I’m normally a pretty cheerful and patient person (being a mother I find I have to be). I look on the bright side of life most days, and try to find the positive in every situation (it’s not always easy, but I give it the good old College-try) You’d think with Christmas around the corner I’d have a more joyful topic to write, but time and time again it seems that my patience is tried…
Line-ups – My #1 Pet Peeve - if there are more than 10 people in line I will walk away and put my potential purchases back. I will definitely NOT suffer for coffee. No matter what kind of coffee it is. Life is too short to wait in line. The only caveat to this is when I am at the grocery store and have a full cart. I will grit my teeth as the line crawls to the checkout. This is when I catch up on the latest celebrity gossip. (Must make sure I put the magazine back before proceeding through the checkout.) Christmas shopping and crowded line-ups in stores drive me batty.
Driving in Traffic – I am very fortunate that I am able to walk to work most days. On those days that I am forced to bring my car I feel my blood pressure begin to rise when traffic starts to back-up. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped between a line of cars and a curb. I’m not claustrophobic or agoraphobic – I just don’t like not moving…If I could abandon my car and get out and walk, there are many days I dream I could do just that. To get me through traffic I lose myself in the radio. I channel surf until I find something that interests me and if it’s a great song then I will sing along, if it’s a talk show then I will absorb myself in the topic.
Impatient motorists/bus drivers – If you can’t get through the intersection on the green then don’t try to sneak through on the yellow and then end up blocking both traffic and pedestrians trying to cross the other way. (On more than one occasion I have had to snake my way between cars to cross a street all the while wondering if the motorist even sees me.) No one can be in that much of a rush, can they? I make eye contact ALL the time to make sure they know I am there. There are also times when I just have to wait for another light cycle and hope for the best. Case in point: yesterday I was walking home and had approached a crossing with the pedestrian walk signal still lit up. I was one lane across the street when the signal changed to the “hand”. A bus turning right on the red started into the intersection and came within a couple feet of me. I stopped walking to make sure the driver saw me. He made eye contact with me, and then to my surprise continued turning. If I had remained where I was standing he would have hit me. I had to back up to the sidewalk to avoid being killed. It was as if he didn’t care.
Oblivious Pedestrians - People who walk two-three-four abreast on the sidewalk (and even worse, those who walk in the center) unaware of people behind them who are walking faster and would like to get by and then grudgingly move when you ask politely if you can get by, as if you are invading their sidewalk. Ditto for dog walkers who walk their dogs a long leash that spans the sidewalk and you have to either go around the dog or hop the leash. All I can do is say, “On your left” and hope for the best. Sometimes people move and sometimes they don’t.
Loud chewers - Please close your mouth when you are chewing. There is really no polite way to tell someone they eat loud without hurting their feelings. (If anyone has suggestions for this I would love to hear them)
Telemarketers – nuff said! (I know they have a job to do and I don’t fault them for that but I don’t have to like it and I don’t have to listen to them)
Malls in December - As I get older I get more and more irritated with crowds in malls. So…I refuse to step into a shopping mall after December 1st. If I have any Christmas shopping to do I will do it early in the season, or online or in stand-alone specialty shops. (*sigh…I failed with this this year…I had to step inside last weekend, but I went early and left before noon – it was the best I could do).
I am very good at calming myself down and deep breathing to get myself through these patience testers. Avoidance works best, but is not always the most practical. A gin&tonic or a glass of wine at the end of the day is also a lovely remedy.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Traditions Reconditioned
The author of a blog I follow recently asked readers to share their favourite Christmas tradition. This is a blog that I comment on quite regularly and I was looking forward to sharing my Christmas traditions. So I sat down and started to write, and realized that I really didn’t have one “Christmas Tradition”. As a child I fondly remember Christmas morning with my family when it was just my mother, father and brother for Christmas. As soon as we were old enough to figure out that we didn’t have to stay in bed until morning my brother and I would sneak out of our bedrooms and steal to the living room where the Christmas tree was. We would first check to see if Santa had come, and then seeing the plump stockings we would race to them and thrust our hands inside to retrieve the flashlight that was always included within. Santa was always faultlessly fair to both of us right down to the number of chocolate balls we received.
The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.
There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats
(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.
The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.
A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.
The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.
Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.
Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.
The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.
There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats
(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.
The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.
A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.
The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.
Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.
Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.
