Each person seems to be afraid of a word that means doing something, being something, something that the person in question couldn’t possibly do or be.
It’s the person who thinks that he’s going to be clingy, who never gets close to imposing his needs. Even a concerted effort in that direction wouldn’t let him get close to being needy enough. Yet he worries about it.
It’s the one who fears offending another’s intelligence, who couldn’t if she tried, even if she took lessons. Yet she frets over the fact that she might, avoids saying what she knows just in case someone hears the wrong thing, thinks she could be, might be talking down to him.
It’s the child who can’t bear the thought of being in the way, and instead is invisible to everyone. It’s the college kid who lives a nightmare of being ordinary when the reality is potential that is amazing, unique, and extraordinary.
We all have these words we fear − each our own and self-selected, probably by something someone else did or said. Despite the DNA that protects us, that makes it so we could never be or do the word that we chose, we act on guard always as if we might, we could. Afraid.
That is, of course, except for me. You don't think so, but I really could be my awful word. I could outwit my DNA to hurt myself and be my word.
We all think that too.
We're a most interesting species. Sure of flaws, holding tight to them, we won't be moved − even if we don't have them, even if they were invented by something someone said a long time ago.
One day I will invent an ERASE button for the tape recordings in our heads.
−me strauss Letting me be
10 comments:
i got to say, i love your writing very much!!
Hi C,
Thank you. I hope that you'll come and comment often. You are who I write for. :)
Hey Liz
If you ever invent an Erase button, I would definitely want to purchase one. Of course, I'm still not totally certain that I fully agree with you (except for the Except for me part!), but I have plenty of other tapes in my head that I'd like to get rid of.Keep me posted on your progress.
Oh Dawn, I would never charge for it. It would have to be free for everyone. After all, we didn't put those tapes there on purpose so, I think I'd have to allow only donations. :)
You know, when I was six I didn't know about the tape recorder in my head and that others might be trying to record on it.
Well, when I turned seven, well maybe eight, then, well, then all hell broke loose and I forgot that cookies were cookies and tea was tea. For more than thirty years I have been on a journey, only recently did I even know this, but I've been walking, running, looking, searching, listening, hoping, thinking and putting my ear to the ground all in the hope of finding that erase button.
Excellent post Liz.
You have another option, Tree,
You can just record over those old tape with new messages. It works faster. Tell your self what you want yourself to know is true. :)
The "greener" way to edit is to compost - compression is a fun thing to do with sampling, too - I love your rhythm
You have a point, Bradford.
I think any method that gets the wrong stuff out of our heads is the right on.
Smash those bad tapes to smithereens.
ME: Of course, I would buy the magic erase machine, too. But until your patents come through: let's hypothetically say that we actually ARE those worst-of-the-words we hear on those recordings in our heads. Then what? What's the most terrible thing that can happen in that moment, if that comes to pass in public reality? See, once we make peace with the very worst potential inside our own lives and minds, we are free (or free-er.) Strikes me that the things we *actually* fear, those things that may ultimately render us ... motionless ... come not from within, but from without. And for me, the magic has come from knowing that when push comes to shove, *I* myself will not be my worst enemy. Survival instincts are otherworldly gifts.
And between here and that moment of darkness, may we all discipline ourselves to continue asking, "so, what would be the WORST that could happen?", "and THEN what?" Because it never ends up as bad as we imagined.
And in that way, step by step, walls of internal courage can be built: like muscles, fortitude and belief in oneself must be exercised to be useful.
--Viaggiatore (twice in one day, eek!) ;>
Ah Viaggiatore,
Your feet are strongly on that Italian soil. . . . You are right and are you? Are we those things because we have so long been told we are? Perhaps erasing those mean tape recordings would erase the inclinations with them?
Ah they're only imaginings of a mind in the clouds. :)
The patent man wouldn't review my drawings. Of that much I think I could be sure. :)
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