Mixed Messages
3/14/06
Why is it so hard to say what we mean and mean what we say? Why do we fear honesty and truely communicating what we're about? Is it because we often really don' t know? Do we project one message while articulating another from ambivalence, a bi-cameral brain, lack of conviction, habit, fear of being rejected? How often do we put on our masks and forget to take them off even when looking in the mirror?
How about genital rejeuvenating surgery, the latest rage in LA? Here's something that only you and your parnter(s) will ever know, yet women who have their various female parts re-structured claim to feel better about themselves once nipped and tucked to look like a porn star even though their spouses or whomever could care less. When you have a face lift, or a boob job, you present a different facade to the world and to yourself: "I am different in your eyes and my own than the way I feel." What about those couples who have been married for 50 years and still see their high school sweetheart when they look at their loved ones? What gift of altered vision do they have that the insecure body conscious socialite does not? And the recently reported case of a woman driven to sleep-eating by her new sleep remedy, Ambien, in complete denial that the candy wrappers by her bed, Doritos in her sheets and popsicle sticks in teh kitchen were hers, until she had gained 100 lbs? How could she not see her own truth? The 60-ish woman I see at the Y with her perfect silicone breasts, yet gnarled feet and sagging skin on an otherwise well tended body? What/who does she see in the mirror?
We must want to believe conflicting ideas at the same time to be able to hold such opposite feelings simultaneously. To say "I love you" while neglecting to nurture; to project self-confidence while secretely cutting yourself; to keep saying goodbye..."no this time I really mean it!" reveals shadows at war within. How can we declare a truce? Do we need to? Must one side win at the expense of the other? Does ambivalence protect us from diving into life and the risk of major injury or, wonder of wonders, a re-birth, frightening as that might be? Or does it allow us to honor divergent instincts and maintain some kind of integrity in a culture that mandates one must be a this or a that.
There is a wonderful clarity in the air when you feel the sureness of your self, no matter what odd and opposite components you discover. The trick is to recognize them, test them well, keep those that feel right and cast aside anything that comes with a pre-fix beginning with "should."
"Convictions are the greater enemy of truth than lies." Examine them, hold them up to the light of day and then the cool cast of night and somewhere, like the gold that settles to the bottom of a river bed, we'll find our gems of truth. Fish them out, whether the water flow is smooth or rough. Guard them in your heart. And then, maybe, we can speak what we really know, the clouds will pass and we can put some plastic surgeons out of business.
Why is it so hard to say what we mean and mean what we say? Why do we fear honesty and truely communicating what we're about? Is it because we often really don' t know? Do we project one message while articulating another from ambivalence, a bi-cameral brain, lack of conviction, habit, fear of being rejected? How often do we put on our masks and forget to take them off even when looking in the mirror?
How about genital rejeuvenating surgery, the latest rage in LA? Here's something that only you and your parnter(s) will ever know, yet women who have their various female parts re-structured claim to feel better about themselves once nipped and tucked to look like a porn star even though their spouses or whomever could care less. When you have a face lift, or a boob job, you present a different facade to the world and to yourself: "I am different in your eyes and my own than the way I feel." What about those couples who have been married for 50 years and still see their high school sweetheart when they look at their loved ones? What gift of altered vision do they have that the insecure body conscious socialite does not? And the recently reported case of a woman driven to sleep-eating by her new sleep remedy, Ambien, in complete denial that the candy wrappers by her bed, Doritos in her sheets and popsicle sticks in teh kitchen were hers, until she had gained 100 lbs? How could she not see her own truth? The 60-ish woman I see at the Y with her perfect silicone breasts, yet gnarled feet and sagging skin on an otherwise well tended body? What/who does she see in the mirror?
We must want to believe conflicting ideas at the same time to be able to hold such opposite feelings simultaneously. To say "I love you" while neglecting to nurture; to project self-confidence while secretely cutting yourself; to keep saying goodbye..."no this time I really mean it!" reveals shadows at war within. How can we declare a truce? Do we need to? Must one side win at the expense of the other? Does ambivalence protect us from diving into life and the risk of major injury or, wonder of wonders, a re-birth, frightening as that might be? Or does it allow us to honor divergent instincts and maintain some kind of integrity in a culture that mandates one must be a this or a that.
There is a wonderful clarity in the air when you feel the sureness of your self, no matter what odd and opposite components you discover. The trick is to recognize them, test them well, keep those that feel right and cast aside anything that comes with a pre-fix beginning with "should."
"Convictions are the greater enemy of truth than lies." Examine them, hold them up to the light of day and then the cool cast of night and somewhere, like the gold that settles to the bottom of a river bed, we'll find our gems of truth. Fish them out, whether the water flow is smooth or rough. Guard them in your heart. And then, maybe, we can speak what we really know, the clouds will pass and we can put some plastic surgeons out of business.
posted by Barbery at 8:23 PM
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