I just realized that we tend to hold our "self images" to ourselves as if they are something we own and can somehow contain and keep from others we deem undeserving. Thus, with this idea, we believe ourselves justified in becoming angry or hurt when someone "misunderstands" us. We believe we can take ourselves back from them, reclaim ourselves from their misbegotten hands, as if this image is a physicality, an unmutable thing.
How others perceive us is not within our purview unless we wish to mold ourselves according to what we think others think. . . and how convoluted this can become, how downright crazy!
In the small writing group that my neighbor invited me to, this same neighbor wrote a moving and perceptive journal entry and read it to us yesterday, an entry about her own hesitancy in owning the name "writer" for herself and an exploration of why this is true. Partly, it is her unwillingness to be taken in by others' expectations for her, i.e., others may expect a daily entry to read and then clip out to put in their little file of her saved and treasured columns. Another part is her sense that she is losing too much energy in worrying about what others think and expect (how does she avoid feeling guilty at not meeting their expectations?). And then, there is (especially in this small town) the feeling that one is no longer able to be anonymous when one wishes to run into the grocery store and not be stopped for long conversations when the time isn't right.
As she was reading these "reasons," I thought that I'd just be considered rude by such people because I can easily tell someone else that I can't stop now but would be happy to talk more later. I also know this person to be very good herself at setting limits, at communicating her desire to be alone without lashing out angrily at someone or hurting them. But I know that people can literally suck you in to their worlds, and these may be worlds that we do not want to enter and don't even realize we've been sucked in until we've spent a great deal of time there. . . .
Instead of attaching myself to a particular "image," I want to become truer and truer to what I value most, to what I believe is most beneficial to me, to Earth, to the greater good of which I am but a small strand, though my own small strand in this fabric of life may help hold on a button or two, and that is good, too. To do this, I personally do not always have an audience in mind other than my own striving self, and if anyone else can benefit from reading about my journey, this can only add to my joy, not detract from it.
