You and me..

I came across this some time ago and it has always struck me profoundly. I turn to it whenever I have a disagreement with someone close to me, or when my patience is tested or I am hurt by someone I love. It serves as a reminder that no two people are alike.

"If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be. I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that someday these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right -- for me.

To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences. "

courtesy of http://www.keirsey.com/

I came across this some time ago and it has always struck me profoundly. I turn to it whenever I have a disagreement with someone close to me, or when my patience is tested or I am hurt by someone I love. It serves as a reminder that no two people are alike.

The Written Word

On writing.

I used to love to write. It was a saviour to my "tortured" soul; like balm to soothe the torrent of emotion that welled up inside too often for my own good. So that when I let loose, I found perspective, it shaped me, my beliefs on subjects of religion, relationships, family and the like. It was the sieve to the many philosophies and worldly wisdom and religious teachings that one accumulates from being around people, reading too many books and watching too much TV. It gave me insight to where I stood on the boundaries of black, white and grey. Or, on contrary, not to have an opinion at all.

I've seldom ever let anyone read my writing. Yet here I am, blogging for all the world to see. To say I've lost my shyness would be inaccurate for am still painfully shy sometimes. [I hide it well. I think no one even knows.] Especially when it comes to my own work. For I try not to judge lest I be judged. Yet, how can I say I've improved when no one has critiqued? I resolve here and now today that I will attempt to write a piece of whatever-catches-my-fancy-or-not-at-all once a week. Here. About the fog that clouds my mind, the abstract (il)logic/situations/people that draws akin to what seems to have no relation with each other. The distracted nature of mine that drives many people to exasperation, notably my other half. My better half. The one who knows the ways of the world when it continues to befuddle me.

Writing is a cleansing process. Much like crying. Does well for melancholics and depressives. But it only works if you acknowledge that you're one. And how often are we that self-aware?

Sometimes, I wish I were more proficient in numbers rather than language. Then perhaps I would less of what I am now, and more of someone the world in general would approve. Not that I have a self-loathing tendency, but more because the numbers-inclined me would've been less of an emotional/sensitive being and more equipped to survive in this concrete jungle. But whenever that thought crosses my mind, I wonder, how do you express anger and joy and anxiety or excitement in numerals? Like 996736352 to the power of 33 gives you "happiness" while the square root of 55883312 equals "really-pissed-off"?

I write openly here because only a few people know of this page's existence. And you guys are the closest to me so I can be myself. Plus there are no photos (neither will there be in future, not of my face at least) so no blog-voyeurs will know who I am. I feel safe like that.

So sensitive

How does one refrain from being sensitive and emotional?

Why is it such a bad thing? Does it make me a bad person? Or a lesser one?

If not, why ask me to change?