Growing Pains
Yet another name for my current life experiences. The term came from K. For a guy who insists he's not into psychoanalysis he can be amazingly insightful.
One of the underlying themes of this blog has been my fear of commitment. Are people who are afraid of commitment really afraid of growing up?Are we just spoilt?Is that it?
Strangely enough he didn't say that about my attitude to my personal life. It came up today while he was trying to explain to me the intricacies of internal Egyptian politics - on the background of the elections. He was trying to say among many other things, that while I have a lot of interest in politics generally & Middle Eastern politics especially, am too utopian, too preoccupied with ideals & theories, not interested enough in pragmatics.True enough in a way. Am very good at diagnosis. Can tell you everything that is wrong with our part of the world. But have never given much thought to practical solutions.
Possible explanations:
1) Am one of those people who are much better at cursing the dark than lighting a candle.
2) I know too much about all our social & political handicaps to feel real hope or interest in any suggested solution.
3) When trying to think of practical, applied solutions you have to compromise your ideals, to negotiate, to support people or positions that are distasteful to you because they might be better than all available alternatives. Don't want to do that. Don't want to get my hands dirty so to speak.
I think no.3 is most likely. Quite often when am criticizing politicians am secretly glad am not in their shoes. That I don't have to make any decisions. And that I have the luxury of stating opinions & not being responsible for any consequences.
In a sense people who back a a real solution expose themselves to being blamed later if it fails. Even if you just backed them in a friendly discussion with friends or family people will come back & tell you see?It didn't work.
And even that small commitment is too much for me. Have perfected this into an art. No one has anything on me. You can't pin me down. Am on both sides of every issue.
In everyway this pattern is reflected in my personal life too. That's the difference between me & him. It's not just a Libra Taurus difference. I depend on my family while his family depends on him. This is one reason why inspite of all my complaints about them am so shaken by the fact that my brothers are moving on with their lives.
The old support system that made it possible for me to go through life without ever being responsible for anything is coming to an end.
Even when I travelled abroad for my education which could have been a great opportunity to learn to be responsible & independent up to a point. How independent are you when your parents are paying all your bills?But still I could have learnt to at least my manage my day to day life on my own.
Didn't though. My bro was there. So it wasn't very different from my life here. Guess who took care of everything for me?
Essentially all I did there was study, enjoy myself & complain about his interference.
It IS growing pains that made me so scared of commitment even when I fell in love. The idea of marriage & being responsible for a family. Me.The eternal child.So my childhood is finally coming to an end. Will have to stand on my own two feet. I have to grow up. And instead of all this kicking and screaming I should try to do it gracefully. Am 29 years old. It's about time.
posted by LouLou @ 12:49 AM
4 Comments:
Enjoyed your blog.
It isn't 'growing pains' that's bothersome it is basically the pain of being a woman in a man's world that's bothersome.
You might like to visit my blog.
"It isn't 'growing pains' that's bothersome it is basically the pain of being a woman in a man's world that's bothersome."
If am going to be perfectly honest I'll admit that being a woman in a man's world has worked out pretty well for me so far. Would be really ungrateful if I said otherwise. It's a fact that all the men in my life so far have treated me like a princess. And that I've taken a lot from all of them & given very little back.
i was actually puzzled reading your post. you do not seem like someone who is dependent and irresponsible at all.
after all you d carry your full responsibility of your job, your relation ship with K, your blog, your discussions. no i don't think you are dependent and iresponsible by nature. i think it would come naturally to you being responsible.
as for having 2 sides of an argument: keteer awy you have mostly one side at heart, but you are able to see the other point of view, that is a good thing
doshar,
Thanks for your comment. It's true that when something is an unavoidable responsibility for me I tend to become obssessive about it. Am a perfectionist & pretty competitive. So work comes pretty naturally to me.
What I meant is that I tend to try very hard to avoid taking on new personal responsibilites - no matter what the reward maybe. Maybe this is a a natural consequence of being a perfectionist. You don't want to do anything unless you're 100% sure you're going to do it well. If am not sure I'd rather not try at all. Don't believe in trial & error. And find it too hard to forgive myself for failure or even partial success.
Work is different. You have years of academic training & testing to prepare you for it. In personal life there are no such guarantees.
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