Friday, 26 November 2010
My Nose Knows
I have a curious sense of smell. Many of my fondest and some of the not-so-fond memories have been triggered by smells. Most of them trace back to when I was young. This makes sense. Sarah Dowdey writes on How Stuff Works: “Because we encounter most new odors in our youth, smells often call up childhood memories.”
As a child I used to visit my grandparents in Sudbury for two weeks in the summer. It was always hot and dry there – or so it seemed – and my cousins and I would spend every day outdoors. My grandparents had many large white pine trees growing behind the house and when the ground was warm and the needles heated up they emitted a musky evergreen fragrance that has stuck with me for years. When I started running over 10 years ago I had a regular route that took me past a lone white pine beside the path. On hot summer days when I ran underneath this tree, the scent from the needles so strongly evoked those memories of my summers as a kid that the first time I smelled it I had to stop and take a few deep breaths because it was so comforting and healing. Even now, each time I pass this tree in the summer I am taken back to Sudbury summers.
The smell of blueberries, which we used to pick that summer as well, will also transport me back to those days.
My first kiss while wearing Orange Crush LipSmacker has lived on in my memory and I’m taken back to that exact time and place whenever I smell anything remotely like it.
On one occasion I bought some Cucumber Melon body wash during a visit to a friend in Florida. That same weekend I met an attractive man who I spent a few hours with during a group run. From that moment on, even though I never saw him again and had never even had physical contact with him, the smell of that body wash reminded me of him. I had to finish the bottle and never purchase it again as it felt wrong to think of him while showering especially when I had just started dating another guy.
When my family lost their house to a fire in 1989 I couldn’t be near a campfire for ages because the smell of burnt wood evoked those disturbing memories of watching my home go up in flames. But that one has faded – likely because it occurred later in life and also because I have been around many fires since then, and have replaced the bad memory with much better ones.
Dowdey goes on to write: “A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the ‘emotional brain,’ smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.”
Some of my favourite smells have included:
• the back of my since-deceased ex-cat (don’t ask – long story) Sid’s neck
• fresh-baked bread (again, back to my childhood when my mother baked bread on a regular basis)
• frying bacon (especially outdoors while camping)
• decaying leaves on fall forest trails
• fresh cut wood and poured cement at construction sites (yet another youth related memory - they remind me of when my parents built their very first home and my brother and I would play at the work site during the day)
• vanilla
• sun-warmed skin on a hot summer’s day (evokes those lazy hazy crazy days of summer)
• freshly ground coffee
Finally there has been much research; much of it inconclusive, that women are attracted to a man’s pheromones. Although there may not be concrete proof, I have an interesting footnote with which to end this one-sided discourse. I spent many years waking up next to a man whose scent I found less than appealing in the morning. It was never a body-odor issue, but something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. And even though I had very strong feelings for him, I just didn’t want to be close to him in the mornings. With my current partner I find myself wanting to snuggle into his neck in the mornings and breathe him in, which makes getting out of bed very difficult unless he is the first to rise. Again I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is other than that I am attracted and comforted by it. I guess that’s a good thing. As Jennifer Aniston is quoted as saying, “The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”
As a child I used to visit my grandparents in Sudbury for two weeks in the summer. It was always hot and dry there – or so it seemed – and my cousins and I would spend every day outdoors. My grandparents had many large white pine trees growing behind the house and when the ground was warm and the needles heated up they emitted a musky evergreen fragrance that has stuck with me for years. When I started running over 10 years ago I had a regular route that took me past a lone white pine beside the path. On hot summer days when I ran underneath this tree, the scent from the needles so strongly evoked those memories of my summers as a kid that the first time I smelled it I had to stop and take a few deep breaths because it was so comforting and healing. Even now, each time I pass this tree in the summer I am taken back to Sudbury summers.
The smell of blueberries, which we used to pick that summer as well, will also transport me back to those days.
My first kiss while wearing Orange Crush LipSmacker has lived on in my memory and I’m taken back to that exact time and place whenever I smell anything remotely like it.
On one occasion I bought some Cucumber Melon body wash during a visit to a friend in Florida. That same weekend I met an attractive man who I spent a few hours with during a group run. From that moment on, even though I never saw him again and had never even had physical contact with him, the smell of that body wash reminded me of him. I had to finish the bottle and never purchase it again as it felt wrong to think of him while showering especially when I had just started dating another guy.
