I hereby declare a
war against
the oppression of definition.
Defining oneself is
oppressive.
i.e. I am
stupid, I am no good at
math, I am not
artistic, I am
blah blah blah
Tell yourself something long enough and you'll believe it, you'll live it, you'll become it.
My
7th grade teacher once told us that to become something, you first have to lie to yourself about it sort of... tell yourself you are what you are desiring to become...
pretend to be it...
act like you are that.. and someday.. you
will be whatever it is you were aiming for. (
That woman was a mean but wise old lady who i gave much hell as a 12 year old)
You can trick yourself into becoming something you aren't at the moment.
I never knew I was good at math until college. Throughout
grade school and
high school I was
average, even when I tried. I didn't know our teachers just really
sucked! I get to
college and discover that
calculus is fun and that I loved
statistics. Strange how things work. And for most of my life I proclaimed, I am no good at
math!
But I was after all..
I mathematically disadvantaged myself (kind of) because I viewed myself as mathematically stupid. But then I got pissed at the world and wanted to make people
angry by succeeding at something.. and by golly it worked. And I can do math. (even if that's all I can do)
I don't know if this makes any sense.. but defining yourself by a few events, is a bad idea. People change. Things change.
The above was hatched in an
EFTSOE to a friend in
Minneapolis.