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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Well, I've never really posted here to express my own concerns, only to attempt to help others with their's. However, I feel like this once I need to steal the spotlight for a bit and say a few words, advice would be appreciated, but more I'm looking at expressing myself to you all, rather than necessarily seeking advice.
Recently I've really been starting to notice something about myself, and this feeling is particularly stronger tonight. It is a feeling of isolation, loneliness. At the moment I feel somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, like I don't really fit in. Even here, there are opinions that are more commonly shared, opinions I often don't share, this seems to be the case everywhere. I know I'm an individual, I always have been, however right now I feel individual to the point where I'll never fit anywhere, my opinions and self are too mixed to settle in fully with everyone. I've always been a strong believer in being true to oneself, perhaps to a fault. I'm starting to feel that perhaps I should compromise myself in order to fit it, instead of being so egotistical and thinking that I shouldn't ever need to change for anyone else. I'm not particularly depressed, so don't worry about that, I'm more just pondering and wondering what I can do in order to fit in. I mean, it just seems that I don't fit any social classification, or that I fit so many classifications a little bit that I can't fully settle into one. Anyway, that's all, feel free to go about your regular business now.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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mihangel
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Likes it here |
Location: UK
Registered: July 2002
Messages: 192
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Shem, I know exactly what you mean because I've been in the same boat for much of my life, and to a large extent I still am.
Everyone's different, but some are more different than others. Some are gregarious, even to the tune of compromising themselves to fit in. Others are loners by nature. Some of us may prefer it that way, some put up with being lonely because we need to be honest and don't like playing a role. We understand what makes others tick, or like to think we do; but most others don't understand us, or show no sign that they do.
I don't think it's egotistical not to want to change, or not to try to change. Because I don't think it's something that CAN be changed: it's the way you're made, like being straight/gay, or left/right-handed, or whatever. If you do or say things just to fit in, just because it's what you think others want to see or hear, you're being dishonest.
I feel like you. If you're true to yourself, you can't be dishonest to others. Do you know that marvellous bit of Shakespeare?
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it shall follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Sure, being different and isolated makes us more vulnerable. The lack of understanding, the unintentional slight, let alone the deliberate knife in the guts, can hurt like hell. But for the most part we get on with life. We have to, because we have to, because it's the way we are.
But being a loner, being lonely, being different doesn't mean you're unique. There ARE others of similar mind with whom you can interact, if you can find them. There ARE others of identical mind with whom you can, well, identify. Soul-mates, if you're really lucky. And if you are lucky enough to find one, believe me, it's wonderful. That feeling of being odd man out doesn't disappear, because your relationship with the rest of the world stays the same. But loneliness is banished if you've someone on exactly the same wavelength to talk to.
It's not surprising you're worried about being different, and it's good that you recognise it and think about it. Loners tend to think more deeply, to understand themselves better, than the gregarious type do. Don't try to change simply in order to fit in. If you do, you'll no longer be the honest Shem you are. You'll be flying false colours.
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Hello Shem.
Funny isn't it how everybody else seems to be so self-assured and having a good time.
The reality, of course, is that you are not as isolated as you think and there are many other people out there feeling the same way. And I can certainly empathise with you because I have been on my own for most of my life, and never entirely sure whether to be content with my own feelings of isolation or frustrated by them.
But one thing I am sure of is this. You are quite right to be a strong believer in being true to yourself. I can understand why you might sometimes wonder whether you should compromise yourself in order to fit in, but that strategy is never going to work.
Have you ever read Dale Carnegie? Some years ago I took the Dale Carnegie course and found his books very illuminating. And they are as valid today as when they were written sixty or seventy years ago. Here is an extract from How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. It's from the chapter called "Find yourself and be yourself". It made a big impression on me when I first read it and I have thought about it many times since. Maybe it will help you too.
I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourself because I feel deeply about it. I know what I am talking about. I know from bitter and costly experience. To illustrate: when I first came to New York from the cornfields of Missouri, I enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea, a shortcut to success, an idea so simple, so foolproof, that I couldn't understand why thousands of ambitious people hadn't already discovered it. It was this: I would study how the famous actors of that day - John Drew, Walter Hampden, and Otis Skinner - got their effects. Then I would imitate the best points of each one of them and make myself into a shining, triumphant combination of all of them. How silly! How absurd! I had to waste years of my life imitating other people before it penetrated through my thick Missouri skull that I had to be myself, and that I couldn't possibly be anyone else.
