so maybe I should be some kind of laundry line
I've been thinking a bit lately about the gap between the ideal and the reality of life. Samhain will do that to a guy, I guess. I'm having one of those minor existential crises people in my age group seem so prone to, where I am gripped with a sense that I am not doing what I mean to be doing, that I am not acting in the way I want to act. That, to put too fine a point on it, I'm not who I want to be right now.
Well, of course I'm not.
The trouble comes in several parts. First of all there's the fact that, every so often, I forget to keep trying. I'm human, after all, as human as the next person. I get bogged down in little details, concerned with the minutiae of my own life. And the minute I'm focused on that level of granularity, all of my efforts to be a better person tend to go slack. Road rage is a good example of that particular phenomenon. I try not to be an angry person, to not let myself hold onto grudges or other negativity. But road rage, allowed to build up a good head of steam, can keep me pissed off for days afterwards. For no particular reason. And suddenly I'm hostile to people who are in no way at fault for the fact that I tensed up in the first place.
Then there's the fact that, even when I snap back in and take a deep breath and remember that I don't want to be like that, its never a straight path from A to B (I'm not talking about driving anymore, we've returned to the land of metaphor.) And the thing is, there's some wholly irrational part of my brain that's frustrated at the idea that I'm not getting better at the process of getting better. I've been doing it for most of my life, and it still goes two steps forward and one step back, even on my good days. For every notch of progress, I feel like I have a corresponding hash mark of regret. And its immensely frustrating. I acknowledge that the frustration is pointless - its always going to be like this, it has to be. But the fact of the matter that I find myself feeling more and more annoyed each time I, well, backslide (I hate the word backsliding, but it applies.)
I'm never going to be as self-aware as I want to be, not all the time. I'm never going to do the right thing at every junction. I will make mistakes. I know these things.
And, apparently, I have to keep reminding myself of that. Probably for the rest of my life.
Well, of course I'm not.
The trouble comes in several parts. First of all there's the fact that, every so often, I forget to keep trying. I'm human, after all, as human as the next person. I get bogged down in little details, concerned with the minutiae of my own life. And the minute I'm focused on that level of granularity, all of my efforts to be a better person tend to go slack. Road rage is a good example of that particular phenomenon. I try not to be an angry person, to not let myself hold onto grudges or other negativity. But road rage, allowed to build up a good head of steam, can keep me pissed off for days afterwards. For no particular reason. And suddenly I'm hostile to people who are in no way at fault for the fact that I tensed up in the first place.
Then there's the fact that, even when I snap back in and take a deep breath and remember that I don't want to be like that, its never a straight path from A to B (I'm not talking about driving anymore, we've returned to the land of metaphor.) And the thing is, there's some wholly irrational part of my brain that's frustrated at the idea that I'm not getting better at the process of getting better. I've been doing it for most of my life, and it still goes two steps forward and one step back, even on my good days. For every notch of progress, I feel like I have a corresponding hash mark of regret. And its immensely frustrating. I acknowledge that the frustration is pointless - its always going to be like this, it has to be. But the fact of the matter that I find myself feeling more and more annoyed each time I, well, backslide (I hate the word backsliding, but it applies.)
I'm never going to be as self-aware as I want to be, not all the time. I'm never going to do the right thing at every junction. I will make mistakes. I know these things.
And, apparently, I have to keep reminding myself of that. Probably for the rest of my life.