Are you seriously working on being the Nietzschian Superman? Do you really need that much control to ensure you are viewed as brilliant and valuable. Is this the leftover residue from your teenage self when it is customary for the American female to annihilate her heart in an effort to be in complete control of her destiny? Is this split an unfortunate byproduct of feminism? Dear reader, this blog entry has been edited to get at the heart of my question, which was not actually my question at all but one asked of me a few days ago while I ruminated over a conversation had a few days prior to that. The original post was not intended to offend, but has and for that I do apologize. The original post has been mostly removed from this blog. Please do leave your feedback regaurding the ways in which we as women do distance our “hearts” from our heads and why.
Q: What is the most damaging part about being a self devided?
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Supressing your more vulnerable, more ‘genuine’ self in favor of the calculating rational self. I think it’s something that happens quite often, one tends to divide the emotional intuitive part of themself from the thinking part.
Here’s a story, then.
I’m a big believer in fleeting love. I think it’s worthwhile if it’s recognized properly as such, and sometimes your circumstances demand nothing more. And sometimes the temperaments involved allow for nothing less.
So there was this guy (and I’m sure you’ve heard this one before); he was tall, dark and handsome. I mean just lovely to look at. And he was brilliant and gifted with language and had the kind of infectious joie de vivre that you can’t help but be infected by.
He was also kind of a jerk. A little too smug and self assured, in that talking-too-loudly-at-brunch-as-if-we’re-al-fresco kind of way. He just knew, and he loved it.
So of course we’re just captivated by each other right away. And what happens is that we start going out here and there on these very innocent, casual dates. Which has to be the case (the innocent and casual part) since he is the lead man at the helm of the biggest most important client maintained by the firm I work for.
So one night, after a function, he kisses me, and he looks me in the eye. And right away I know that I have two choices; that I can either follow through with my impulses and indulge in this moment I’ve been unwittingly craving for weeks and weeks now, or that I can be realistic, responsible to the potential ramifications, and refuse to move forward. And if I refuse, then given the scenario, what I have to do is save his ego, for fear of all the professional repercussions. And the only way to do that, without losing respect or without pissing him off (the client! dear god), is to get him to really want me in a transcendental kind of way, but in a way so that he’ll know that it’s the right thing to do. To fix his impression of myself as something infinitely and unreachably adorable. To make him feel guilty of insincere intentions. This is the kind of thing that requires a great number of tactful maneuvers.
So there it is. Here, it comes down to butterfat vs. host wafer. I can melt on contact in a greasy, potentially rancid kind of way, or I can give him a taste of communion bread, with all the pretensions and considerations of failure that that metaphor affords.
The thing about those wafers is that they are manufactured. They have dies that are cast and the process requires a great deal of calculation.
We find ourselves in these scenarios, stuck between madness and method all the time. Because we have so much to lose. Hearts, head, and livelihood. The fact is that modern love is a game of gambles, and given that we know we can’t rely on traditional securities, what we tend to seize instead are the variety of protections at our disposal.
Insurance is a recent invention. And consider how unthinkable it is to live without it now.
i love this story. and maybe i heard it before, but forget. so i’m still dying for some upshot closure.
which body did you settle on- hot body or body of christ?
also
1. i know you, girl and i don’t buy the ‘unwittingly’ part, cause your movements are pretty deft and prolly nudged you there in the first place. (you jokester…!)
2. in the ‘much to lose’ list, you must add dignity and marbles.
per the heartvsmind dilemma, it’s an old thing i think both damns us [women] and yet lifts us all the same. it’s not another either-or issue though we may fluctuate and stalemate on it. but really a nice interdependent dipdicht insight. a built in system of checks and balances, if you will.
really. i can appreciate the humility and courage in risking vulnerability (and absolute emotional annihilation). but equally valid / complementary is the ability to wrap your head around it, to understand it by articulating it. you don’t blast the heart by exercising the head.
that being said, thinking gets me in my own way too muchl. it works better fo r me on the backend than in pregame. ugh. i could use a little hot body.
I have amazing friends… just thought you all should know that.
Okay, well of course, we made out a whole bunch. Later in the evening he invited me up to his room and I just had to be like, “I want to, I really do. But I just can’t. It’s just not my style.”
He made a few pleas and then finally admitted that he respected it. Begrudingly.
Anyways, we were with his friends later at a bar and he left us to go sleep alone. And I found myself talking with one of the more subdued, responsible, married men in the group. So I turned up the dial on the intellectual supercharm, with all the best getting-to-know-you stories, (even the pleasantly sad ones, like the bats in the field). And then asked him about his wife, and went on for a few minutes about how lovely it would be to be married, how it was easy enough to have fun, but how much nicer it would be to have a good match; then went on to express concern over our mutual friend and the challenges in his career trajectory and his emotional health; and I wondered out loud if he would ever get married, if he was that type. Then I split.
Anyways, dudes, I know I did the right thing, but I would so love to be up in that business right now. I mean, like, tumbleweeds…