Jettisonning ol' bags
Not sadness but relief...finally to stop his wagging tongue of negativity...
I have been warned in my first year of grad school to cut ties with people in love with their negativity, even long-standing friends who don't realize their constant bitterness and unhappiness about the state of the world, who find the injustice, speak well of it, but does nothing to change it, if only to further justify their victimization by the harsh system. Deep inside, there is self-aggrandisement in this constant bickering, as if to say, look I am better than this and therefore I am not going to play--this goes in all areas: work, art, love, friendships...the list is long, as variegated as life itself. We all go through our moments of disillusionment, but at some point, you pick up and attempt to salvage remnants of optimism that once allowed you to create beauty in a world constantly riddled by unkindness. This is the cycle of recovery; along the way, you hope friends, negative or not, will stick by you, accepting only that for better or worse, you are nothing but an evolving human-being. These people are few and far between. For one, the end of line has been reached.
Fact is, the world is as treacherous or as kind as we wish to see it. A common vision of it links us to the persons we hold close. The question is, what happens when one or the other ventures far from the common ground and lands at a different vantage point? Description is a piss-poor second to experience. We connect mostly based on the common path we tread and our same knowledge stops the other from needing to finish a sentence. A nod suffices and in that we find relief. Now, once we no longer feel the pain or elation of our friends, something vital has broken. This nod comes rarer in the conversations and in its place slithers judgment. You cannot really know what something is like until you have had it happen to you. Simple? Yet true. This is the rupture that a kind word would have bridged.
The trouble is, when the other fails to understand, he becomes excluded in the other person's experience. "Oh, wait, she's talking, I don't understand it, so, it's no longer about us...what about ME! Don't I have a say in this?"
ANSWER: NO! Apparently not! Point is, it isn't about the listener anymore, so he cuts off and feels offended at his lack of voice, at his inability to be heard through the other's pain. So, the inexperienced gets left in the peanut gallery and has no other role to play but that of the abstract critic, staking a claim, feeling entitled to spew out his opinions, which are mostly uninvited, while justifying this transgression as an act of friendship, a way, as it were, to save his friend from herself. Truth is, this unsolicited "advice-giving" is never for the sake of the other; rather it serves as a self-protective act, the most pernicious form of egotism. This is the luxury of those who yell from the gallery...most of the time you can detect the bitterness and ignorance. Most of the time, they are the ones who know the least about the experience they choose to plunder with comments. It speaks volumes when people come to such an impasse. As all things cycle in and out, so do people.
I've seen it over the years, a certain toxicity in this bag.
I have been warned in my first year of grad school to cut ties with people in love with their negativity, even long-standing friends who don't realize their constant bitterness and unhappiness about the state of the world, who find the injustice, speak well of it, but does nothing to change it, if only to further justify their victimization by the harsh system. Deep inside, there is self-aggrandisement in this constant bickering, as if to say, look I am better than this and therefore I am not going to play--this goes in all areas: work, art, love, friendships...the list is long, as variegated as life itself. We all go through our moments of disillusionment, but at some point, you pick up and attempt to salvage remnants of optimism that once allowed you to create beauty in a world constantly riddled by unkindness. This is the cycle of recovery; along the way, you hope friends, negative or not, will stick by you, accepting only that for better or worse, you are nothing but an evolving human-being. These people are few and far between. For one, the end of line has been reached.
Fact is, the world is as treacherous or as kind as we wish to see it. A common vision of it links us to the persons we hold close. The question is, what happens when one or the other ventures far from the common ground and lands at a different vantage point? Description is a piss-poor second to experience. We connect mostly based on the common path we tread and our same knowledge stops the other from needing to finish a sentence. A nod suffices and in that we find relief. Now, once we no longer feel the pain or elation of our friends, something vital has broken. This nod comes rarer in the conversations and in its place slithers judgment. You cannot really know what something is like until you have had it happen to you. Simple? Yet true. This is the rupture that a kind word would have bridged.
The trouble is, when the other fails to understand, he becomes excluded in the other person's experience. "Oh, wait, she's talking, I don't understand it, so, it's no longer about us...what about ME! Don't I have a say in this?"
ANSWER: NO! Apparently not! Point is, it isn't about the listener anymore, so he cuts off and feels offended at his lack of voice, at his inability to be heard through the other's pain. So, the inexperienced gets left in the peanut gallery and has no other role to play but that of the abstract critic, staking a claim, feeling entitled to spew out his opinions, which are mostly uninvited, while justifying this transgression as an act of friendship, a way, as it were, to save his friend from herself. Truth is, this unsolicited "advice-giving" is never for the sake of the other; rather it serves as a self-protective act, the most pernicious form of egotism. This is the luxury of those who yell from the gallery...most of the time you can detect the bitterness and ignorance. Most of the time, they are the ones who know the least about the experience they choose to plunder with comments. It speaks volumes when people come to such an impasse. As all things cycle in and out, so do people.
I've seen it over the years, a certain toxicity in this bag.
posted by rocelyn at 9:11 AM
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