*note* this has nothing to do with the project. it's just thoughtful blogging. *end note*
This morning on my way to work I was exploring a new podcast (new to me anyway) and at the beginning the host discussed the "phenomena" of something called the "I Wish Song." He had just noticed how so many classic musicals and Disney movies introduce a main character with a song that declares "who it is they are and what it is they want," which essentially launches the story. Its so basic a concept and yet who really thinks about this and knows this for themselves? How often do we lose that sense of self and are thus directionless in our lives. In the book Talent is Never Enough by John C. Mawell, the author gives a great analogy about an octopus that I have never forgotten. The octopus is wearing roller skates on every tentacle and is going absolutely nowhere! Why? Because every tentacle is trying to go a different way than the other, there is no focus. Is he saying we should have only one dream and not eight? Actually, I think it is really trying to portray the distention in our everyday lives. If we are doing eight things, for example, and don't know WHY we are doing them then there is no focus. Without focus, there is no direction and without direction we feel like our lives are going nowhere at all. We feel drained with the effort too, you can bet that octopus is really working to stay up on all those rolling skates, eventually he is going to get tired and just straight collapse with the exhaustion and lack of motivation. Focus does give us motivation too, the drive and reason to keep going.
This is easier said than done, of course, when is it not? With all the insane....well...crap...going on these days, how do you find focus? Anyone can arguably have too many roles they play on a daily basis; just look at the statistics on stress and you will see that our lives honestly cannot fit much more in them without a major organ exploding. And yet we try! Why? Because we desperately want meaning. Does that mean sacrificing everything to live a life apart "finding ourselves"? Perhaps if you have driven yourself to exhaustion this extreme action seems like a rational plan. I, personally, don't see it as wholly beneficial to a person, let alone the others in their lives. its like an explosion of selfishness, really, brought on by years of no boundaries and giving up your own self to get what you have been told you want by a whole lot of idiots called society. Yeah, damn the man, but you don't need to do it in a stupid self serving way that really doesn't benefit anyone, including you.
I know about this because I am that person that has done all that, including the semi-selfish binge. So before you write me off, think about this. After my binge I had a whole lot of experience and a whole lot of memories that I am still hoping will just go away with time. Emotionally, I was still where I was before. I people-pleasing addict with no idea how to set boundaries. I still had anger issues. I was still depressed. I hurt people because I was hurting and didn't know how to act anymore. I was still a wreck of a person. The only thing I had learned, really, was that I didn't want to be that way. Am I reformed? Not 100%. You can't make over 29 years of one kind of life style in a few years of work, but it's getting better and thats the point.
That brings us back to the "I Wish Song." I love those songs, I am a sucker for inspirational heart longings. I think everyone longs for something, I am sure that is why songs like "Belle", "Part of Your World" and "Out There" make me all happy and wistful. Do I know mine? Hmm... "Who it is they are and what it is they want." That could go one of two ways. There is the version of my life that i tell others, which can aptly describe "me" or at least what has happened to me and thus might explain why I act so differently than others. When I tell this story, though, it's edited to gloss over the parts where I did anything bad myself. If bad behavior is told, it's usually told to excuse the behavior. I am sure I am not alone in this; no one wants to think they are a bad person, they want to get over it, be sympathized with and encouraged. Not dumped. The second way you tell it, the whole truth, well, that might get you dumped.
A day or so ago a song came up on the shuffle, one from The Man of La Mancha. I LOVE that musical, though I hear it is nothing like the book. Haven't read it, don't know, don't care, this is separate work so lets just look at it like that, shall we? Ok, good, we're agreed. So this song, "Aldonza," comes on. If you don't know anything about the play, its key character is an old man who has decided to be a knight and sees the whole world through this chosen lifestyle. Everything is different to him because he chooses to see it that way. Skipping other aspects of the story, eventually the possibly-crazy fellow comes to an old inn with a lot of unsavory men and a whore. Yet to him she is not who she sees herself to be, the "knight" sees her as the lady he has been seeking and undertaking all these other quests for, Dulcinea. Aldonza's song is raw and ugly, bitingly angry, defensive and attacking, like a wounded animal in a corner so far gone in its abuse it sees any hand coming towards it as harmful, even if its intent is to gently sooth it. She attacks herself and the knight verbally, lays out her whole life story in dirty detail as proof that she nothign and will never be anything more. She begs him to go away or get his sexual dealing over with and stop torturing her with this insistence that she is a "Lady." But the knight continues to declare, even more impassioned, that she is forever his lady, Dulcinea, and that he will continue to quest on for her glory, she is that magnificent and valuable to him. His blind faith in her eventually changes her life forever when she finally believes him, that he truly sees that in her. It is that acceptance of his truth that washes away her own and saves her. In turn, she saves him, but I won't spoil any more of it for you.
