22. Bottom Line, Keep It Together

Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Bottom Line, Keep It Together. Some traits are useful in life, a good head on your shoulders, to make good decisions, if your project has legs it will be successful. A good head and legs. So, you don’t want to lose your head, that means you have to keep it together. Whatever that means. I have to say, there is a special hell for people who think it is useful to say: relax and calm down when you are teetering on the edge of losing it or if you are spiraling out. There is very low tolerance in our society for our purest moments of humanity, our tenderst vulnerabilities. Some seem to be living a latent Victorian era. I wonder who they are serving. The Queen is dead.  Upon years of reflextion, which add up to something, I’m 40 and so proud of it. I think of the concept of the norm and what is average. How there have been times in my life in which I wished so hard to fit in to a conception of average. I never did. And the reality was that I couldn’t last five minutes adhering to the social norms of a subgroup or counterculture which I perceived contained repressive rules or silly artificial standards. I was not a nerd, not a punk, not an emo, not posh, not rich, not poor, not an artist, not a philosopher, not a dancer, not popular, nor did I go unnoticed either. Most people are all those things too. Others are so eager to be seen and defined, validated. Please, don’t, I think, that might become a pigeonhole you cannot escape. It can be be so very dangerous to let someone else’s perception, skewed by definition, tell you who you are and what you deserve. I’d rather believe we can be whatever we like if we are willing to develop the skills needed. Is everything readily availabl? —No. That is life, there lies the frustration. I would think that, I am a teacher. That is a pigeonhole I worked very hard to put myself in. I guess coming to terms with a configuration of life that escapes the Victorian norm is has its pitfalls, requires courage and the willingness to put in flight hours. Of course I sometimes seek validation. Intensely. But the pigeonholes, am I right? Of course there are traits that are so natural, so engrained in your personality that it is best to know yourself and make space for what you need. We should all take architecture classes for life that start with psychoanalytical work. Make sure you are building what you want and not what they want, whoever they are. It is better to be aware of that sooner rather than later. After all, you are the one who has to live in whatever you build. Having a good head on your shoulders should include that. Ballet dancers work on their tendons and muscles, they need to be light on their feet to make quick changes, jump very high, with precision. That is part of the training. So, change you mind, make a plan, build, build wherever you want, and use your talents. Identify your talents. Surround yourself with natural teachers and leaders, who encourage you to put in the hours it will take to become who you know in your heart of hearts you can become.  This is a very enlightened notion, the use of reason and science to get what you want. Find the teachers that are aware of the importance of frustration and developing the tools to work through it and achieve. That is part and parcel of keeping it together.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BtgPdnvsMtgaoSnRVYH5_CCXJw_XUJsYzOM93oQ3dw8/edit?usp=sharinghttps://docs