Bemoan, and Bemoan, and Bemoan

I think my main criticism of other people's complaining comes down to the words. People are too generally superlative and hyperbolic in their emotionality. I, too, make this mistake, and wish I were more able to think logically when I am distressed.
The most distressing things (to me) to hear others complain about are their weight, their employment, or their dating life. I can beat most people I meet for misery in all three categories, and yet I have to listen to them and wonder about what they must think of me.

Do we really think that our misfortunes are the worst, or do we only talk as if they were? Do we honestly believe that our situation is to the point where no one who has ever been here before has come out of them?

I have been in an ongoing argument with several people, but mainly my father, about the pointlessness of hope, but I think what I really need to embrace the concept is an alternate definition. I don't think hope, in the common sense, is anything more than being able to imagine the positive. It all comes down to imagination. I have plenty of that.

Even when I don't think it's likely, or even possible, I can still imagine it, and anything I can imagine God can create.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joy in the Ugly Process

Image
 Today I sat on a panel of colleagues at a "Meet the Professor" activity hosted by the English student committee. It was awesome! Such bright and interested English majors. Meanwhile, I was sitting there, a middle-aged woman, on a panel of people who had "arrived." They had reached their destination. Each of them took a moment and explained how they had succeeded, how they had found acceptance. Even those who had detoured through other paths before they got what they wanted described those detours as some kind of success: some successfully raised families, some had other jobs, etc. Some were convinced that it was because of a particular habit or capability. For several minutes, I just sat there feeling horrible, right in the middle of this impressive panel. I should have stayed silent. Blerg. I can't stay silent. I'm not that wise. So I added my two cents: I explained that I would tell them something the others would not: that sometimes you don't arrive,...
Read more

High and Low Horses

 I have not blogged in a LONG TIME and I'm so rusty.  Politics these days, amirite? My little brother pissed me off a few weeks ago in the throes of a political kerfuffle (not reasoned enough to be an argument by either definition). He accused me of posing - I don't remember exactly what he called it, but it was something like "virtue signaling." And very, very rapidly, I was trapped. I could not even attempt to do the right thing without knowing that I was doing exactly what he had just sneered at. I suppose I could go back and carefully analyze the rhetoric of the conversation and delicately unravel exactly what was happening. I am capable of that kind of analysis, but this is a blog, not a school paper, and I'm more interested in the abstractions at play. I'm always more interested in the abstractions. Let's imagine that you have a stick figure in a two-dimensional world. I'd draw it and upload it for you, but somebody stole my reMarkable. Stick fig...
Read more

The Guilt-Edged Life

Folk philosophers and self-help "experts" (seriously: what kind of person claims to be an expert in living somebody else's life!? I mean, BESIDES me) have hypothesized about the negative emotions that we struggle with when we become painfully aware of our own flawed natures. In my own experience, I can identify three, and this year, I'm going to deal with each of them differently than I have before. 1) Shame. Shame is that mortification and humiliation I feel when I see my flaws through somebody else's eyes: a symptom of valuing their opinion above its worth. I want to learn how to put negative feedback - verbal and nonverbal - into context, subordinate to what I know is true about me, the world, and God. And I want to distinguish between my actions and my identity. I can be mistaken, but I am NOT a mistake. I am Batman, but that doesn't mean I accept all the pop-philosophy of the Christopher Nolan films. 2) Guilt. Guilt is the puritanical conviction that I ha...
Read more