{"id":870,"date":"2013-02-26T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T00:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=870"},"modified":"2013-02-28T16:25:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:25:19","slug":"celebrating-your-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Your Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself! I am great! I contain multitudes!\u201d wrote the American poet, Walt Whitman, in the mid-19th century (in a poem, \u201cSong of Myself<\/a>\u201d). This blog post is a re-affirmation of the glory and necessity of individuality. The notion that we have to bring it all together in some consistent whatever is misleading. The way we bring it all together is that as Shakespeare said, \u201c…one man plays many parts…\u201d (In his \u201call the world\u2019s a stage\u201d speech given through one of his characters in As You Like It, Act 2, scene 7). A life lived can enjoy a moderate degree of diversity as we spend some time at work, some time at home, some time in the garage at our workbench, some time with our pets\u2014very different roles come forth. In my life I have roles where I write, edit, try to be coherent, rational, or at least easily followed. In other roles I\u2019m more dreamy, poetic, mythic, fantasy-filled, child-like. Some roles make presentations or write papers, some roles do dishes. <\/p>\n

Yes, one of the challenges of life is to promote some integration rather than fragmentation, but this can be relative rather than either-or. Integration is not an absolute goal. You\u2019re in no way a failure if you don\u2019t wrap up all the loose ends. Indeed, some of those loose ends are what make you so special. It may be fun in some ways if and when you find that aspect A also mixes with role B when you do C\u2014but it\u2019s an aesthetic discovery, not a measure of yourself as effective. Indeed, discovering that you can fully accept some of your less talented facets without having to measure them as \u201cnot as good as\u201d some others is yet another kind of integration!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty good at a few roles and enjoy stretching and pushing myself in, say, my writing. But again, I accept myself as okay in a number of roles in which I don\u2019t make much effort to improve my skills further. It\u2019s good enough. Then there are many roles I play in which, truth be told, I\u2019m really mediocre\u2014about as good and bad as most folks. That word, \u201cmediocre,\u201d implied a real fault when I was growing up, but it turns out that it\u2019s no big deal if I am. Hey, also, there are a fair number of roles where I\u2019m inferior! Some of them I simply avoid and don\u2019t bother with. Others I can\u2019t avoid so I pay someone else to do them\u2014or there are a few roles I\u2019m not good at and Allee enjoys doing them and does them well. Other roles I do okay\u2014like dishes\u2014she hates. So we complement each other. The crazy message from my schooling is that I had to excel in all ways or I\u2019d not get a good report card. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s crazy because I don\u2019t care about and won\u2019t ever use (or hardly) a good many subjects and yet I will use some others. I\u2019ve discovered to my chagrin that one doesn\u2019t have to be very well-rounded. I\u2019m pretty well-rounded, as I look at my peers, but \u201cgood enough\u201d is an operative theme in my world.<\/p>\n

Keeping Up with What\u2019s Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

A parallel theme in our changing world was an older belief of mine, sort of implicit, that I could keep up with what\u2019s coming down, science and news-wise.  That was more vivid among the educated class, and there were even books (more comedy, but not entirely) about what can seem smart to say at parties. Looking back, that was so 1970s. Acceleration of (it seems) \u2018most everything continued and today there\u2019s no way to be \u201cau courant,\u201d cutting edge. There are now way too many edges! <\/p>\n

The spring gave forth a trickle which became a stream, a creek, a pond or lake, a big ol\u2019 river, a waterfall, a delta, a flood, a tsunami (tidal wave). Between a lake and a big river one begins to drown. The metaphor simply refers to the continual acceleration, broadening, and complexity of everything in the culture. The proper way to cope is to let go of the dream of being a generalist (unless one keeps that as a casual and highly imperfect role), and to be good at whatever is your focus\u2014or good enough. In a globally-connected world, chances are high that there are lots of folks better than you at your specialty.<\/p>\n

I cope by mixing how good I am at what I do with finding a relative ecological niche\u2014not many people are talking about what I focus on.  So that gives me a bit more courage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself! I am great! I contain multitudes!\u201d wrote the American poet, Walt Whitman, in the mid-19th century (in a poem, \u201cSong of Myself\u201d). This blog post is a re-affirmation of the glory and necessity of individuality. The notion that we have to bring it all together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-literacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870"}],"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=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}