When my family lost their house to a fire in 1989 I couldn’t be near a campfire for ages because the smell of burnt wood evoked those disturbing memories of watching my home go up in flames. But that one has faded – likely because it occurred later in life and also because I have been around many fires since then, and have replaced the bad memory with much better ones.
Dowdey goes on to write: “A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the ‘emotional brain,’ smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.”
Some of my favourite smells have included:
• the back of my since-deceased ex-cat (don’t ask – long story) Sid’s neck
• fresh-baked bread (again, back to my childhood when my mother baked bread on a regular basis)
• frying bacon (especially outdoors while camping)
• decaying leaves on fall forest trails
• fresh cut wood and poured cement at construction sites (yet another youth related memory - they remind me of when my parents built their very first home and my brother and I would play at the work site during the day)
• vanilla
• sun-warmed skin on a hot summer’s day (evokes those lazy hazy crazy days of summer)
• freshly ground coffee
Finally there has been much research; much of it inconclusive, that women are attracted to a man’s pheromones. Although there may not be concrete proof, I have an interesting footnote with which to end this one-sided discourse. I spent many years waking up next to a man whose scent I found less than appealing in the morning. It was never a body-odor issue, but something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. And even though I had very strong feelings for him, I just didn’t want to be close to him in the mornings. With my current partner I find myself wanting to snuggle into his neck in the mornings and breathe him in, which makes getting out of bed very difficult unless he is the first to rise. Again I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is other than that I am attracted and comforted by it. I guess that’s a good thing. As Jennifer Aniston is quoted as saying, “The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Caring Capacity
We all carry baggage. For some of us it can be heavy emotional baggage, like wounded hearts and scarred souls, for others it’s more physical in nature, like those who can’t let go of body weight or possessions, and then there are the ones with what I call familial baggage; like children and aging parents. But if you are really lucky the only bag you carry is your gym bag or your lunch bag.
Emotional baggage can result from a bad breakup, stress in your life, or a traumatic event. For many people the presence of emotional baggage trumps everything, especially new relationships. Emotional baggage has followed me from time to time stymieing my urge to focus on a relationship. Many years ago when I was a couple months into dating a new guy my family lost their house to a fire. Oddly enough the house fire left me cold, and even though I had been dating this guy for a while, I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I simply lost all feeling I had for him. It was strange to suddenly feel absolutely nothing. Ironically, this house fire, while creating emotional baggage also helped me get rid of the physical baggage in my life.
Physical baggage comes in many forms; excess body weight, overstocked cupboards filled with food items near or past expiry dates, closets filled to the brim with ‘just in case’ clothing items that haven’t been worn for over a year, and even cluttered and paper covered desks because you are just too busy to file things in drawers or the round filing bin on the floor. I think shedding physical baggage is probably the easiest for me. I feel lighter when I am able to organize my living spaces and make them esthetically pleasing places in which to be.
Finally there’s familial baggage. I loathe calling my children “baggage, but they come with me no matter what I do or where I go, and when describing who I am my children are inevitably a part of that description. That said they are the best kind of accoutrements and I love surrounding myself with their presence. It wasn’t until I began dating again after my marriage ended that I noticed a big difference in my “post children” dating style. The freedom to go out spontaneously had been replaced by compromise. I quickly learned the type of person I wanted to date by his acceptance of my scheduling conflicts. There were some people who, once they found out I had children, were gone in a flash, sometimes even before our first date. What worked best was when I met someone who was both cognizant of my situation and who came with similar baggage of his own. I think that I was drawn to the same. I have dependent children and he has an aging parent, both of which require time and patience and an unending ability to empathize. There are many days we share our responsibilities (these are also the times when we must share our affections with others) and there are other days where we each shoulder the entire load ourselves. Our caring capacity does not diminish with this added responsibility. Conversely it continues to grow. It’s what makes us human.
Emotional baggage can result from a bad breakup, stress in your life, or a traumatic event. For many people the presence of emotional baggage trumps everything, especially new relationships. Emotional baggage has followed me from time to time stymieing my urge to focus on a relationship. Many years ago when I was a couple months into dating a new guy my family lost their house to a fire. Oddly enough the house fire left me cold, and even though I had been dating this guy for a while, I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I simply lost all feeling I had for him. It was strange to suddenly feel absolutely nothing. Ironically, this house fire, while creating emotional baggage also helped me get rid of the physical baggage in my life.
