Rumors
As a writer, it’s exceptionally important to be self aware. You can’t write effectively about the world around you, if you can’t understand that world to begin with. Which necessarily requires, first, understanding yourself. Yourself, in terms of your own wants and desires, and yourself in terms of your relationship to others. All too often, we paste a mental picture of who we want to be, and how we want others to interpret our motives over the truth of who we actually are. Which, of course, leads us nowhere: because this is fantasy, not reality. Reality is not, and has never been, self-serving. It accepts the good with the bad, because it simply is. Unlike individual people, reality has no agenda.
I have a situation in my own life right now where someone is upset with me, blaming me for spreading “rumors” about them. Which, of course, I’m not. I think, sometimes, what people mistake for “rumors” is really other people forming their own opinions, based on the facts before them. Again, all too often, opinions that dispute a person’s chosen narrative are rejected as “rumors,” or otherwise the product of vicious minds. When in reality, they are a learning opportunity.
There’s how we see ourselves, and then there’s how the world sees us. Everyone we meet isn’t always going to agree with our editorializations of our own actions, or with how we–consciously or unconsciously–wish to be seen. And that can be a hard lesson. It’s no fun to realize that people are judging you or that, in some cases, despite your best efforts they genuinely do not like you. Sometimes it’s our fault and sometimes it’s nobody’s fault; the world is full of as many opinions as there are people, and chasing down those who disagree with us to attempt to “reform” them only increases the negativity in the world.
This person in my life, did something to me that wasn’t very nice. She did it very publicly, and expected a different result than she got. And so she blamed me. The truth is, I’m no more responsible for others’ viewpoints than she is; you can’t tell people what to believe. It doesn’t work that way. Tell people, “I’m nice,” “I’m honest,” it doesn’t matter. They’ll decide, for themselves, based on their own interpretation of your actions. Not your words, your actions. Sometimes they’ll decide right, and sometimes they’ll decide wrong. “Right” and “wrong” are subjective terms. Hopefully they’ll decide right for them; that’s all we can any of us hope for, on this mortal coil.
I understand making a public statement, and getting a negative response. When I first released The Price of Desire, some people hated Aria, my protagonist. Of course, we want people to agree with us; to agree with our view of the world. But at the same time, it’s crucially important to recognize that the golden rule, or karma, or whatever term you choose, isn’t merely a random punishment. It has teaching potential. Whatever the situation, and however dire it might seem, we conquer it when we learn from it.
I’m a nicer–and hopefully wiser–person because I’ve failed. And because I’ve let my failures teach me something. Love me or hate me, I am where I am from following my own advice. And from selecting, as mentors, those people I admire and want to be more like. Not everyone likes me, or agrees with me, but at the end of each day I can go to sleep knowing that I lived according to my own values–and that has made all the difference. The more committed you are to your own path, moral and ethical, the clearer certain things become. Like who should be in your life, and who shouldn’t; whose advice is worth heeding, and whose isn’t.
Thoughts?
