Boxing
"They laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at them because they are all the same."
One of my favorite sayings.
A friend and I were discussing the use of my term "minivan driving soccer moms". I realize there are thousands of women out there who drive minivans, take their kids to soccer practice, and really love their lives. Those aren't the women I am talking about.
The ones I am talking about are the ones who feel like that is who society expects them to be, and that they have no alternative.
So many people spend their lives sitting 6 inches from a brick wall, a thick heavy chain around their ankle, never realizing that the other end of the chain isn't hooked to anything. They never realize all they have to to is get up and walk away. Never know that living inside the box is an option.
I personally do not live inside the box. I stay as far away from the box as possible. When I was a teenager (Damn that seems like a long time ago!) I did things just to assert the fact that I was outside the box, I termed it doing things "for effect".
There is a certain ladies club here in hick county, that every year used to get together with other ladies clubs around the state and have sort of an art show featuring young artists from their communities. These are the little "Aunt Bea" prim and proper ladies. One year, they chose me. What they expected, and I knew it, was a nice landscape, or a still life of roses, or maybe a group of children. Would have been easy to do. Give them what they want, make them happy. Did I give them that? Of course not. I gave them my favorite work at the time, a pen and ink portrait of Jim Morrison. Yep, that Jim Morrison. Never heard from those little ladies again. Hmmm.
There was a time in my life, however, when I really tried to live in the box.
Once, when I was in my "trying to be a proper Christian woman" era, we were getting new clothes together to send to our sponsored orphan child. The minister's wife was listing the things that would be "appropriate" for the little boy, mentioning with a knowing little laugh that "we certainly don't want any leather jackets" and nothing black. I stopped wearing my leather biker jacket that winter. Got pretty cold, I couldn't afford to buy another coat, but I didn't wear it, thinking that it was something that a "good christian woman" shouldn't wear.
I am so glad that I got out of that trap. I am who I am, and if their god doesn't like me, I don't need to be there. People who don't accept me for the real me don't matter to me anyway. Not that I expect everyone to like me, or agree with the way I live my life... I just ask that they accept that that is the way I am.
I just feel sorry for the people who don't realize they have a choice. Many of the people who judge me critically for the way I live my life , the ones I feel sorry for, are the ones who are jealous of my ability to chose my way of life not realizing they have the same ability to chose thier own paths.
One of my favorite sayings.
A friend and I were discussing the use of my term "minivan driving soccer moms". I realize there are thousands of women out there who drive minivans, take their kids to soccer practice, and really love their lives. Those aren't the women I am talking about.
The ones I am talking about are the ones who feel like that is who society expects them to be, and that they have no alternative.
So many people spend their lives sitting 6 inches from a brick wall, a thick heavy chain around their ankle, never realizing that the other end of the chain isn't hooked to anything. They never realize all they have to to is get up and walk away. Never know that living inside the box is an option.
I personally do not live inside the box. I stay as far away from the box as possible. When I was a teenager (Damn that seems like a long time ago!) I did things just to assert the fact that I was outside the box, I termed it doing things "for effect".
There is a certain ladies club here in hick county, that every year used to get together with other ladies clubs around the state and have sort of an art show featuring young artists from their communities. These are the little "Aunt Bea" prim and proper ladies. One year, they chose me. What they expected, and I knew it, was a nice landscape, or a still life of roses, or maybe a group of children. Would have been easy to do. Give them what they want, make them happy. Did I give them that? Of course not. I gave them my favorite work at the time, a pen and ink portrait of Jim Morrison. Yep, that Jim Morrison. Never heard from those little ladies again. Hmmm.
There was a time in my life, however, when I really tried to live in the box.
Once, when I was in my "trying to be a proper Christian woman" era, we were getting new clothes together to send to our sponsored orphan child. The minister's wife was listing the things that would be "appropriate" for the little boy, mentioning with a knowing little laugh that "we certainly don't want any leather jackets" and nothing black. I stopped wearing my leather biker jacket that winter. Got pretty cold, I couldn't afford to buy another coat, but I didn't wear it, thinking that it was something that a "good christian woman" shouldn't wear.
I am so glad that I got out of that trap. I am who I am, and if their god doesn't like me, I don't need to be there. People who don't accept me for the real me don't matter to me anyway. Not that I expect everyone to like me, or agree with the way I live my life... I just ask that they accept that that is the way I am.
I just feel sorry for the people who don't realize they have a choice. Many of the people who judge me critically for the way I live my life , the ones I feel sorry for, are the ones who are jealous of my ability to chose my way of life not realizing they have the same ability to chose thier own paths.
5 Comments:
My God is a loving god. I let him judge and I try not to judge. My God wants me to be all that I can be. And that does not happen if I am trying to be someone else or what someone else thinks I should be. As the song says "I gotta be me" (by Sammy Davis Jr.)
Excellent essay, Amethyst. Well done and truly said.
Never worried much about god judging. For sure, people judge all the time. And that sucks. Seems the good, god fearing religious folks judge the very most.
That's just it, Buffalo. Their god is much more forgiving than they are. His followers are the ones who judge others, and criticize...
Jut like when blind Bartimaeus was by the road, and yelling for Jesus - His followers tried to make him be quiet... He wasn't anyone that was worthy of an audience with Jesus... So his followers judge others to this day... Or when Jesus dined with the tax collector, and then Mary Magdalene came in and washed his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair... They thought it horrible that he would allow "such a woman" to touch him... If she were alive today, she'd be wearing a black leather jacket just like mine...
You know Red, I have known some really great christians who don't judge others... but they are very rare... Some of the most hateful people I have ever met are christians who think they are doing god's work... but making people live seperate lives, or hurting people is not god's work...
When I start thinking about things that are deemed "not relevent" to today's society in the bible, the big difference in today's bible as compared to the meaning of the original text, the parts that were left out entirely (or added), and how only certain people can interpret the words (ministers, priests, etc.) I wonder - who made these decisions? Where is their basis in reality? How can there be so many different versions of the same religion if they all are supposedly using the same book?? Why is a person chosing their own interpretation and their own path such a complete horror to christians?
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