Back from character-building
Back from Europe-quest, and I actually feel lighter, more confident, more daring with my work. It was a very good trip; enlightening, disturbing, unexpected. Of course, I was lucky it worked out alright, but I'm willing to take that luck and run with it awhile.
It partly ties into what A-L was telling me on the phone yesterday. About Barbara Ehrenreich's book 'Nickel and Dimed', for which the author sank herself below the poverty line as a psychosocial experiment (reminiscent of, but perhaps more guardedly than Orwell). Ehrenreich found that servility starts on the outside and slowly but surely diffuses inward. The lesson I'm going to take away from that is that we shouldn't capitulate too easily. There's a difference between being polite and being a pushover.
Actually, before Ehrenreich and Orwell came George Bernard Shaw - "... the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she is treated..."
Anyway, once we corral ourselves into our perceived roles, it's difficult to get out again. I go to meetings where people shift position by reflex, without even registering that they have given ground. The irony is that we do the best job when we are not afraid to lose it... so long as we do not take it too far. I see people mistake rashness for inspiration; confuse alleyway thinking with decisiveness.
Lots to think about in the coming months. Like they say, it ain't worth doing if it ain't hard to do.
It partly ties into what A-L was telling me on the phone yesterday. About Barbara Ehrenreich's book 'Nickel and Dimed', for which the author sank herself below the poverty line as a psychosocial experiment (reminiscent of, but perhaps more guardedly than Orwell). Ehrenreich found that servility starts on the outside and slowly but surely diffuses inward. The lesson I'm going to take away from that is that we shouldn't capitulate too easily. There's a difference between being polite and being a pushover.
Actually, before Ehrenreich and Orwell came George Bernard Shaw - "... the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she is treated..."
Anyway, once we corral ourselves into our perceived roles, it's difficult to get out again. I go to meetings where people shift position by reflex, without even registering that they have given ground. The irony is that we do the best job when we are not afraid to lose it... so long as we do not take it too far. I see people mistake rashness for inspiration; confuse alleyway thinking with decisiveness.
Lots to think about in the coming months. Like they say, it ain't worth doing if it ain't hard to do.