This whole idea, for me, is gut-wrenching, honestly. It speaks to the utter reality of ourselves! Our ugly lives. We are disgusting creatures, some of us. When I face myself in the mirror and actually admit everything I have ever done then there are a lot of laws against people that I have broken. I am a bad person, not for the crime,/sin but for the harm it caused others. And yet we are pursued by a glorious Knight. He seems foolish to ourselves and others in his blind belief that we are, in fact, the beautiful creature for which He does everything. He "blindly" adores us, sees the worth and value in us, loves us and encourages us to treat others the same way. It is our acceptance of that belief that changes us, saves us from ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves to let it all go and to realize how much has been forgotten by the one being who knows everything. Its rather mind blowing.
So....Who are you? What is it you want? Will you be honest about it and face yourself, your true beliefs, or will you choose something to make society proud of you? Aldonza declares in an angry determined voice that she is "no one, nothing at all." She never says what she wants, other than to be left alone or to make money off the fact that men use her and forget her. This is not what she really wants, is it? I think the anger tells another story, that really this is just the reality she has accepted. It is the only thing she thinks she can get, and so she seems to have stopped wanting. The fact that she is angry says she wants, somewhere deep, something to be different, at the very least.
I am a messed up person who wants to be better than I am. I am someone who has learned a lot about life and yet, after a big decision, still wants to live it. I am creative and I want to express myself, even if no one is listening (<-----that took a while to get to, i used to want to be heard, noticed, now its ok either way, i just know i want to write. I don't think I will ever be able to write the way I truly want to if all i do is worry about pleasing people.) Will everything I want actually happen? Sometimes you just have to believe.
This morning on my way to work I was exploring a new podcast (new to me anyway) and at the beginning the host discussed the "phenomena" of something called the "I Wish Song." He had just noticed how so many classic musicals and Disney movies introduce a main character with a song that declares "who it is they are and what it is they want," which essentially launches the story. Its so basic a concept and yet who really thinks about this and knows this for themselves? How often do we lose that sense of self and are thus directionless in our lives. In the book Talent is Never Enough by John C. Mawell, the author gives a great analogy about an octopus that I have never forgotten. The octopus is wearing roller skates on every tentacle and is going absolutely nowhere! Why? Because every tentacle is trying to go a different way than the other, there is no focus. Is he saying we should have only one dream and not eight? Actually, I think it is really trying to portray the distention in our everyday lives. If we are doing eight things, for example, and don't know WHY we are doing them then there is no focus. Without focus, there is no direction and without direction we feel like our lives are going nowhere at all. We feel drained with the effort too, you can bet that octopus is really working to stay up on all those rolling skates, eventually he is going to get tired and just straight collapse with the exhaustion and lack of motivation. Focus does give us motivation too, the drive and reason to keep going.
This is easier said than done, of course, when is it not? With all the insane....well...crap...going on these days, how do you find focus? Anyone can arguably have too many roles they play on a daily basis; just look at the statistics on stress and you will see that our lives honestly cannot fit much more in them without a major organ exploding. And yet we try! Why? Because we desperately want meaning. Does that mean sacrificing everything to live a life apart "finding ourselves"? Perhaps if you have driven yourself to exhaustion this extreme action seems like a rational plan. I, personally, don't see it as wholly beneficial to a person, let alone the others in their lives. its like an explosion of selfishness, really, brought on by years of no boundaries and giving up your own self to get what you have been told you want by a whole lot of idiots called society. Yeah, damn the man, but you don't need to do it in a stupid self serving way that really doesn't benefit anyone, including you.
