We are all of us, at one time or another, full of crap. I have a friend who sometimes says "I call bullsh*t" whenever he hears someone wading through their own crap. I like this expression because it makes him sound like a referee of life as in "I'm calling a foul", only funnier. Just as we are all intermittently full of crap, we all want to believe that we are never, ever so--that we are all truly authentic individuals who never needs to sell a load of scat to our fellow human beings. I think we would all be better for the act of calling our own bullsh*t from time to time. Here, I'll start. The subtitle of this blog is "Don't call me cute". While it is legitimately annoying to be referred to as an adjective better suited to puppies and toddlers in one's third (nearly) decade of life, this has never stopped me from utilizing my aforementioned and much maligned preciousness to get out of trouble. For instance: said with big innocent eyes, "I don't know, sir, I am just sure that I sent that paperwork for Defensive Driving in" or with mock concern, "No, I would never tell an irate customer at the bank drive through to go screw himself" (I used slightly more colorful language, actually, but you get the general idea). Actually, I did and I never sent that paperwork, either. But I was more than happy to let the cuteness that accompanies extremely small stature work to my advantage. So there, I have on many occassions been utterly full of it.
In all seriousness (did I really just say that?) there is much to be learned from the gap between the person we project ourselves to be and the person we really are. By confronting our own myriad little acts of dishonesty, we can learn to reconcile who we are with who we want to be. Some of us have farther to go to close this gap than others but the first step is turning around to stare at that dark expanse. It can even be amusing to confront your own absurdity, as long as you don't take yourself too seriously.
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We are all full of it…in fact we are so full of crap we over fertilized the planet and now it and the rest of its inhabitants are becoming extinct.
ReplyDeleteLife is an act, in which we have facades to deal with certain situations, never knowing our true selves we are so caught up in our act.
The problem is, I think, most people tend to want the façade and not the true self, to know someone as real is to break a person’s grasp on their own realities.
How do we break into truth and not facades? I do yoga and Zazen, which you have noticed, but after a day at work sometimes Zazen and yoga fails to do the trick.
Hence, I am drinking a Coors Light (Their spelling not mine I looked on the can…trying to go cheaper these days…that is their reality), going through blogs I read, because I wish to numb my mind so that I do not have to think of other people’s realities. (Yet I am reading blogs how weird)
We are so full of it that many people have a permanent look of constipation on their faces. Some times even after an hour of yoga I have that look on my face after dealing with other people’s realities. Can we be our selves? Too many people say that is weird. I prefer eccentric.
Oh and by the way, a blog tends to wipe the crap off because of the anonymity bit yet we are not really anonymous on line. That is why I never talk about work. ;-)
I am wondering how wide my gap is!?
ReplyDeleteWhenever I complement my mother, she perks up and says "And I'm cute, too." Which makes it funny to listen to you rail against this C-word. For us, cute is not a comment on stature; it's more a recognition that we are not beautiful women, and we are certainly not ugly.
ReplyDeleteI will, however, have to start using the phrase bovine scatology whenever possible. Or maybe bovine coprolite.