Two quotes from my favorite television show – Scrubs – one from tonight’s episode and one from a couple of weeks ago.
"Sometimes the easiest way to lose something is to want it too badly." – JD (Zack Braff – who I am in love with).
"show me a well-adjusted, successful man who wants to settle down and have kids, and I’m not interested, but find me an alcoholic in his midthirties that still thinks his band might make it, and just tell me where I can show up and buy him dinner." – Molly (Heather Graham) the psychiatrist.
I don’t know why these two quotes struck me, but I like them. I love Heather Graham’s character, because she is totally aware of who she is and she is okay with it. She is also overly optimistic, happy, and chipper. And the amazing thing is that her happiness and optimism totally irritates a lot of people. Fascinating.
Jessica and I were discussing the upside to living in a fantasy world. In our fantasy world, everyone has good intentions and deep down is a good person. It takes a lot for someone to convince me that they actually don’t like me. I know I talk about this a lot, but I honestly don’t have the energy to think that someone doesn’t like me. I have been working on this new life approach for a while, and here it is (if you spend much time with me in person or on the phone, you can probably skip this part because I talk about it a lot).
New Life Approach:
I believe that all the problems in the world and especially in relationships come down to two things: 1. Bad Self Esteem and 2. Miscommunication.
This being the case, I am no longer going to take people the wrong way and I am going to try to keep my bad self esteem from getting in the way of me loving people. Bad self esteem makes me react the wrong way to people – and then it is easy to miscommunication. I have been trying to think of practical ways to put this plan into action, and the simplest thing I can do is to not react. Or maybe, not to over-react. If someone is not nice to me, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt that it has nothing to do with me, and they might just be having a bad day.
Another important side of this new approach to life is to be aware of others bad self esteem and inclination to misunderstand me. So it is important to be a good communicator. When ever possible, I am going to be upfront with people about how I feel (but remembering their bad self esteem at the same time). The downside of this is that I have a tendency to wear my heart of my sleeve – my mom has been trying to teach me not to do this for years – but some things you just can’t change. Therefore I must have a high tolerance for people in general – or only hang out with people I really like – in order to not increase someone else’s bad self esteem. But I really and truly do like most people, so maybe it won’t be that difficult. Also, must be aware of situations that are likely to bring out bad self esteem, we all have our own – mine tend to be around people I really like a lot who I am not convinced like me, and also with regards to my usefulness – I love to help, and some people don’t want my help – and this is where I get very defensive (there are many others, but examples – oh I also hate it when people want to take my temperature about something – my academics, my spirituality, my dating life – i.e. – "How are your outlines coming?").
This might make me seem overly concerned with others and selfless – but really this is pretty much for self preservation more than anything. I don’t know, I guess it is just important to me to believe that people are inherently good for the most part – and this is a way for me to analyze away some of the everyday problems that I see with the world. I know, I’m delusional and naive, one day I am going to have to deal with the real world, but until then, don’t be the reason I lose my enthusiasm.
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the thin line between optimism and delusion... 