soapboxdiner

On being Excellent

Tonight was the first night of the seminar D00d's mom browbeat me into.

Well, that's not necessarily fair. She took it and D00d took it and they both told me that the class teaches the participants about their actions and reactions, and how they are currently looking at those things, and how to look at them in a new way to affect positive results. They both swear by it.

And so I walked into it saying to myself, "Well, I've done a lot of introspection in my life, and I'm pretty in tune to what motivates me and others. It will be interesting, but I probably won't learn anything new. Maybe some things will be crystallized, but I already know all this stuff."

And tonight I learned that I'm a selfish person with a superiority complex who uses martyrdom and victimization, frustration and anger to extricate myself from unwanted situations without a backward glance.

Once upon a time, when Kiddo was young, I started taking him to church. And every Sunday I would sit through the service and just cry, cry, cry. Could not, COULD NOT, stop crying.

And tonight in class during the relaxation and visualization exercise, that's all I wanted to do. Tear welled in my eyes and I experienced the deepest sense of remorse and disappointment in myself than I have felt in years. Granted, those things are always just below the surface, but I usually don't engage them. They bring no positive result.

I hate those sides of myself. I do good work. I strive to be a blessing to others. But it's all self-serving. And life has taught me that if you wait long enough being the victim, sooner or later opportunity presents itself to rise up against your oppressor. They will eventually show a weakness -- and it is in that moment that you have the power. That is the moment to strike them down in vengeance without mercy, without hesitation. And once that happens, you are free and you are strong.

Only I think that's not really true. That is the basest, most animalistic instinct. And it works in the short term. But once the immediacy and urgency of necessity subsides, the higher faculties re-emerge and you are left to reconcile the damage you inflicted.

But knowing your own "hunt and kill" capacity changes you. It's another layer of your innocence that's gone. No longer are you the little girl who undercombed grandma's grays in her hair or drew pretty pictures of horsies and houses on happy little rolling hills, covered in flowers with fluffy clouds and flying birds in the sky. You're not the sweet little girl who would have some boy bend down on his knee to ask you if he could be the man who'd love and cherish you. Instead, you're a dangerous woman who's been backed into a corner and came out snarling with blood dripping from her jaws.

Victorious, but diminished. Savage, independent, and often times alone.

And you want to recover the little girl who drew pretty flowers and horsies in her leftover steno-sized spelling notepad. And you act kinder, with deeper understanding of the fragility and vulnerability that life creates in us all. You cherish people who have been defenseless or ill-equipped. But that snarling woman is always underneath, panting, in wait for the time when she will be needed.

And that is just about enough to make a woman want to cry and cry and cry.

12:02 am - 03.06.09
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