Do you know who you are and do you let others know it? That is the question of the day; a big one, I know. I like to think that I do an okay job of letting people know who I am and what it is that I believe in/stand for. There is a lot of pressure to play the B.S. game of ‘putting on a good show’ so that everyone thinks you are ‘normal’ or at least working with the flow instead of against it. Most people that ‘know me’ are either members of a close network of friends or the readers of this blog, as I bare it all here. However in person I am just not willing to put myself out there, in the proverbial sense, to just anyone; I withhold. My problem and another post.
Life is full of little circles. You live in one, work in another, and exist within an expansive set of them. For me some of my circles are as follows: husband, father, employee, man, citizen, pro-choicer, environmentalist, lover, conserver, Mormon, recycler, voter, motorcyclist, pacifist, and believer. Each of us has our own complex set that we operate within. At some point, or perhaps multiple points, we establish priorities; even changing some of the circles we call ours; further evidence that we are not static but dynamic individuals functioning together in the complex network of society.
I am reminded of a scene in the film Office Space. The character Joanna, played by Jennifer Aniston, works as a waitress at the popular chain restaurant Chotchkie’s (a parody of T.G.I. Fridays). If you have been to Fridays, then you know of the obnoxious buttons that the employees cover themselves with; I’m not a fan. But anyway, Joanna is told by her boss that she must wear a minimum of 15 pieces of flair (buttons) on her uniform. She wears 15. But her boss believes that she should self-express with more pieces like that of a coworker who dons 37 pieces of flair. She is pushed to the point of resorting to a universal piece of flair…’the bird’. I wish it were that easy sometimes. But then again, Joanna was fired after that. It takes guts to buck the system. For the rest of us, have as many pieces of flair as you want, but no one says that you have to show them to anyone. Individuality is a virtue not a vice.
Life is full of little circles. You live in one, work in another, and exist within an expansive set of them. For me some of my circles are as follows: husband, father, employee, man, citizen, pro-choicer, environmentalist, lover, conserver, Mormon, recycler, voter, motorcyclist, pacifist, and believer. Each of us has our own complex set that we operate within. At some point, or perhaps multiple points, we establish priorities; even changing some of the circles we call ours; further evidence that we are not static but dynamic individuals functioning together in the complex network of society.
I am reminded of a scene in the film Office Space. The character Joanna, played by Jennifer Aniston, works as a waitress at the popular chain restaurant Chotchkie’s (a parody of T.G.I. Fridays). If you have been to Fridays, then you know of the obnoxious buttons that the employees cover themselves with; I’m not a fan. But anyway, Joanna is told by her boss that she must wear a minimum of 15 pieces of flair (buttons) on her uniform. She wears 15. But her boss believes that she should self-express with more pieces like that of a coworker who dons 37 pieces of flair. She is pushed to the point of resorting to a universal piece of flair…’the bird’. I wish it were that easy sometimes. But then again, Joanna was fired after that. It takes guts to buck the system. For the rest of us, have as many pieces of flair as you want, but no one says that you have to show them to anyone. Individuality is a virtue not a vice.
No comments:
Post a Comment