Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Why am I Bland?

Why are my thoughts so mundane and typical?

I don't care for living as an un-creative, stifled human, and it's certainly not what I wish to be. Yet that fate has come upon me and instead of detesting it, fighting against it, and denying it, by boring nature has more or less accepted it. Wherefore art thou, self, who once wrote nonsense stories and saw them to completion? Where have you hidden your notes, your heartfelt, foolish, but valuable vignettes; your ability to run at whim, your uncanny ability to startle when you laugh?

Granted, all of those things, when actually within my life, needed some reigning in, and I certainly couldn't have dealt with all the emotional darkness which filled the time between my miniature periods of pseudo-creativity. Yet I still miss them. Old me, set apart from others, says that I have betrayed myself and am foolish for not seeking the parts of myself so integral to my sustained well-being. New, practical me says that all lose those childish aspects and learn how to passably enjoy life without the imaginative doings of childhood.

I don't want to be a child, and I know I must develop emotional and mental well-being. Yet I see that life is bleak, too, when things are without surprise, without joy, without a childish wonder at people and places and circumstances.


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Another part of me, too, knows that the accusations made by my boyfriend are right: I am on repeat; I have visited this topic time and time again and made no real progress. That, too, dissuades me: is he right? Is life..... That? Is it?...

4 comments:

Marvin the Martian said...

What you're feeling is normal, the process of growing up, of moving into an adult's frame of mind, with an adult's memories, experience and responsibilities. When you are a child, everything is new. When you're an adult, new experiences are further and further apart as you get older, and eventually you may even avoid new experiences because they tend to make older people uncomfortable.

So you're missing the grasshopper-jumping mental creativity and wonder of a child, when you no longer have a child's mind. This is perfectly normal and expected. I long for the time and creativity to make music the way I did when I was small. I plan to do it again someday, but I simply can't do it now. It pains me, but I accept it. Adults are able to do that. Meanwhile, I enjoy the music in my heads, even though I can't get it out into the world right now.

If you're feeling that your life is mundane and rote now, I hate to say it, but it will feel even more so in the future, particularly a few years after college. So enjoy this time now. I'm not saying that the future will be worse, I'm saying that it will be different. As you get older, you will be more comfortable with that difference than you are right now.

Have you visited this topic before? Sure. Is it a problem that these thoughts are a recurring theme for you? No. It takes years to work through some things, just as it's taken you years to mature to this point. Decisions and feelings and situations often cannot be resolved overnight, or in a matter of days. It may take years, or decades, for your soul to become at peace with an event or with a situation. That's normal too. Your boyfriend is young and doesn't have your mind or your experiences, and therefore he can't appreciate that this is a long-standing, recurring issue for you. He needs to be patient with you, be supportive of you, and accept that you will not reach a resolution or attain peace regarding this issue overnight. That's what a supportive mate does. Men always want to "fix" things immediately. As they mature, men learn that they can't "fix" the issues that women wrestle with, and they shouldn't even try. They just need to be supportive, loving and accepting of her feelings and her expression of those feelings as she works through her issues. That's what love is: support and acceptance.

You are not bland at all - you are a wonderful, multifaceted, fascinating. If you were bland, I wouldn't read your writings. So there. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Lydia, the subject matter isn't nearly as important as the way you present it. There's something fun and interesting about every facet of life and the creativity involves finding that spark within the content.

If you ever read Pearl s. Buck, you'll find her treatment of the scenes in her books is fascinating. She won a pulitzer prize for "The Good Earth", a book with as mundane a subject as you may ever read. Her chracter portrayals and her perspective were so excellent, it made for a classic masterpiece of literature.

Marvin the Martian said...

Hey, saw this chart and thought of you... http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=

Marvin the Martian said...

Merry Christmas, quiet one!