I\u2019m not claiming that my life was objectively perfect, but subjectively I\u2019ve come to a point of cultivating an attitude of \u201cso this is what it is,\u201d really knowing that I don\u2019t have a clue to what it is, but there is that awakening sensation, that moment of perceived insight: I had to mess up and get the consequences for messing up in order to learn what I needed to learn. So, though I\u2019m pretty happy now, there were times when life did not seem perfect. I was either being messed with or I was messing up\u2014or maybe a bit of both. But although everything hasn\u2019t been smooth, then again some of the really rough edges were smoothed off by good fortune, aka the protective angels of Grace. And the rough spots were indeed learning lessons that required pain, I think back, or I wouldn\u2019t have learned them.<\/p>\n
I thought people were as smart, fluid, imaginative, loose as I was. Nobody had ever said otherwise. Now I realize that it wasn\u2019t the kind of thing anyone would admit to, or even consider. Rather, they would tend to label me with words that were less flattering, judge me, and dislike me. Finally I got the message that people were put off by my exuberance, they really couldn\u2019t handle it, and I seemed to them to be too much. It wasn\u2019t their role to be accepting! It was foolish of me to have unconsciously expected them to be accepting. So I learned to tone it down, and I was still learning through my 60s! Ay yi yi! <\/p>\n
Now I still slip, but I can say with more assurance that I\u2019m okay, I\u2019m reasonably popular, I\u2019m a bit of a character but not too much. I don\u2019t try to relate to too many people, because I\u2019m aware that most folks don\u2019t know what to make of me. I have a number of friends and as for the rest, okay, I stop trying to be their good friends. I\u2019m kindly, helpful, but not overly so\u2014in contrast to a couple of decades ago when I\u2019d try extra hard to be friendly with folks who were a bit edgy with me. Now I recognize that this edge was a sign of medium-poor rapport (or \u201ctele\u201d) and that I shouldn\u2019t push my luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m not claiming that my life was objectively perfect, but subjectively I\u2019ve come to a point of cultivating an attitude of \u201cso this is what it is,\u201d really knowing that I don\u2019t have a clue to what it is, but there is that awakening sensation, that moment of perceived insight: I had to mess up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2167,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}