Taking it Personally? No, Just Annoyed

Posted on January 27, 2004 in Attitudes Hope and Joy Writing Groups

Something’s become clear to me. The difference between taking things personally and being annoyed. I didn’t take last night’s performance art personally: I did not buy into the villification. I was annoyed. A bee can sting you. It’s impersonal, no sign that you are a bad person. But it still hurts. So you can cry about it if you want.

Here’s what it deciding me: staying in the group strikes me as tantamount to buying into the villification, that I can’t be trusted not to lose control. Staying in the group means to say to myself “You’re a bad person and you can’t be trusted with your temper.” That’s demanding that I take it all personally, that I allow others to use the fact that I suffer from Major Depression and panic attacks (both controlled by medication) to prohibit me from being a full person. It’s demanding that I bottle up my feelings as if anger is always evil. It’s demanding that I go back to being the explosive bastard that I was only a few weeks ago.

I don’t want to be that person any more. I want to be the fellow I am becoming.

Was it Sartre who said “We are what we are not yet: we are always becoming”? Sometimes we can roll into a cul-de-sac and be becoming the same thing we were before. I lived at that address for all too long. I am moving on.