That distressing experience ought to have taught me a lasting lesson. But it didn't. Not me. I was too dumb. I had to learn it all over again. Several years later, I set out to write what I hoped would be the best book on public speaking for businessmen that had ever been written. I had the same foolish idea about writing this book that I had formerly had about acting: I was going to borrow the ideas of a lot of other writers and put them all in one book - a book that would have everything. So I got scores of books on public speaking and spent a year incorporating their ideas into my manuscript. But it finally dawned on me once again that I was playing the fool. This hodgepodge of other men's ideas that I had written was so synthetic, so dull, that no businessman would ever plod through it. So I tossed a year's work into the wastebasket, and started all over again. This time I said to myself: "You've got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and limitations. You can't possibly be anybody else." So I quit trying to be a combination of other men, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences, observations, and convictions as a speaker and a teacher of speaking.
Finding and being yourself is not at all the same thing as being egotistical. One day, when you meet someone special, they will want to get the know the real you, not a compromised version.
Be proud of who you are.
Nick
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13750
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I looked for ages at your message, thinking, and trying to help.
I am going to make some assumptions. You can say if they arte right or wrong, if you like.You are away fomr home for the first time. It is "ok" but sometimes very lonely. Homesickness is an odd thing and bite sus in different ways- Your faith is important to you, but it feels different in a strange place. The pillar it was at home is different feeling where you are
- You sometimes confuse "being yourself" with other things.
I can help a little with the last one. The others, well they are deeply perosnal things and need you to think.
Be yourself. But not "Here I am, take me or leave me" for most people will leave you. Instead be th eindividual you are, with soft edges. Compromise everything except yout principles, but wear the principles as a velvet coat, not a suit of armour. Instead of "stating" an opinion, ask about it instead in a persuasive manner. Your faith, I know, provboded absolutes as answers. It is very hard to see, when brought up in a stern faith (I mean no disrespect here), how to ease one's way with those whose faith is less unyielding. That seeps into all of one's interactions.
The trick is to defuse the times when things like rigidity might intrude.
Now I have probably got it all wrong. But there is food for thought here.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Firstly I'd like to thank everyone for replying. It has helped knowing there are people that care. Timmy, I think you have got a point in talking about my religion, since I moved I've taken a far more passive religious stance, I've stopped attended church, and started to think outside the Mormon square. Right now I probably consider myself to be a Thiest more than anything else, I believe there's a supreme being, but I'm yet to determine for myself what I believe "its" nature to be. I do believe Jesus was a great man, and had a strong connection with the supreme being, and sacrificed himself for humanity, however I don't like the label "Christian" as it has too many negative connotations and other ideas that I may not share associated with it.
That all said, I still believe through my religion I've become quite "rigid" as you say. I believe in right and wrong and although nothing is totally right or totally wrong, I still believe that certain choices can be "more right" than another choice. I also believe in the quest for perfection, it is something we as humans will never achieve but my belief is that we should work towards it. This puts certain demands on me however, as in all things I am looking to do the greater good, I'm quite a harsh judge of myself as I see how far from perfection I am. I try to be well balanced, but in the process I become a jack-of-all-traits but master of none. I have many many interests and many social groups that I wish to be involved with, but my thought pattern stops me from pursuing one as that would mean the exclusion of others. I need to realise my own limits and that there's only so much I can do.
Also as you say I feel I don't negotiate my actions to better fit in with others. As people have said it is important to be true to oneself, however that doesn't mean just accepting your flaws instead of working at them. I think in real life I just act however, without giving thought to what other's reactions may be. At times I can be thoughtless and tactless in dealings with others because I just do what "comes naturally" per se, without actually thinking about it. Then, at home on the internet, that is when I think too much, I analyse myself too much to the point where I feel I'm so flawed that I don't even go out and try to make friends as I fear rejection.
I'm an active and social person, I love to be doing things with friends. Unfortunately though, the "making friends" process is something I'm not very good at. I'm secure in a group once I have friends, but approaching people is something I've always had trouble with. Moving away from home has been quite a shock and it has thrown me into a situation where everyone around me seems so different from me, and from what I'm used to as well, despite everything, at the end of the day I'd come home to a Mum that was not only familiar to me, but who was similar to me and who on an unspoken level I could relate to. As you say, it is homesickness, but on a very different level to what most people experience, I think I'd prefer to just miss my family, friends and places I loved, but instead it's more a feeling of being out-of-place.
