Deep Thoughts
I sometimes wish that I never had deep thoughts.
I look at hopelessly shallow people with envy. I wonder: What is it like to look around and not see anything? What is it like to think that our government is wonderful, that our quality of life is brilliant, that people are good and true?
When I finish with a thought like that, I have to look at myself and ask: which is better? My life or idiot's life over there? Idiot seems to be smiling and having a good time. I wonder.
Today, however, is not filled with too many deep thoughts. I'm trying to finish a semester and finish a dissertation. I'm trying to get a job. In the nanoseconds in between I have been thinking about control. I watched this documentary on HBO called Thin and I thought that these women needed something in life to control -- so they controlled their food intake, their bodies, their desire.
I am a controlling kind of girl myself. I not only want the house clean, I want it clean MY way. This is a personality trait that is good for teaching, but hard on a person's life. The world is not a neat little package that one can wrap up with the corners tucked in tightly. When I finally stopped biting my fingernails, a well-meaning member of the family asked what I replaced the habit with. I gave some stupid, and not-thought-out answer, but the real answer is control. I learned that the control was just as satisfying.
I'm finding this to be true in my eating habit change as well. There is something to be said for control: that something is that it is gratifying. My therapist says that my drive for control stems from a childhood that was out of control. That sounds rational enough.
But am I alone out there? Do you control things? Does it give you a sense of satisfaction? Does it make you crazy when you lose control?
Well, those aren't really deep thoughts. But that is what I have to offer today.
I look at hopelessly shallow people with envy. I wonder: What is it like to look around and not see anything? What is it like to think that our government is wonderful, that our quality of life is brilliant, that people are good and true?
When I finish with a thought like that, I have to look at myself and ask: which is better? My life or idiot's life over there? Idiot seems to be smiling and having a good time. I wonder.
Today, however, is not filled with too many deep thoughts. I'm trying to finish a semester and finish a dissertation. I'm trying to get a job. In the nanoseconds in between I have been thinking about control. I watched this documentary on HBO called Thin and I thought that these women needed something in life to control -- so they controlled their food intake, their bodies, their desire.
I am a controlling kind of girl myself. I not only want the house clean, I want it clean MY way. This is a personality trait that is good for teaching, but hard on a person's life. The world is not a neat little package that one can wrap up with the corners tucked in tightly. When I finally stopped biting my fingernails, a well-meaning member of the family asked what I replaced the habit with. I gave some stupid, and not-thought-out answer, but the real answer is control. I learned that the control was just as satisfying.
I'm finding this to be true in my eating habit change as well. There is something to be said for control: that something is that it is gratifying. My therapist says that my drive for control stems from a childhood that was out of control. That sounds rational enough.
But am I alone out there? Do you control things? Does it give you a sense of satisfaction? Does it make you crazy when you lose control?
Well, those aren't really deep thoughts. But that is what I have to offer today.
posted by perrykat at
2:54 PM
3 Comments:
well i am 30 and still haven't been able to master the ability to stop biting my fingernails. I guess i haven't found anything powerful enough to replace that habit with. sad but true to break one habit you must replace it with another...maybe i need to try control..maybe that's one i haven't tried. the one time that i quit for a year I instead of biting became obsessed with keeping them perfect constantly filing them...that too became annoying and away i went back to biting. :)
Control, absolutely. My dream though is passive control, that is, things running like clockwork while i relax.
That is, it's not the act of control, but the state of in control. Maybe similar background/motivation.
But orderliness of the environment, clothes washed and put away, books being read, things in order, and then I can sit by the fire and relax, knowing that no sky will fall.
But the sky will fall, if things are under control.
Re: blissful ignorance, I wonder that too... I have to think that there are things I experience that have a sweetness to them that I could not in such a state of ignorance. Beauties that would have to go unseen. But bittersweet ones.
That's okay for me. Never much of a sweet tooth, prefer dark chocolate.
And cheese.
...aren't...
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