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07 November 2009    10:23 am

People Of Change

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…

– Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

categories: books, life, links, literature, quotes, relationships
1 spoke back
28 October 2009    11:01 am

Does Not Meet Standards

There are people who deserve you and people who don’t. If you have someone in your life who takes you for granted or doesn’t give you the respect that you deserve, leave them in the past where they belong. Surround yourself with people who challenge your mind and bring out the best in you. As for the ones who only exist to bring you down or cheapen your potential; let them find people who are better-suited to their own qualities and principles. Hold yourself to the highest standard possible. People who don’t measure up don’t deserve your time. People who can’t see past their own cowardice or their own arrogance don’t deserve your time. Anyone who doesn’t treat you the way you treat yourself doesn’t deserve your time. And if you are treating yourself in a way that gives people permission to take advantage of you, start showing yourself the exact same respect that you should be demanding of everyone else.

– style + stubstance

categories: links, quotes, relationships
0 spoke back
15 September 2009    09:51 am

Racism Is Not Always Obvious

Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish linked to an article about basic Jungian principles to give some explanation of the psychology behind the tea-party movement. Are teabaggers projecting their need for control through their fear of (governmental) control? I think so, to some degree. But I think that it is also a fear of change, of this uppity black man who usurped their America, of the coming reality that white people have to share their power.

One of Sullivan’s readers comments:

To take [Jung and teabaggers] one step further and incorporate some innate racist tendencies that many middle class whites may not even be aware of in themselves: for the United States to be called on the carpet, chastened for our collective excesses and asked to come to our senses by a black man now that decades of Great White Fathers and their laissez-faire spending and social awareness have failed us all – well, of course puny minds are blown.
categories: links, politics, quotes, society
tags: , 0 spoke back
12 September 2009    11:27 am

Anywhere Etiquette

I have lived far down on the B line at Packard’s Corner. I have also lived in Kenmore Square. I now live in Fenway. I have lived in Boston long enough to appreciate every single word of this letter:

Dear MBTA riders,

That sucks about the fare hike huh? Anyway let’s talk about proper transit etiquette when one is crammed onto a metal tube with a bunch of strangers, yeah?

1) When you’re about to get on a train, you need to realize people are getting off of it. Wait your turn, the train conductors stick their heads out the window looking for people like you, they see you, they’re not going to pull away while you’re half in the door, even if some of you deserve it.

The list goes on.

categories: links, quotes, society
tags: 1 spoke back
28 August 2009    08:48 am

Note Bene

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes. I’m out of control and at times hard to handle, but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

– Marilyn Monroe

categories: life, quotes
0 spoke back
25 July 2009    11:37 am

Playing The Neg

This is how I feel about arrogant, sleazy people using annoying, sleazy pick up techniques (and yes, I have played the player this way):

How does one determine if a pickup technique has “worked”? What counts as success? You say that “the neg” does indeed work sometimes. What does that mean? I guess it depends on what the pickupper’s goals are. But I bring this up because that discussion about pickup techniques seemed to assume that women are all looking for nice guys to have solid relationships with – they could be seduced by “the neg” and then get burned. But women can spot pickup techniques that are disrespectful and still respond positively (outwardly). A man who uses “the neg” or some other slimy pickup technique can be taken to be someone whose feelings are not of great importance. So he could be used for free drinks, free tickets, meaningless sex, whatever – and all without guilt because, hey, he’s no better, right? It may not be moral, but it is fair. A man’s pickup techniques can signal exactly where he belongs on the relationship food chain. Has a guy who has used “the neg” and then ends up buying lots of drinks been successful? Depends on if he likes buying women drinks, I guess.

– Sonja, commenter on The Daily Dish

categories: life, quotes, relationships, society
2 spoke back
21 July 2009    09:38 am

The Extremists

Atheists are awfully quiet about the one historical attempt to mass-inculcate – and enforce – atheism. Of course this attempt was communism. Stalin mass-murdered up to 50 million of his own people, plus a few million non-Soviet citizens. My dear atheist brothers & sisters in Science, it’s not religion that bends people to pursue curious, terrorizing, or murderous ends – it’s any belief, or non-belief, taken to extremes that turns human beings into pitiless thugs and murderers. Were religious faith and religions to vanish from human kind at noon today, mankind would not be propelled or elevated to some new and Utopian age.

– Reader response on The Daily Dish

categories: history, links, philosophy, quotes
1 spoke back
04 July 2009    09:24 am

What People Do To Other People

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

– Jodi Picoult

categories: life, quotes, society
0 spoke back
02 July 2009    10:25 am

There’s A Reason Why People Don’t Stay Where They Are

Chez at Deus Ex Malcontent throws in his two cents on the Sanford affair. While many pundits snicker at Sanford’s hypocrisy—having an affair while having loudly condemned others who had them—Chez sees something sad and human in the entire fiasco.

Love can fail. Relationships don’t last forever.

Chez explains:

Once again though, [Jenny Sanford] had to know that this day would, in one form or another, come. She had to grasp, even from the beginning, that no matter the ostensible strength of the foundation she’d built with her husband — years together, kids, a home, mutual friends, a joint membership at the local country club — that it could all come crashing down and be rendered utterly meaningless at some point. That he’d be willing to betray it all for a cheap, ego-stroking thrill. Or that she might. Humans are painfully flawed creatures — maybe too inherently flawed to make a marriage, the brass ring marriage we’re taught to strive for by movies and TV commercials, work and last.

I want to believe in a love that lasts forever and can withstand anything — the good times and bad. And for a long time I believed just that. I clung desperately, passionately to the fantasy that there was a “right person” and that being in a committed relationship with her or him — while not without conflict, trauma, and a lot of hard work — would be rewarding in immeasurable ways, because that person would bring out the best parts of you and you would do likewise.

I believed so strongly in that. I don’t anymore.

[...]

Like everything else these days, love is a many fickled thing.

If you don’t think this is true, don’t worry. You’ll eventually find out the hard way.

The comments at the blog take offense at the implication that marriage is a doomed, pointless contract, but I don’t think that is the point at all. The ideal romance doesn’t exist except in stories—and apparently not in the good, memorable ones either. We all know relationships require work, that there will be bad times along with the good.

But, in the end, we all think that love can always save us from the beatings that hound a relationship.

Patty Smyth had it right: Sometimes love just ain’t enough.

categories: life, links, lyrics, news, relationships
tags: 0 spoke back
18 June 2009    06:47 pm

We Are So Much More

Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The difference is that is not all she longs to be.

– Betty Rollin

categories: activism, politics, quotes, sex, society
tags: 0 spoke back