I guess I just need to pick a social group that interests me and work a bit towards acting in a way so that I'm accepted by that social group. If I choose to be an internet nerd, then I need to be more active online, learn to talk more in chats, etc. If I choose to be an intellectual, then I need to do my school work more, get involved with intellectual groups, read more books, care less about what I wear and focus on other things. If I choose I want to get involved with mainstream gay society then I need to adopt traits and habits more accepted by that group. And regardless of what social group I join, I need to learn to think about how an individual will react should I talk or act in a certain way before doing it. I need to become more aware. Then, once I've done all this I need to just accept it, instead of always looking for more. Anyway, just a few more of my thoughts in response to the comments I received, I again thank you all for them.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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mihangel
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Likes it here |
Location: UK
Registered: July 2002
Messages: 192
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As I understand it, we're talking here about something deeper than homesickness, about something etched into our soul. I'm not sure that even faith comes into the picture either: we may feel out of a limb, but we still cling to our faith, if we have one, because it's a fixed point in our lives. Maybe the only one we have.
Nor are we talking about what's sometimes called divine discontent. That IS common. By that, I understand a discontent not with what we ARE, but with what we DO with what we are. Like being in a dead-end job (or even a dead-end marriage) and knowing that, given our make-up, we could do better elsewhere. Or feeling that we could do better in the job or marriage that we are in.
There is compromising and compromising. At one level, of course, we all compromise, or most of us do. No reasonable person would suggest being totally true to ourselves, totally honest, in everything. That's not the way society works. Being abrasive helps nobody, and tact and politeness, even when we're miffed or hurt or livid, is the expected norm. So show soft edges, sure.
But in fact, as I see it, we're not talking about communicating directly with other people at all. We're talking about self-perception, about what's inside our heads, and how we deal with that, inside our heads. The people we're talking about think "I'm a square peg and all the holes out there are round. I don't fit." One solution - in my eyes a bad one - is to shave the corners off until our peg is round and will fit. That's not compromising our principles, it's compromising our very selves. In a simple practical example, it's pretending to be one of the lads when we know very well that we aren't. It's dishonest, and it rarely works (I've tried it) because it isn't easy to fool oneself by betraying oneself.
And that's why I say, accept that you're a square peg, accept that you're likely to be a solitary, until a square hole swims into your ken. Try to be proud to be different (you'll see an obvious parallel here). Indeed, try to think not that you're different from others, but that others are different from you. It's a much more positive approach because it boosts your self-esteem. It's not dishonest because it is equally valid. Odd men out are not necessarily wrong or inferior. And it helps. At least it's helped me.
But let's hear what Shem's comeback is.
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mihangel
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Likes it here |
Location: UK
Registered: July 2002
Messages: 192
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As I was finishing my last, you pipped me to the post.
Just one point in what you say. You talk about flaws in yourself. OK, if there are flaws that you recognise, work on them, fine. I was going on about deeper things, part of your very fabric, which I don't think can be called flaws. Nobody here, presumably, would think of gayness as a flaw. I was talking about being different at that sort of level.
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Well, I know I'm different on that "higher" level, too but I know trying to change on that level would be not only impossible but morally wrong. Instead I'm trying to focus on changing the things that I can change. Shallow things that on top of the deeper ones set me a part. I have a different way of reasoning, arguing and thinking from most people I see and while that is an innate part of my nature the way I express my thoughts to others is something I can change. Ultimately I'm looking not at shaving off edges of my octagonal peggedness, I'm more looking at lubrication that might help me slide into some kind of hole a bit easier.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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trevor
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Really getting into it |
Registered: November 2002
Messages: 732
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It sounds like you're very analytical and detail-oriented in most of your thought processes. Those can be excellent traits, but it also sounds like you need to truly accept yourself for what you are - not work so hard at perfecting every aspect of your person and life?
I mean, cut yourself some slack and don't be overly critical of yourself. I suppose I probably go too far in the other direction and am just too laid back sometimes! But, frankly, people don't to be around "perfect" people because it makes them feel inferior and like they have to "compete" and can't relax and be themselves.
I hate to be overly simplistic and of course don't know you well, but especially in social situations, it's important to focus on your similarities with others rather than your differences. Maybe just spending more time listening would help if you seem to express opinions that put others off, or perhaps thinking about how what another says is relevant to you?
