to see oursels
i've just been reading about the distinction between self-enhancement vs self-insight today. Thinking on the bright side and the rose-tinted specs view of oneself vs realising that that's how you'd like to say it was (but know better). It called to mind two pieces of poetry (and I use the term lightly) that were on wall plaques around my house as a child. One was irrelevant to the theme above but I'll tell you anyway: it was "Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive". The other was more relevant and it took me years to work out what it meant:
From memory - enter Rabbie Burns
O' wad some po'er
the gift tae gie us
to see oursels
as ithers see us
it wad frae muny (sp?) a blunder free us
an foolish notion...
From memory - enter Rabbie Burns
O' wad some po'er
the gift tae gie us
to see oursels
as ithers see us
it wad frae muny (sp?) a blunder free us
an foolish notion...
posted by Diorissi at 6:13 PM
4 Comments:
How about some fractal perspective, some bigger-yet-smaller? Some room for paranoiac self-aggrandisement too? I'm with Phillip Lopate; well, maybe not with him...but certainly whooping with laughter somewhere near him:
We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realise we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.
In the words of the captain watching (man who usually is typecast as) Monk making love to an alien (with many gooey limbs) in (B-grade self-reflexive sci-fi) Starquest, I just want to say
- oh that's just not right...
but when placed in the feverish hands of a depressed narcissist, quite fun to watch...right up there with gooey multi-limbed alien sex for splatter potential, no?
(Oh yes, be careful what you teach. The grasshoppers are listening....)
Sorry - that should have read GalaxyQuest...it's very funny.
I did I cover narcissistic voyeurism and transplanetary intercourse with extraterrestrials then - good! I thought I had run out of time that day...
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