Physical baggage comes in many forms; excess body weight, overstocked cupboards filled with food items near or past expiry dates, closets filled to the brim with ‘just in case’ clothing items that haven’t been worn for over a year, and even cluttered and paper covered desks because you are just too busy to file things in drawers or the round filing bin on the floor. I think shedding physical baggage is probably the easiest for me. I feel lighter when I am able to organize my living spaces and make them esthetically pleasing places in which to be.
Finally there’s familial baggage. I loathe calling my children “baggage, but they come with me no matter what I do or where I go, and when describing who I am my children are inevitably a part of that description. That said they are the best kind of accoutrements and I love surrounding myself with their presence. It wasn’t until I began dating again after my marriage ended that I noticed a big difference in my “post children” dating style. The freedom to go out spontaneously had been replaced by compromise. I quickly learned the type of person I wanted to date by his acceptance of my scheduling conflicts. There were some people who, once they found out I had children, were gone in a flash, sometimes even before our first date. What worked best was when I met someone who was both cognizant of my situation and who came with similar baggage of his own. I think that I was drawn to the same. I have dependent children and he has an aging parent, both of which require time and patience and an unending ability to empathize. There are many days we share our responsibilities (these are also the times when we must share our affections with others) and there are other days where we each shoulder the entire load ourselves. Our caring capacity does not diminish with this added responsibility. Conversely it continues to grow. It’s what makes us human.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Remembering
My sons are in Air Cadets and will be attending a Remembrance Day Ceremony tomorrow. Their paternal grandfather didn’t fight in the war, but taught pilots to fly during that time. They have heard stories from their father passed down from his father. The war is more real to them than many of their friends because it has a face on it.
I am not old enough to remember a time when then world was at war. I am glad for that. But I am old enough to keep the memory alive for those who gave their lives for us.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Boys and Girls
For as long as I can remember I have always gotten along with boys better than with girls. It started when I was young. There were never many girls in any of the neighbourhoods where I grew up. I always remember having boys as neighbours, and we would hang out building forts or playing hide&seek in the bush across the road from our duplex. When my younger brother got old enough he joined us. Since my parents had a cabin 30 minutes from town we spent many weekends there and most of the summer holidays. There were no other kids nearby, so my brother and I used to make up games and hang out.
I had a few girls as friends in public school but never anyone who I considered my very best friend. The one girl that I considered to be my closest friend had many other friends in our class so she never hung out with me exclusively. As we got older the girls in my class would have Barbie parties. I remember two or three girls bringing Barbie outfits over to another girl’s house, and they would dress up their dolls and swap outfits. I used to take my Barbie outside and make her ride around the back yard in GI Joe’s Jeep with his army guy friends. While the girls were plotting ways to make Ken like their dolls, my Barbie was going on jungle adventures.
Around men I never worry about competition because men and women traditionally compete on different levels. (And as I wrote in a previous blog entry, the person I most love competing with is myself.) I ran a small town half marathon a few years back and at about the half way point I began leap-frogging with another woman on the course. I would ease ahead of her and then she would come from behind and pass me. This kept me on pace for the second half of the race but as we got closer to the finish line she kept looking over her shoulder nervously. Then when the finish line approached, she took off like a bat out of hell. I didn’t give it another thought as I was racing my own race and assumed she was too. Later on in the washrooms I was changing before the awards ceremony and I overheard a woman’s voice saying, “I HAD to pass her! I was going to be fourth…There was NO way I was going to be fourth female!!” I emerged from the washroom stall to see her look up at me. She instantly turned red and shut up. I turned and left the washroom, secretly thrilled that I had placed fourth female overall and oddly confused about why she was more concerned with what didn’t happen than with her own placement.
I also don’t have to worry about a guy vying with me for another guy’s attention, or trying to outdo me by showing up in a fancier more stylish outfit. Throughout the years this still hasn’t changed. I am intimidated by stylish women. I don’t have a fashion sense worth beans and couldn’t pick out an original outfit without seeing something on a store model and trying to emulate it. Some women look as if they don’t even try. No matter what I do I always feel like a clumsy wallflower lacking grace around other women.
I’ve tried to determine the source of why I don’t feel nearly as comfortable around women as I do around men. Looking back into my past there was never a defining moment that changed things but I guess there were lots of little things – for example one winter when I was in grade four I’d had a fight with the girl who lived down the road from me and the next day at recess she rallied our friends around her and they followed me at recess “erasing my footprints so I wouldn’t exist” giggling and whispering behind my back the entire time. That symbolic gesture has remained with me over the years because it hurt me so deeply. I remember going home and crying.
