there must be people who pay their bills on time, take vitamins, tend carefully to their possessions, floss daily and remember what day the trash is picked up. there's no question that i am not one of those people, but there is the perennial question of whether i'd like to be one of those people, or more like them. the fact is that i can be astoundingly irresponsible when it comes to the managing my own health and finances and taking care of things i own, even the few things i love the best or need the most. i like to think that i make up for these shortcomings in other departments, that i don't attend to some things because i'm busy attending to more important things, but everyone always thinks that-- egos must preserve themselves. are my flaws a mutable and contingent matter, or do they flow from the same deep source as my talents, such as they are?
it's snowing in boston, and i can't sleep.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
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3 comments:
Why are you going to delete this? It's a great question.
About my children, I have often wondered the same thing: Are the wellsprings of their wonderful qualities also the source of their, um, blemishes? For example, Eli is not a grade grubber, and he distributes his energy among his assignments according to what's important or challenging to him. That means that he sometimes does a rather... cursory job on homework that seems lame or rote. I do see those two things as linked, and I fear that, if I advised him to put his nose to the grindstone, he might lose his lovely inclination to figure out his passions and devote himself to them.
Instead of giving up the flaws of my son, I should have given up my own!
Shame on me, trying to seem so knowing (which is the plus and the minus of the same quality).
I ask myself this question perennially. I, also, think I want to be more organized like these people, until I am around one of them -- I was around one recently, so my perception may be a bit off and not to say they are all the same, but I undoubtedly do not want to be as miserable as she. She thinks of herself as "organized" when she just likes to control everything. Said person should direct plays, I say!
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