it's good to be back home...
It could be that all I'm about to describe only applies to me. I'm a person who has trouble hiding emotions. When I try, they just come seeping out the sides, coming out in ways that I would have never imagined....and am not aware of. Everything about me is just the aggregate of where I've been, and not really what I'm trying to be at any given point. In many ways, it makes me an easy person to understand from moment to moment...if you're aware of that fact.
It also makes me a really shitty poker player.
I think this applies to everyone. If you sit and watch someone for long enough, analyze them for long enough, you can tell a lot about where they've been.
You can pick out the boy who's trying to escape from a blue-collar childhood. The one who never felt at home there, and worked like hell to get out and tried to never look back. Even though he never felt comfortable there, that upbringing is as much as part of him as his eyes and mouth. Through the veneer of moderate affluence and nice posessions, you can tell that it wasn't always that way. Maybe it's a little bit of shame. Maybe it's ambition...and maybe, just maybe maybe it's the fear of having to go back because that's the way to be happiest.
You can pick out the rich girl who lives in rebellion against where she comes from. There's shame there too, but it's centers more around feeling like nothing has been earned. Small pokers in the eye of social convention abound, but she still maintains an outward cloak of social acceptability. She swears like a sailor, and speaks with a "fuck the world" tone...but it's so contrived that you can tell it runs against her nature. Outside of the dramatic moments, she undertakes an air of breeding....and looks too well-kept, with a quiet style about her...to really be the person she is pretending to be.
It makes you wonder what happens to people like this in the real world. Do they just continue to be square pegs in round holes...getting worn enough around the edges to *just* fit? Do they go back to where they came from, giving in to something that was set in motion when they were born?
...or do they find that what they are looking for, what they are trying to be, lies not without...but within?
It also makes me a really shitty poker player.
I think this applies to everyone. If you sit and watch someone for long enough, analyze them for long enough, you can tell a lot about where they've been.
You can pick out the boy who's trying to escape from a blue-collar childhood. The one who never felt at home there, and worked like hell to get out and tried to never look back. Even though he never felt comfortable there, that upbringing is as much as part of him as his eyes and mouth. Through the veneer of moderate affluence and nice posessions, you can tell that it wasn't always that way. Maybe it's a little bit of shame. Maybe it's ambition...and maybe, just maybe maybe it's the fear of having to go back because that's the way to be happiest.
You can pick out the rich girl who lives in rebellion against where she comes from. There's shame there too, but it's centers more around feeling like nothing has been earned. Small pokers in the eye of social convention abound, but she still maintains an outward cloak of social acceptability. She swears like a sailor, and speaks with a "fuck the world" tone...but it's so contrived that you can tell it runs against her nature. Outside of the dramatic moments, she undertakes an air of breeding....and looks too well-kept, with a quiet style about her...to really be the person she is pretending to be.
It makes you wonder what happens to people like this in the real world. Do they just continue to be square pegs in round holes...getting worn enough around the edges to *just* fit? Do they go back to where they came from, giving in to something that was set in motion when they were born?
...or do they find that what they are looking for, what they are trying to be, lies not without...but within?