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A Thing I Am Working On
Sep. 25th, 2014 08:35 pm... and by 'working on', I mean, 'have acknowledged and am now putting consciously to the back of my mind to work on themselves while I have a bath and an early night':
I have a Thing coming up. A good Thing, an exciting Thing, a scary Thing. A Thing I have been keeping very secret.
This bothers me a little bit because I have been trying to do without secrets. I can live with this particular secret because it’s time-limited. The timer will run out, the Thing will go boom and then either there’ll be news or there won’t.
(That said, I almost always do tell people. This is the first time I’ve managed to keep the specifics of a thing to as few as two others. I’m trying to think of it as an experiment; as Things go, this one is relatively low-stakes. I will lose nothing if I don’t succeed, and will gain a lot if I do.)
All the same, I would like to be able to share the news that I already have, the news of the Thing existing in the first place, because I’m really quite pleased with it. I am reluctant to do this, however, because I do not want people to get invested in my being successful in the Thing. Say I tell twenty people. That’s twenty sets of good wishes to buoy me up as I go into the Thing.
And it’s twenty people who are disappointed – whom I’ve disappointed – if I’m not successful. Twenty sets of disappointment to drag me down again. That’s why I don’t want to tell people.
Every time – job interviews, driving tests, whatever – I’m disappointed on my own account, and then I have to tell people. I’m not surprised, now, that I bottled the vocations discernment process long before I got within sniffing distance of a Bishops’ Advisory Panel.
There are some things I know. The people that love me want the best for me. They want me to succeed in the Thing. I want that too. But I know that it might not happen.
What if there was a way for me to accept the good wishes while leaving aside the expectations and the disappointment?
What if I could distinguish between people being disappointed for me and disappointed in me?
What if I could give people gentle, subtle guidance about the sort of good wishes that are easy for me to receive and the sort that stress me out? What if I knew what those were in the first place?
I will find out.
As for the Thing itself, I am going to trust that, whatever happens, it will turn out to be what should have happened.
(No advice, please! And I think not even good wishes beyond the very generalised - I am going to have difficulty distinguishing them from expectations that I will do well, and will end up worrying about disappointing you! Thank you.)
I have a Thing coming up. A good Thing, an exciting Thing, a scary Thing. A Thing I have been keeping very secret.
This bothers me a little bit because I have been trying to do without secrets. I can live with this particular secret because it’s time-limited. The timer will run out, the Thing will go boom and then either there’ll be news or there won’t.
(That said, I almost always do tell people. This is the first time I’ve managed to keep the specifics of a thing to as few as two others. I’m trying to think of it as an experiment; as Things go, this one is relatively low-stakes. I will lose nothing if I don’t succeed, and will gain a lot if I do.)
All the same, I would like to be able to share the news that I already have, the news of the Thing existing in the first place, because I’m really quite pleased with it. I am reluctant to do this, however, because I do not want people to get invested in my being successful in the Thing. Say I tell twenty people. That’s twenty sets of good wishes to buoy me up as I go into the Thing.
And it’s twenty people who are disappointed – whom I’ve disappointed – if I’m not successful. Twenty sets of disappointment to drag me down again. That’s why I don’t want to tell people.
Every time – job interviews, driving tests, whatever – I’m disappointed on my own account, and then I have to tell people. I’m not surprised, now, that I bottled the vocations discernment process long before I got within sniffing distance of a Bishops’ Advisory Panel.
There are some things I know. The people that love me want the best for me. They want me to succeed in the Thing. I want that too. But I know that it might not happen.
What if there was a way for me to accept the good wishes while leaving aside the expectations and the disappointment?
What if I could distinguish between people being disappointed for me and disappointed in me?
What if I could give people gentle, subtle guidance about the sort of good wishes that are easy for me to receive and the sort that stress me out? What if I knew what those were in the first place?
I will find out.
As for the Thing itself, I am going to trust that, whatever happens, it will turn out to be what should have happened.
(No advice, please! And I think not even good wishes beyond the very generalised - I am going to have difficulty distinguishing them from expectations that I will do well, and will end up worrying about disappointing you! Thank you.)
