i didn't have as much time as i would've liked before, so i'm doing a part 2 on change.
the reason i even decided to post about it was because i have been looking really hard at myself. i found it discouraging that a lot of people have said that people just don't change. i knew deep down inside that i had changed. a lot. but i also know that there are a lot of things i still want to change about myself. i have taken some long hard looks inside and i come up split down the middle. there are parts of me i would never ever change. but then there are those other parts. those darker parts. the ones we don't often like to talk about.
here is my list of not so pretty parts:
i can be petty
i am not always kind
i can be selfish
i judge others too harshly
i am way too defensive sometimes
i am uptight
i think the fact that there are words in there like "can be" and "sometimes" and "not always" is telling. i know that i am not these things all the time. and so i guess that would make me what? normal? is everyone like that?
anyway, thinking like this is what kept me up late at night and i just wanted to put the words out there. have a conversation. and that is exactly what happened. and it opened my eyes in a few different ways. a few thought provoking comments and emails later and i'm able to better define my struggle. at least in my head. putting words here, well...that's another story.
so i'm working on these little pieces of my personality. i think it will at least help me to chill out a little bit. i do think people can and do change all sorts of things about themselves if they choose to do so. but i'm still left wondering about the personality part. is that possible? can we do anything about our core personalities? or are we stuck with ourselves, as is, no refunds or exchanges?Share
Saturday, February 23, 2008
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1 comment:
another thought I was having on this, mostly about the definitions part, is that these are things I see as CHOICES, not ways of being. It is a choice each and every time, thus the sometimes, often, etc. qualifiers. People can and do make different choices, and if they can stick with the same choices long enough (like not smoking for me) then you that choice becomes easy and thus habitual (like me now being thoroughly a non-smoker -- I never even think about it -- except interestingly sometimes I smoke in my dreams and I always wake up freaked out by it, thinking I have to quit all over again which I DO NOT want to do because it was HARD!).
But changing from a non-smoker to a smoker to a non-smoker is not a change of who I fundamentally AM.
Also, while I might think we don't change who it is we fundamentally are, our range of how to express ourselves if pretty wide. I am fundamentally paranoid BUT I can choose to listen to that more or less. Etc.
Anyway . . .
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