It's Bigger Than We Think

I wince when someone labels himself a "Conservative" or a "Liberal"  Especially when they are a "true conservative" or a "true liberal".  There ain't no such species.  Never was.  Never will be.

For instance, the founders of the Tea Party wear clothing.  Great Gadzooks!  Our forbearers, way, way back, the "TRUE HUMANS" didn't wear clothing.  The liberals among them had not invented loin cloths or jock straps or "over the shoulder boulder holders".  Not only that, but Tea Party members ride in cars, on airplanes and don't smell of horse manure.  A slightly true conservative would be looking back at the horse and buggy days as the "Better Days" when no one stole, when men were men and women were women and gays non-existent.  OK, maybe they do smell of bull manure.

The blind conservatives don't realize how much "progress" they have embraces in order to flaunt their so called brand of purity.

Lest I forget the true liberals, every one of them hearkens back to something, some value, some memory, some good old day, in some way.  There is no true progressive, no true liberal, either.  Not 100%.

In fact, we are all a mixture of looking backwards and looking forward, of nostalgia and hope, of being glad for something in our past (maybe even just being born) and being glad for our iPhone or car or pizza  takeout.  (I remember when there were only the two, first, pizza places in all of the Seattle metro area.  I got my pizza from one of them.)

Looking for purity in people is like looking for purity in an active volcano.  Everything is pretty much mixed up, just in different amounts and different ways.

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Musings About Perfectionism

I have a family member who wants things and people and relationships and herself to be perfect.  She imposes this demand on most people around her, and [sometimes] on herself.  Most of the time she does not know this about herself.  It may be a corollary to this, but she has no sense of humor.

I'll muse about how humor usually is a way of dealing with foibles, failures and imperfections -- one of these days.

She wants to be the perfect wife, the perfect parent, the perfect teacher, the perfect cook, the perfect housekeeper and the perfect friend.  Possibly you know someone who can actually be that perfect.  I don't.  Yes, I know her.  She is not perfect.  How she copes with being not-perfect would be funny if it were not so sad.  I'm too close to laugh.  I weep for her.

But she wants me to be perfect, and the perfect man does not weep.  In her judgment, I am a failure.  I guess I have been a failure for many years, in her view.  In my view, I'm human.

Life is too complex, and living to complicated, to be always on, always right, always having just the perfect emotion for the situation.  Anyway, get two experts on living in the same room and they will not agree on what the "perfect" and "right" response is to any given situation.  So how can anyone know what would be "perfect"?

Ask her.  Even if her answers differ from month to month, she is convinced she is "right", perfectly right, and any given moment in any given month.  Thus I fail, in her eyes, and she fails often in her eyes.

I find it supremely sad.  I find her a walking sack of misery, and I hurt for her.

Perfectionism is not only a form of mental illness, it's a form of self-hatred.  I don't think I know anyone who deserves to be hated all the time, even by herself or himself.

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