be teachable.i think that is the one key thing that will really keep you going on in life. even if you lose your passion, as long as you remain teachable and be open to foreign, curious, unknown ideas, you will find joy.
oh dear, it seems that we've started at the end. let's get back to the beginning, shall we?
*rewind*
these 'note to self' posts are very much self-realizations and journeys on my personal development, so here i am, talking about this stuff. mostly about how i perceive.
this one's about people and relationships.
i've been told recently by a friend of mine to be more 'polite' in relationships because it reduces friction between people. i guess i've never seen it that way before, as i've always been a firm believer of hard and painful honesty; shortening the pain was the way to go and i wanted to remain entirely as my straightforward self. being 'polite' was/is definitely not second nature. it was probably... the hundredth nature. nonetheless, it brought me to a realization of how i've stopped being gentle with people, simply because i think they'd be okay with harsh comments just as i would. and i've stopped seeing my comments as harsh too, only honest. brutally honest, but certainly not harsh. (oh, don't our rationalities almost always get warped along the way?)
in short, i've become someone with a somewhat abrasive personality.
i suppose i haven't noticed that very successfully, since the personality i've publicized myself to be in the virtual reality is not only someone who wants to be honest inside-out about life, but also someone who strives to encourage and inspire others with her writing and art. i've been perceiving myself to be that encouraging person online, but i may not have been the entirely same person in real life.
my sarcasm shows very apparently in reality. i now have a gut feeling that this sarcastic personality of mine surfaced as a self-defense mechanism, so that i can lead people to think that i have a strong personality, countering the weak and low-esteem self whom i was just several years back. don't get me wrong, i am a much more confident person today than i was half a decade ago, but i think there will always be remnants of our old selves in us, having transformed themselves into something seemingly more useful or presentable or acceptable to us, the spirit, who perceives.
(i'm not sure either; i'm figuring all of this out as i write this too.)
i know this for sure, though: my sarcasm has a tendency to be that part of my personality that strives to impress. you know what i'm talking about. we all have that little part of us that has always been a bit too exuberant, too fancy, too beautiful, too strong, too bright--the part of us that we half-make-up so that we can seem like a bunch of more socially acceptable people. i'm pretty sure i have other Impressive Qualities as well, but sarcasm is definitely one of them. i don my sarcastic self to feel 'cool'.
on the other hand, i'm impulsive. especially when i speak. i don't think a lot when i talk (unlike when i write), so a lot of my words can sometimes be made up to sound cool, jumbled up because i lose the structure along the way, or even just plain nonsense for feeling nervous around people.
hence, all of this adds up to a somewhat abrasive personality.
so, back to being polite.
i'll try! i legitimately will. because i've come to realize also, that although i love to be my own one hundred percent self to everyone else, not everyone will come to love my one hundred percent self immediately when i present myself to them. sometimes it's not just because they don't like my personality, sometimes it could just be because i may be too overwhelming for them. or they're simply easily-overwhelmed people. or they've never met anyone like me in their lives before, and getting the full-blown one hundred percent Me is a major surprise and mess-up to their routine lives. i don't know. the thing is, every person is different, and every person receives and gives information differently.
note to self: just tone down. it won't hurt.
if the person does not even like the tone down version of you, then so be it.
moral of the story: be teachable. i didn't like the fact that my friend implied that i was not a polite person, but i knew getting angry over such a petty matter would contribute nothing positive to the situation at all. so i collected my thoughts, listened, and analyzed his thoughts. i took time to chew on it.
i've learned that people generally like it when other people listen to them. we all love it. so when someone gives you advice about life, even if this person may be 10 years younger or a divorcee or a known douchebag or a really old guy who's infamous for bad advice-giving, take it with a pinch of salt. take it with humility. be teachable. you may not want to live out all of their life advices, but take it anyways, knowing that these are true tales they are telling you; they're all experiences of their hearts, so take heart, and be humble.
1 comment:
This is obvsly a very personal and specific experience to you, but just wanted to say that I relate very much to the use of sarcasm-as-shield. My sense of humour used to be very cutting and mean, born out of some twisted combination of both low self-confidence and a feeling of superiority over my peers. It was more important to me that other people laughed and admired ME for being so witty and sharp and ~edgy~.
I don't know when exactly I grew out of it, or even one moment where I made a conscious decision to stop, but someone once pointed out to me that they liked my sense of humour and that they were never afraid of what I was going to say because it would never be degrading or hurtful. And that kind of made me pause, because while I was glad I had changed in some way it also never occurred to me that people would have once been AFRAID of my then-teenage tongue or dreading what flippant comment I would make next, because back then being perceived as funny/sarcastic was more important to me than being kind. That the "brutal honesty" I subscribed to wasn't cool or authentic, it was just me being an asshole because I felt I was entitled to it (because I thought I was smarter? More enlightened? That other people would benefit from what I said regardless of how mean?). Etc etc.
But anyway yeah that was the point of conscious change, I think. That you can be kind and funny. That you can be kind and honest. That you can be kind and educational. That you can be kind and intelligent. That how kind you feel towards others shouldn't be measured on how you feel about yourself.
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