In this one, I'm going to try to accept it.
I didn't go looking for compliments when I posted that. I never do. Taking compliments is much harder than giving them, for me. For most people, I think. Most of us don't think of ourselves as particularly worthy; for many, the thought is outright heretical. Which is one reason (among many) that I persist in spreading compliments and love. I usually see people as they are. Don't be alarmed: Who You Are is beautiful.
That's nice, Ken. Apply that to yourself.
I wrote a self-love post, not all that long ago, at the urging of someone my self loves deeply. Since then I've been the subject of some compliments that have left me at a loss for words. Yes, me.
Today was a case in point. I spent some time this morning in the presence of a Beautiful Mind (TM): a lovely person whose intellect would be intimidating if it weren't so welcoming and accepting. Some of our deepest beliefs seem to jibe, although we have taken radically different paths in life and don't express them in quite the same manner.
To repeatedly be called "bright", with some "very"s added here and there, by such a person...at first it beggared belief. A few short minutes convinced me of a lack of pretension and an abundance of honesty and sincerity, but...really.
I'm used to being called bright. And I'm the first person to tell you I'm NOT. I have a trio of arguments to refute the claim.
One: spend any substantial time in my life and you'll eventually notice my natural state is much better described as DIM. Mark tells me I enter a hypnotic trance very easily. Indeed I do. I leave most of the world behind without effort and enter a realm of no-thought. Music is usually what carries me there, but writing a blog will do it; so will reading; so will just sitting in a car--which is one reason driving said car is not such a hot idea for me.
Two: I'm stupid.
Okay, that's harsh, and not really true. But my knowledge is skin deep if that in many places. I know a very little about a very lot of things. People often assume I know more than I do. There are vast categories of things which open a trapdoor in my head, and not all of them are silly things like celebrity culture, either. People have tried to explain various facets of the economy to me...how stock markets work, for instance...and it just doesn't take. We won't even get into the mechanical ineptitude (oh, wait, we just did).
Three: I'm impractical. Which is one reason whatever intelligence I have has not translated into something meaningful (for values of 'meaningful' the world appreciates).
My impracticality, my idealism, and my intellectual grasp on life and love was examined today -- by, I repeat, a mind I'm a little in awe of -- and it became apparent that she didn't mean 'bright' in an intelligent sense. Or not just an intelligent sense.
She called me 'pure'.
I scoffed at that: I'm no more pure than I am bright. But she made reference to a sort of philosophical bright light..."blinding" was in fact the word she used...and I was struck dumb. Struck dim, you might say.
The discomfort was acute, actually. THIS IS JUST ME, I wanted to shout. I told her I've never given it much thought, and that's the truth: my ideas on loving many--of giving love in whatever manner, to whatever degree, it is accepted--have always been there. Of course I've had to defend them, repeatedly, in a world hostile to abundance. But actually thinking of the mechanics and metaphysics of it proved tiring. I almost felt myself falling victim to the Centipede's Dilemma as I struggled at self-definition; the conversation began to feel like a hyper-lucid dream I was having, and I wasn't sure if I was making any sense whatsoever. Always a danger when you believe you're with someone considerably more intelligent than you are yourself.
She managed to make me feel much better about the 'flight/fight/freeze' reflex that seems permanent frozen on 'freeze' with me. Witness the morning I tried to burn my house down. I note in there I went tharn. I became a "useless block of uselessness".
Shock, she said. That's shock.
I thought, that can't be. The fire was out, the danger had passed.
That's when it happens, she told me, and went on to explain all the physiological effects. Your body becomes concerned with keeping the heart beating and the liver functioning; everything else is superfluous. Certainly brain function is too much to ask.
And then she went on to give a theory she had, that people are physiologically/biologically predetermined to fall most naturally into one response or another, and that those who freeze have an important place. If everyone jumped to confront a danger, the result would be chaos; if everyone fled, we'd be extinct. Some of us have to freeze.
Reframe.
I'm always trying to do that with people: to reframe their negative thoughts about themselves into something positive. I'm good at it. To have it done TO me... incredibly lightening feeling.
And if what I do produces in people anything like that effect...maybe, just maybe, there is something to my brightness.
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