I don't think it is a "compromise" in any way to sometimes NOT express a differing opinion. Sometimes it just doesn't matter and isn't productive. Our war debate is a good example. You don't have to agree with things you don't agree with, but every opinion doesn't need to be expressed.
I guess I would never even consider changing my dress or mannerisms or vocabulary or whatever to become part of a group - I do dress and speak appropriately for work and church, but I can still be myself in personality, style, lack of style, etc.
I don't think you have to fit a "classification" to be part of a group. All of us can relate to a bunch of different groups in different ways. If we fit a stereotype too well, we're probably faking it or extremely boring. The surprises and quirks can be what make people interesting.
I'm an introvert and hard to get to know mostly because I'm quiet and self-conscious, but I've heard that others can take that as being aloof. I don't really know how to make small talk and don't talk about things others do just to make conversation. But, because I'm "inoffensive", perhaps to a fault, people tend to really like me once they understand I'm just shy, so I don't worry about it much. Well, that's just me, for what it's worth.
We all have so much in common, really: We want to feel successful, appreciated, loved, and secure, although of course different people feel these through different actions or indications. But, it's the commonality that makes us human, not the "implementation details", me thinks.
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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This is something i read the other day and i thought i should share it with you.
This is the link if you would like to read more about the subject http://www.bashar.org/HOMEMAIN.html
go to the link on the top which says (ABOUT) it really interesting you should check it out. You dont have to believe if you like!
Here is the text:
"By changing that frequency, by accelerating it…by stepping it up
through the method of being more yourself,
getting closer in alignment to your true, core, vibration,
you will create a reality that makes it more likely
and more probable and more possible,
for any other being that operates on a similar level,
to be able to interact with each and every one of you,
individually and collectively,
but first and foremost, the people you must meet,
the "aliens" you must come into contact with
are those portions of your consciousness,
that have for thousands of years been suppressed within you
and have become disguised in the idea of fear,
in the idea of denial…in the idea of all of these fragmentations
that have occurred in your consciousness.
So, the ideas that we will most likely be discussing
are notions of how to become more of yourself,
how to remember who you are
and not just on a philosophical level,
but on a pragmatic, practical physiological level of physics…
how to apply these principles into your day to day reality
to get an effect,
for we understand that just as we are…you are physiological beings
and you must understand how to connect the idea
of spirit and mind with body
in order to complete the circuit that allows you to have
the experience of spirituality in the physical plane
and not just relegate the concepts of spirituality
to higher philosophical and etheric realms
with no practical application in the realm you decided to experience.
For there is nothing unspiritual about physicality,
it all depends on how you use it…that's the point.
To a very great degree,
to put this in a very simplistic idea or foundational fashion:
"One of the greatest acts of spirituality that you can possibly achieve
is to simply live your physical life to the fullest that you can".
And this brings us to the crux and critical point
of the things that we wish to reflect to each and every one of you.
The critical point is this:
How to discover the vibrational frequency of who you are.
How to allow yourself to continue to create that frequency
moment to moment…day to day…in your life,
as you desire to…as you choose to."
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tim...of usa
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Likes it here |
Location: buffalo, new york...USA
Registered: July 2002
Messages: 266
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well the only thing i have to add is that i think you hide in cyber land way way to much. if you did not have your computer you would be forced to get out there and at least try to be social, with your nice safe cyber life you get to hide for any and all possible human contact, its "safe" in cyber land for you.
not saying that on line is bad but you have to have BALANCE in all parts of your life.
as has been said by my self to you personally in chats and here:
cut your self some slack
dont think to much about what is wrong
join some social groups
try and balcnce things is your life
stop the "black and white" thinking...the only absolute in life is death
well my friend we have been over this many times and i am really glad that your reaching out to others...ball is now in your court.
peace
love you shem
hugs
tim...of USA
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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Well I realy dont know how to respond... I knew you were having a hard time of it, but not this hard.
Yes finding friends is important, very important, just as having a place is.
I know if you work at it you can slip in anywhere and do anything. You have proved that to me on many occasions.
Dont give up. You gave me this piece of advice once... I think it only fair that maybe i give it to you now;
"Have fun, and no regrets - be strong and never look back"
Well might need a little amending.. because looking back can be good at times.
I know you can be strong, you can be very strong, one hell of a lot stronger than me.
If you need help, or to talk to someone, then there are many people out there willing to listen. You DO have a lot of friends.
You also gave me something b4 I left... dito what it says to you.
Please take care.
-your friend
Jake
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