Showing posts with label adversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adversity. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Art Of Being A Bitch

In life, when conflict occurs, a person has two choices. Fight or flight.

As a woman, my first instinct is to flee. Especially if I am in a conflict with a male. I even catch myself having thoughts like, be careful he could pop your head like a grape, did you see his arms? He could bash your face in and not think twice about it.

But I can't shut up. Never have been able to. For some reason that split second of fear makes me start running my mouth. I have the life experience of being with an abusive boyfriend and I took more beatings because of this inability to just be quiet, even if my life is at risk, even if I know what's coming. It's who I am, rather it's stupid or not. Rather it causes me physical pain or not.

Whenever, I find an innate personality characteristic my first instinct is to call bullshit on it. This normally leads to failed attempts to correct, alter or change this behavior. Like my failed New Years Resolution to "quit popping off at the mouth so much."

Between internet comments that I should "not give a damn", to my husband saying, "look if you would quit jumping into attack mode all the time, we could communicate effectively", I thought this was a correctable character defect.

However, by day ten, I was back to form on this one. Wound up calling my best friend and she said something that stuck out. She said, "I have known  you since you were 13 and you have always been a loud mouthed, opinionated, dramatic bitch. Ever think that's just who you are?"

As we continued to talk, I realized she was right (people reading this don't need to know all that ancient history) . She also said that I make being a bitch an art.

This made me realize that fighting instinct I have, rather childish, stupid, immature or whatever to others, is not going anywhere. I also realized it's only a character defect if I think it is. While I could choose my battles more carefully, I ain't gonna stop arguing, disagreeing, or expressing how I feel, way to loudly at times.

Just because others don't like what you do, doesn't make them right. Just because they call you names, insult you, claim you're a host of things, doesn't mean it's not some innate "youness" shining through.

So I won't wind up being some non confrontational Zen Master type, having overcome all instinct and emotion. So I won't wind up just walking away if I feel called out by someone. That's okay.

I just found another itty bitty piece of me, the real me, not who I was conditioned to be. That's worth a failed New Years Resolution. That's worth the horror of the online lookey loos.

I am a loud mouthed, opinionated, dramatic bitch.

FS

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Learning Through Adversity

Any knowledge that is not rooted in experience is suspect. One sentence that boils the essence of a Praxis to it's most basic wording.

The issue with most of humanity is putting stock in their own opinions and what one thinks about any subject. There is even a delightful selection of labels to choose from, that let people know how you think about things. Most are bound to these rather Democrat, Republican, Christian or Satanist. A label based on thought, rather than action.

But what do most do? What is their true knowledge? Do these labels for thinking in a Super Serial manner indicate who that individual is?

As I interact with others, I see most of these terms of identification are meaningless to most. Is there a difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Not really. What about a Christian and a Satanist? Not for most. I despise it.

I have never really cared what "affiliation " one claims as long as they are living it, applying the philosophical constructs they espouse, in their daily lives. I can't stand a lying, cheating, selfish Christian, the same as I can't stand Satanists who still espouse morality, living within the law and the upholding of society's values over the individual and self sovereignty.

It annoys me because anything I truly believe I live. My life has been complicated, difficult, full of just as much success as failure, mind twisting at it's most difficult, full of heartbreak, strife, and adversity, but I have survived all of it. Grown stronger due to the hardship.

The funny thing about learning through real adversity, is you don't become "nice " or "good." You become harder, more willing to do whatever it takes to survive, to thrive, to do better. You lose the comfort of depending on others, rather society or people, in favor of you and your own judgment.

One year ago, I joined SIN. So I could interact with Satanists. I learn better by doing and interacting, not reading. Things I read have to relate to my life, or I don't really "get it." If I can find a mental bridge between the idea being presented and my own life, it clicks pretty quickly.

Finding and exploring Satanism has been the single most liberating experience of my life. I lacked the language to explain my own personal philosophical thoughts. Satanism has always felt more like RE-membering,  than learning something knew. I said on the Ooze once, "I feel like I am remembering what I always knew. " That still rings true.

At the end of the day, rhetoric is just rhetoric, opinions are just opinions, ideas are just ideas, and it's mostly meaningless bullshit.  Knowledge is a personal thing, based on experience, not what others know or think. Let your Satanism bleed out, color and affect every aspect of your life. I firmly believe there is no aspect of life that is free from being infected. No part of my life where I don't apply that Praxis, nothing that isn't altered by my own knowledge and experience.

FS3.0