You Don’t Know Me
I recently have been mischaracterized in some very harsh and potentially damning ways.
Being mischaracterized really pisses me off. I go from zero to 100 in rage and anger when I have been mischaracterized. See, I feel I’m a great guy, an understanding guy, a kind guy, a guy that is reliable, a straight shooter. But others perceptions of me rarely seem to align with this rosy view of myself. This has always been difficult to accept.
Even well after Get Real I still had issue with being mischaracterized. I would obsess about what I could do to prove to other people that their perception of me is undeniably out of whack, that, in fact, I am the precise opposite of the presumed perception. This, like rejection, would occupy my mind for days, weeks, months. Though I would not feel depressed because of it, I would feel continued frustration and powerlessness.
What is at the core of this obsession with being characterized rightly? Wanting to feel accepted, and that is rooted still deeper in my own feelings of disconnection.
I just realized today that being mischaracterized no longer has the same punch it once had my entire life.
And this is no exaggeration.
My WHOLE conscious life I always got the most angry at being mischaracterized. When people perceive me as being one way, as being such and such a person, but I know with all my being that I am no where near their perceptions, I would blow up!
So what has changed for me? What has happened that I no longer experience mischaracterization as I had in the past?
Simple: I live truthfully.
Over the last three years, the choices I make and actions I take in my life are not based on how those actions will be perceived by others. I do what is right to the best of my ability.
This is not ordinary, at least not amongst a good number of people in my current social orbit. They are concerned with “looking good,” making a good impression, saving face, giving face, and not wanting to make others “look bad.” Each person, wanting so deeply to feel connected, are more than willing to “keep up appearances” of social niceties as an expedient way of feeling accepted, or, in their words: “liked.”
And they are right…I mean, this is one way of feeling connection with others, but only in a very superficial sense. Thus as soon as they perform their socially accepted niceness and propriety, there is an immediate sense of powerlessness, and, in their more honest moments, they will express it as: “having to play the game.”
This is a kind of being truthful I just cannot get behind. This is acting in terms of what is socially expedient, acceptable, useful for the moment to keep vulnerability at bay, to keep on being “liked.” Its richly selfish. It says: “hey, OTHER PEOPLE better be nice to ME and not make ME feel vulnerable or uncomfortable in any way.” What could be more selfish than the expectation that it is OTHER PEOPLE’S responsibility for making sure you feel “good,” “secure,” “confident,” “liked”?
To be truthful is to be vulnerable, for instance, to say “I do not like you in that way,” is to be vulnerable. To drop all this mental gymnastics and fall down the rabbit hole that comes when one begins to ask: “how will this be taken”? “What impression will this give”? To drop all that bullshit about how YOU will be perceived is to live in an entirely different world than most people. It is to be vulnerable. It is to live in a world where rather than doing and saying what will make YOU liked in order to feel accepted, safe, and confident, you instead do and say what is right.
So what is right? Who decides? This question is always the next one when you tell others that you do things that “are based on what is right.” You know the character Bane in last Batman film? (geek note: I’m talking about the “Bane” from the recent movie and not the actual comic character with all his complex life history). Bane saw fit to try to change Gotham because he felt he was “right.” He was “forcing” his view of the world onto the people of Gotham. Why? Because he felt there was much “injustice” between the haves and haves not. He felt he was just and right to take his actions. But there is something deeper…much deeper.
Bane feels powerless and blames outside forces for this his own sense of powerlessness. It is other people’s responsibility for why he feels as he does. He wants to change the external world to fit his image of how it (and people) should be because he blames it and others for his problems. He does not have an injustice problem, he has a “I-feel-powerless-and-everyone-one-more-powerful-than-I-is-the-reason-and-cause-of-it” problem. Bane…? Bane needs a hug. When he does what is right…it’s a deeply needy and problematic “right.”
This is typically why people “freak” when you say you make decisions based on what is right…they, being dependent on being liked and accepted by others and making others responsible for their feelings, can imagine only this Bane sense of “right.”
True, I decide what is right. But this sense of right is my own code of what is right. I sit daily and ask myself: what do I want? What kind of world to I want to create? And when I feel I have lived towards these fully, holding nothing back, then that is “my truth.” Often times that means I might say and do things with little regard for how it will be perceived, not to be an asshole, not to be mean, not even to be judgmental, but to be me.
In fact, sometimes what is right is to “play the game,” to be polite, to consider others impressions, but if I do so I do so not because “I have to play the game,” but because doing so is right. There is no sense of need, or dependence upon this game for my own sense of acceptance, it is a clear and conscious choice done because I DO NOT need nor desire to gain my acceptance from others. At this point, its not really a “game” anymore, actually. It is, rather, just me being true to myself and doing what will create the world I want.
This also means that the choices and actions I take are not “selfish” but are SELFISH. Bane is selfish. He wants the whole world to change, just for him, just so he can feel better. Others need to act or speak a certain way…just like most people today feel that we should always be mindful of our words, our impression, that our actions are “well received” by all. They, like Bane, want the world to change to make them feel more secure in it, protected.
I do not wait for the world to change…I am the change in the world I am seeking, the change I am wanting. I am SELFISH in a different sense. I give my world an “ish” of self. My world has an self-ishness.
I do what is right. This means not only that I might do and say things that piss others off, but it also means that regardless of how I feel about others’ view of me, I’m not going allow that take my focus away from the kind of world I want to create, from doing what will create the world I want to live in. So, for instance, I want to live in a world where people judge others on their actions and not solely on impression or “how well liked” they may be. Doing so is right for me. This means that no matter how well liked someone is, nor even how I might feel about them, if their actions show a side of who they are that dispels my own perceptions of them, then that is fine and good. Hell I might even let them know: “I really dig what you did, or how you handled x.”
It’s funny…recently I complimented someone who perceived me as an asshole. The result was my sincere compliment was met with the predictable cynicism. But, guess what? That mischaracterization of my comments did not matter…why? because my focus is on living my truth and doing what is right, and what was right for me is acknowledging when others do great things…it does not matter to me the impression I give nor the one I have of the other person. I did me.
How selfish is it when you can truly not care to make others’ judgements your sole source of acceptance, when you can look past that because you can give yourself that experience in other ways that does not make other people responsible, and when, by doing so, you can acknowledge when those who would be so judgmental have done great things? And actually tell them so because it is right for you to do so in order to create a better world.
And in doing this, I am no Bane, mostly.
Bane would see the other person who had done better than himself and blame their success on some injustice, when really, he just felt powerless and blames that feeling on others and the world outside himself. His particular “code of life” is based on changing the external world around him…not on what HE can do to GIVE HIMSELF a sense of power without needing others to accept his way of living.
I bask in the fact that everyday I take actions that bring me closer to the kind of world I want, the kind of people I want in my life, and the kind of life I want. I do not blame others. In living this way, I often experience profound senses of connection and bewildering senses of power and all of it under my own control.
And now, some 3+ years after Get Real, I finally feel very little dismay at mischaracterization.