Adam Blatner

A certain degree of self-acceptance becomes more necessary as life progresses and I make choices that diverge from the norms of the culture as to what is desirable. Consider:

They all have a point, and many other perspectives and intrinsic values might also be entertained: irrelevant, trivial, lacking seriousness, amateurish, lowbrow, intellectually too esoteric, etc. It becomes kind of funny thinking about all the ways we are that are “different.” Many of these ways we couldn’t help even if we wanted to, some of these ways we could try to accommodate the critic, but it would feel so inauthentic. I suspect, looking back, that there are a few ways where I did try to be what “they” would have preferred—and failed. I am reminded of the lines in the last verse of “Both Sides Now,” a 1969 song from Joni Mitchell (also popularized by Judy Collins): “Now old friends are looking strange; they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed. Well, something’s lost and something’s gained in living every day.”