I know about this because I am that person that has done all that, including the semi-selfish binge. So before you write me off, think about this. After my binge I had a whole lot of experience and a whole lot of memories that I am still hoping will just go away with time. Emotionally, I was still where I was before. I people-pleasing addict with no idea how to set boundaries. I still had anger issues. I was still depressed. I hurt people because I was hurting and didn't know how to act anymore. I was still a wreck of a person. The only thing I had learned, really, was that I didn't want to be that way. Am I reformed? Not 100%. You can't make over 29 years of one kind of life style in a few years of work, but it's getting better and thats the point.
That brings us back to the "I Wish Song." I love those songs, I am a sucker for inspirational heart longings. I think everyone longs for something, I am sure that is why songs like "Belle", "Part of Your World" and "Out There" make me all happy and wistful. Do I know mine? Hmm... "Who it is they are and what it is they want." That could go one of two ways. There is the version of my life that i tell others, which can aptly describe "me" or at least what has happened to me and thus might explain why I act so differently than others. When I tell this story, though, it's edited to gloss over the parts where I did anything bad myself. If bad behavior is told, it's usually told to excuse the behavior. I am sure I am not alone in this; no one wants to think they are a bad person, they want to get over it, be sympathized with and encouraged. Not dumped. The second way you tell it, the whole truth, well, that might get you dumped.
A day or so ago a song came up on the shuffle, one from The Man of La Mancha. I LOVE that musical, though I hear it is nothing like the book. Haven't read it, don't know, don't care, this is separate work so lets just look at it like that, shall we? Ok, good, we're agreed. So this song, "Aldonza," comes on. If you don't know anything about the play, its key character is an old man who has decided to be a knight and sees the whole world through this chosen lifestyle. Everything is different to him because he chooses to see it that way. Skipping other aspects of the story, eventually the possibly-crazy fellow comes to an old inn with a lot of unsavory men and a whore. Yet to him she is not who she sees herself to be, the "knight" sees her as the lady he has been seeking and undertaking all these other quests for, Dulcinea. Aldonza's song is raw and ugly, bitingly angry, defensive and attacking, like a wounded animal in a corner so far gone in its abuse it sees any hand coming towards it as harmful, even if its intent is to gently sooth it. She attacks herself and the knight verbally, lays out her whole life story in dirty detail as proof that she nothign and will never be anything more. She begs him to go away or get his sexual dealing over with and stop torturing her with this insistence that she is a "Lady." But the knight continues to declare, even more impassioned, that she is forever his lady, Dulcinea, and that he will continue to quest on for her glory, she is that magnificent and valuable to him. His blind faith in her eventually changes her life forever when she finally believes him, that he truly sees that in her. It is that acceptance of his truth that washes away her own and saves her. In turn, she saves him, but I won't spoil any more of it for you.
This whole idea, for me, is gut-wrenching, honestly. It speaks to the utter reality of ourselves! Our ugly lives. We are disgusting creatures, some of us. When I face myself in the mirror and actually admit everything I have ever done then there are a lot of laws against people that I have broken. I am a bad person, not for the crime,/sin but for the harm it caused others. And yet we are pursued by a glorious Knight. He seems foolish to ourselves and others in his blind belief that we are, in fact, the beautiful creature for which He does everything. He "blindly" adores us, sees the worth and value in us, loves us and encourages us to treat others the same way. It is our acceptance of that belief that changes us, saves us from ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves to let it all go and to realize how much has been forgotten by the one being who knows everything. Its rather mind blowing.
So....Who are you? What is it you want? Will you be honest about it and face yourself, your true beliefs, or will you choose something to make society proud of you? Aldonza declares in an angry determined voice that she is "no one, nothing at all." She never says what she wants, other than to be left alone or to make money off the fact that men use her and forget her. This is not what she really wants, is it? I think the anger tells another story, that really this is just the reality she has accepted. It is the only thing she thinks she can get, and so she seems to have stopped wanting. The fact that she is angry says she wants, somewhere deep, something to be different, at the very least.
I am a messed up person who wants to be better than I am. I am someone who has learned a lot about life and yet, after a big decision, still wants to live it. I am creative and I want to express myself, even if no one is listening (<-----that took a while to get to, i used to want to be heard, noticed, now its ok either way, i just know i want to write. I don't think I will ever be able to write the way I truly want to if all i do is worry about pleasing people.) Will everything I want actually happen? Sometimes you just have to believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment