This is gonna be scattered, rambling. And repetitive, because a buncha peeps are doing this, but I had a lot I wanted to say.
Some people find others "mean", and they post about the way it impacts them. Maybe they hope it will effect a change.
Some people believe that posting about how perceived meanness affects you is whiny and self-serving and deserving of scorn, especially if the posting person has themselves been mean.
Some people believe that life dishes you what it dishes you, and there are ways to deal with it, and they provide their own recipes for success in a world fraught with hurt feelings.
I'm leaving out vast groups of "some people" because I haven't got all day.
My view is ... maybe not simple. It's this: life can be mean. We're going to react to things we don't care for, sometimes by crying in hurt, and sometimes by lashing out. We're gonna be passionate about topics, and get emotionally invested in them and feel hurt when they are challenged and then lash out, garnering a counter-reaction. We're going to misconstrue light-hearted banter for insult. And on, and on.
A while back Looney posted about his father, psychically wounded, causing misery around him. Following that up with her own thoughts about the brokenness of human beings was Arleen.
The fact is that no one knows how we each can cope with things. No one really can say for certain that there isn't some special pain going on in a person's life. And what works for thee may not work for she, and maybe some of it will work for me, but what about he?
That said, I believe this: we are each responsible for our own hurts. We really are. Whether it's our brain chemistry, or simply that we don't know better, or just plain childishness, we more or less *choose*, albeit not consciously, how to react to any given situation. I may see a spider walking across the floor and react with disgust and fear. Looney may see it and want to study it. Sour Grapes would want to pull its legs off, and Paula would be envious because the spider would get to wear four pairs of shoes at once! PJ would probably want to make up a recipe for a nice sauce to go with braised spider.
If we were perfect, we'd learn how to change our reactions -- and we often do change, without awareness, to suit a new situation. But we aren't perfect. Arleen's and Looney's posts tell us about that. It may take herculean effort, or magic pills, to enable us to change, to overcome.
But, in the end, we are responsible. We take the heat for our behaviors. We live with the consequences, even though it may seem horribly unfair. And we're held accountable for past behaviors -- unfair as that is, people have colored their view of us based on how we've acted in the past. They can't help it. It's ingrained in our survival.
I don't have an answer. I can't neatly summarize and tell everyone to just buck up, move on, and deal with it. You have to choose how to handle the events in your life. You'll end up living with the consequences whether you want to, or not.
Good post, Gekko. I took some and left some.
Thanks.
:o)>
I was wondering when you were going to make a poastie on this subject, Geks! We all have our ways of dealing with shit, it's true. Not really my place to tell you how and v-v. Though it is human nature to make judgments. "He's too mean. She's too sensitive." Etc. For me, I may ignore someone I perceive as a one-time annoyance, but for someone in the "circle," it works better for me to punch back when swatted. That's just my way. So when some dumb wench called me ignorant, I walloped her and she's still whining about it. Very satisfying.
And I'm just gonna say it straight up cuz I know Mark will read this and I don't feel welcome to leave a comment on his blog. Don't take swipes at me, including through third parties as you did at Lucy's, and I will leave you alone as I was doing in January/February. If you swipe at me, I will hit you back harder. That is all.
And I'm just gonna say straight up that you are in fact, mistaken, Paula, and that is all. This is the first and last time I will address you directly or indirectly, anywhere, as has been m,y custom since you stated a desire to move on, a desire I have respected entirely, including not visiting your blog six times a day.
Namaste.
There are mean-zones and not-mean zones in life, the trick is to stay in the not-mean zones. It's similar to a minefield, if you have a map of where the mines are you can walk elsewhere. If you don't have a map but you have a metal-detector, you can walk elsewhere. If you get your leg blown off enough time (hey, even lizards can regrow at least tails) in the emotional sense, you can develop a "feel" for where to walk. It's a thing that applies to more than meanness. No shit.
But if you feel more comfortable shrugging footwear off as a preachey fuck who knows squat, that's okay too. Your life is yours to live, there's always an uncle-somebody wanting to tell you how to do it, I say fuck'em all including shooz.
Mark, you are wrong. Anyone can go to Lucy's and see that you took a shot at me through Jeff on the "To serve and protect" thread. And as long as your site is public, I'll visit it whenever I please. I discover interesting tidbits there, such as the fact that you and the dumb wench have no email ethics. If you want "namaste" from me, start giving it.
Wonderful, insightful post, gek. It's all stuff I always believed, but needed to hear it from you at this point in time. Everything happens for a reason, right? And yes we *are* ultimately responsible for our own happiness. And no, I'm not talking about blogs.
Smoochies.
Except in intimate relationships, people *choose* whether or not to be hurt, and for the most part that choice is narcissistic. Certainly, people can also choose whether or not to try to be hurtful, but that is a separate issue.
For me, this is a professional issue. I spend tens of hours a month being the target of "hurtful" attacks. When I'm on the witness stand, attorneys are paid $300/hr to try to make me look bad. In doing so, they attack my character, my competence, and my integrity. Then, afterwards, we go have lunch.
Every few weeks, I spend a few hours on the phone with the parents of a young adolescent who committed suicide listening to them tell me how I'm an incompetent boob, an uncaring h or part of a grand conspiracy to cover up the murder of their child. But that's part of their grief process -- they have to go through denial, and I'm the one whose signature is on the paper telling them what they don't want to hear. Part of my job is to sit there and let them abuse me.
And it goes on.
And, on the flip side, I say "hurtful" things to those parents when I tell them the things they don't want to hear. There's no "nice" way to tell a parent that their child was a crack whore who killed herself as an act of self-loathing. There are certainly some *bad* ways to say it, but there are no good ones.
People say hurtful things without meaning to be hurful. People say hurtful things simply telling hard truths. People say hurtful things as a matter of policy or other necessity. People say hurtful things because they want to hurt.
But the bottom line is that the recipient of that hurtful speech is the person in control, because they have *complete* control over how they react.
It's a little like being shy. I used to have horrible stage fright. Today, I give lectures at international meetings to thousands of people without a second thought. How did I get over it? One day a pastor I had pointed out to me that being shy is an example of hurtful pride. The reason I was shy and had stage fright was because I was more concerned with how *I* looked than I was about helping other people. If I stopped being worried about myself and worried instead about others and about my mission, there would be no reason for shyness or stage fright.
And he was right. Once I stopped focusing on myself and how *I* looked, and instead focused on *others,* my stage fright went away. I was still concerned about doing a good job, but not about myself.
The same thing is true with being "hurt." Once people stop being so self-centered, they stop choosing to be hurt by every little thing.
In intimate relationships it's a different because the statements are interpreted in the context of being comments on the relationship itself. In that case, choosing not to be hurt can mean either that the statement has nothing to do with the relationship, or may imply also choosing to make the relationship less intimate.