It can be argued that boys can be just as hurtful as girls, and they often were, yet I forgave them quicker. Maybe I assumed that boys didn’t mean to be hurtful, but the girls knew exactly what they were doing. I had too many secrets revealed by girls I’d trusted. (To be fair, I do have some very strong relationships with women today, and there are some women in my life who I will always be close to and able to talk to about just about anything. But these relationships have been carefully nurtured and are a subject for another post.) Boys didn’t really care about my secrets. If they thought I was being silly they would tell me. They also told me when they thought I was being smart. The girls I knew seemed to have a secret language that I wasn’t privy to. I’ve never been big on the subtleties of the female psyche, or perhaps I am just extremely naïve, but I continue to remain wary. I think when it comes down to it most of the men I’ve known have always told it like it is. I never have to try to read between what they are saying to figure out what they are saying.
I had a few girls as friends in public school but never anyone who I considered my very best friend. The one girl that I considered to be my closest friend had many other friends in our class so she never hung out with me exclusively. As we got older the girls in my class would have Barbie parties. I remember two or three girls bringing Barbie outfits over to another girl’s house, and they would dress up their dolls and swap outfits. I used to take my Barbie outside and make her ride around the back yard in GI Joe’s Jeep with his army guy friends. While the girls were plotting ways to make Ken like their dolls, my Barbie was going on jungle adventures.
Around men I never worry about competition because men and women traditionally compete on different levels. (And as I wrote in a previous blog entry, the person I most love competing with is myself.) I ran a small town half marathon a few years back and at about the half way point I began leap-frogging with another woman on the course. I would ease ahead of her and then she would come from behind and pass me. This kept me on pace for the second half of the race but as we got closer to the finish line she kept looking over her shoulder nervously. Then when the finish line approached, she took off like a bat out of hell. I didn’t give it another thought as I was racing my own race and assumed she was too. Later on in the washrooms I was changing before the awards ceremony and I overheard a woman’s voice saying, “I HAD to pass her! I was going to be fourth…There was NO way I was going to be fourth female!!” I emerged from the washroom stall to see her look up at me. She instantly turned red and shut up. I turned and left the washroom, secretly thrilled that I had placed fourth female overall and oddly confused about why she was more concerned with what didn’t happen than with her own placement.
I also don’t have to worry about a guy vying with me for another guy’s attention, or trying to outdo me by showing up in a fancier more stylish outfit. Throughout the years this still hasn’t changed. I am intimidated by stylish women. I don’t have a fashion sense worth beans and couldn’t pick out an original outfit without seeing something on a store model and trying to emulate it. Some women look as if they don’t even try. No matter what I do I always feel like a clumsy wallflower lacking grace around other women.
I’ve tried to determine the source of why I don’t feel nearly as comfortable around women as I do around men. Looking back into my past there was never a defining moment that changed things but I guess there were lots of little things – for example one winter when I was in grade four I’d had a fight with the girl who lived down the road from me and the next day at recess she rallied our friends around her and they followed me at recess “erasing my footprints so I wouldn’t exist” giggling and whispering behind my back the entire time. That symbolic gesture has remained with me over the years because it hurt me so deeply. I remember going home and crying.
It can be argued that boys can be just as hurtful as girls, and they often were, yet I forgave them quicker. Maybe I assumed that boys didn’t mean to be hurtful, but the girls knew exactly what they were doing. I had too many secrets revealed by girls I’d trusted. (To be fair, I do have some very strong relationships with women today, and there are some women in my life who I will always be close to and able to talk to about just about anything. But these relationships have been carefully nurtured and are a subject for another post.) Boys didn’t really care about my secrets. If they thought I was being silly they would tell me. They also told me when they thought I was being smart. The girls I knew seemed to have a secret language that I wasn’t privy to. I’ve never been big on the subtleties of the female psyche, or perhaps I am just extremely naïve, but I continue to remain wary. I think when it comes down to it most of the men I’ve known have always told it like it is. I never have to try to read between what they are saying to figure out what they are saying.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Competitive Spirit or Competitive Nature?
We, as humans, are a competitive species. It stems back to early days of man when one literally had to fight for food, for shelter and ultimately for survival. As humans evolved, the need to fight for the basics requirements of life began to subside. We had homes, we had jobs, and we had clothes on our back. We didn’t need to get up in the morning and wonder if we would live to see another day.
