit here thinking of the painful place I am in and how I feel myself about to sink into a deep pool of pity, but I don’t want to. No. I do not want to wallow. I resist the pull of the quicksand of pity—I will pull myself out before I sink in. I am more than this circumstance that has morphed into my life. This does not define me; this has not redefined me, well, not wholly. And I want to channel Scarlett O’Hara: I don’t want to think about that today. But there is no way around what has become a foundation stone, for better or worse.

So I sit here pushing my thoughts away from pity and into the path of pith. And as I ponder, it occurs to me that rather than a separation of body and soul that we have grown up being aware of, perhaps there is a different dichotomy, perhaps it is a multi-tomy or even a uni-tomy. There is not the internal life and the external world. There is not the desire and the reality. There is not the present and the future, or the past and the present, or the past and the future. There is not the perception and the reality. No. It is not even thoughts and actions. I can enunciate what the division of self is not, but what it is doesn’t come as easily. What is a self? What defines who I am? Is it who I want to be rather than who I think I am?

Can I negate my circumstance (all of the things that I don’t identify with because they hurt too much and actually deny who I am—who I should be) and focus instead on that which I acknowledge, of which I might be proud. (Would that be a more spiritual—not religious—interpretation of self?) Why not? Why can’t I consider myself as those qualities and capacities of which I am proud, which I would proudly acknowledge in a self-survey, and let the rest wither in estimation. Why do I have to resort to seeing myself as encompassing the good and the bad; does that really help me? And what does it mean to help oneself? If all of the introspection we do is to help ourselves, guide ourselves to making better decisions, acting kinder in tough situations, being satisfied, even pleased, with ourselves then why not just focus on the glow and not the glower?

Instead of pondering where I have fallen short, why not mull over deeds well-delivered? Wouldn’t making myself feel good at the end of the day be better for me (and those around me) tomorrow than festering over scabs that have been picked at? Instead of endlessly poking around slights, I could spend my talk and think time on how I lived up to self-estimation, and how I can even raise the bar.

There is a man at work who stops by my room every day to see me smile. He doesn’t always ask how my day is, and I don’t always want to talk, but his searching out the positive in me, my knowing that someone expects that of me, is what I am probing here. Often I feel better after my smile and nod of thank you than I do after a discussion with a colleague or friend or even my mother because so often our conversations flow to what was not good, what was upsetting, what went wrong with our day. And even after an outpouring of angst and an in-pouring of empathy I don’t feel better, I feel drained—and that is an empty feeling, not a full one, not a fulfilling one.

Maybe it’s me and that is the way I have directed my conversations with people, and if so, I need to stop that. I need to focus on the moments that enable me to smile at least once a day (five days a week). And if it’s other people, then I need to direct our attention to those moments in their day that would bring out their smile if they had a smile-man.

Yes. It’s already working. I have spent a few hours thinking about how to make myself feel better and not how the world is punishing me or how a man can be smaller than a mite and I do feel good. (Or is that the beer and the black and whites?) Perception, maybe that is the key, and the key within that would be to put blinders on to the bad and ugly.

In class, when a student answers a question, or has an insight, or even if s/he reads a passage aloud, I generally say “excellent” in acknowledgement which is surely a bigger pat on the back than the situation deserves, but it feels darn good to say it, and, I hope, to have it said to oneself. And to others I generally comment on how good something they did is, or how good they look. So this looking on the bright side of things is not new to me, is not an alien concept, it is something that came from me—to others—naturally.

Now I need to embrace that positivity for myself. I need to embrace it with the intensity with which I generally analyze the failings of ex man and the glowerings of older daughter. Even if this doesn’t turn into a lifelong conversion, I could really use a break from visiting the dark side for a while. I need a break from that because, really, what is new? Maybe only this intense exhaustion which could use a smile a lot more than it could use commiseration.