But the need to compete remained. It is a rare person who can honestly say that they are completely fulfilled and lack nothing in their lives. We all want something, and more often than not, that something needs to be fought for – in the way of competing for a better job, bidding more money for a home in a desirable neighbourhood, or sometimes even finding the perfect mate. Competition exists in some form in nearly every facet of our lives.
My own biggest competitor is myself. As long as I am achieving as much or more than I am personally capable of, I am usually happy. This drive to better myself is what motivates me on a daily basis. I don’t need to use another person’s achievements as a benchmark as long as I have my own. But that’s not necessarily true of everyone. Anthony Garcia in his article Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy says, “Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by ‘rewards’ — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.”
Some people compete ferociously and will stop at nothing to try to win. I’ve seen soccer coaches push their young players to tears for the sake of the win. The losing team feels inferior and the players begin to believe that winning is the only outcome worth playing for. I’ve seen this intense competitive nature in my youngest son. He is very good at Wii Sports and will challenge me every chance he gets. He practices and plays more often than I do, so understandably, he is better. But there are the odd times when we play that I beat him. When my points begin to creep up he’ll pause the game and ask if we can start over stating: “My hand slipped”, “I didn’t mean to do that” or some other pretext. I refuse. He always has an excuse for why I beat him and none of them are because I played better. Some people may think this is cruel, but I believe in teaching my children the honest (and simple) facts of life, that you can’t win all the time, and that if you only play to win, no one will want to play with you anymore. Already his brother is hesitant to play against him for this very reason, and even less so when he rubs it in. This is a stain that takes a long time to wash out.
I try to instill in him the sportsmanship that I was taught in school years ago, which seems to be slowly fading in today’s society. It always seems to be about the win. For me, because I am not overly competitive, it’s more about the game, and sharing the experience with others: it’s hard for me to weigh in on why some people need to be first and/or best. I am a runner and there is competition at every race I have ever run in. I have never won a race, and yet I am not at all discouraged or disappointed by this. Simply put, I don’t expect to win. On the rare occasions when I have unexpectedly placed in my age category I am pleasantly surprised. An unknown author sums it up perfectly: “The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” A little competitive spirit is good for the soul. Like I wrote earlier, it’s part of what makes us human.
But the need to compete remained. It is a rare person who can honestly say that they are completely fulfilled and lack nothing in their lives. We all want something, and more often than not, that something needs to be fought for – in the way of competing for a better job, bidding more money for a home in a desirable neighbourhood, or sometimes even finding the perfect mate. Competition exists in some form in nearly every facet of our lives.
My own biggest competitor is myself. As long as I am achieving as much or more than I am personally capable of, I am usually happy. This drive to better myself is what motivates me on a daily basis. I don’t need to use another person’s achievements as a benchmark as long as I have my own. But that’s not necessarily true of everyone. Anthony Garcia in his article Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy says, “Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by ‘rewards’ — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.”
Some people compete ferociously and will stop at nothing to try to win. I’ve seen soccer coaches push their young players to tears for the sake of the win. The losing team feels inferior and the players begin to believe that winning is the only outcome worth playing for. I’ve seen this intense competitive nature in my youngest son. He is very good at Wii Sports and will challenge me every chance he gets. He practices and plays more often than I do, so understandably, he is better. But there are the odd times when we play that I beat him. When my points begin to creep up he’ll pause the game and ask if we can start over stating: “My hand slipped”, “I didn’t mean to do that” or some other pretext. I refuse. He always has an excuse for why I beat him and none of them are because I played better. Some people may think this is cruel, but I believe in teaching my children the honest (and simple) facts of life, that you can’t win all the time, and that if you only play to win, no one will want to play with you anymore. Already his brother is hesitant to play against him for this very reason, and even less so when he rubs it in. This is a stain that takes a long time to wash out.
I try to instill in him the sportsmanship that I was taught in school years ago, which seems to be slowly fading in today’s society. It always seems to be about the win. For me, because I am not overly competitive, it’s more about the game, and sharing the experience with others: it’s hard for me to weigh in on why some people need to be first and/or best. I am a runner and there is competition at every race I have ever run in. I have never won a race, and yet I am not at all discouraged or disappointed by this. Simply put, I don’t expect to win. On the rare occasions when I have unexpectedly placed in my age category I am pleasantly surprised. An unknown author sums it up perfectly: “The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” A little competitive spirit is good for the soul. Like I wrote earlier, it’s part of what makes us human.
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