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When asked what they like most about themselves, men tend to speak of their talents...and women name a body part.
Just words, scrambled together, but stuck like an oily omlet these past few days. Just a snippet of information from Girl's Rock, which I vewied days ago. Folded up and ready for consumption in my hungry mind.
What's my best feature? Sadly, as the question slid around, the first thing I wanted to do was ask a treasured one what feature in me they would identify. It made me uncomfortable trying to name something on my own. Yes, fear of boasting, but more, fear of picking just one, as if this feature tattoo'd forever as a solid identity. Bravely, I start thinking too much, thus making the question less instinctual, more cerebral than real.
What do I like best about myself? My DRIVE...it is the feature responsible for rappelling down a waterfall, obtaining my PhD, or even making my own ketchup. If I have a goal, I almost always reach it. This quality also sinks its hooks into my self-esteem, pushing me to off readily equate okay-ness with what I am producing, what I do.
There's a quote from the poem Ulysses "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yeild..."
It is quite touching, because it is about living life to its fullest, but also depressing, because it means that "nothing is ever good enough."Anyway, that's my feature, which shames, surprises and supports me and those I am around.
What do you like best about yourself? Do you feel the same tension in naming one thing? Would you name a body part?
Just have to say: my calves kick ass.
Yay for your "drive" being your "best" feature -- but I have to comment on one thing, inspired by my recent reading of Derrida and Nietzsche and others (will you appreciate this?): I love it that "nothing is ever good enough." In fact, although I (everyone?) always desire my life and my work to be fixed and good and stable, I love it that they never can be, that there's always something else to think about, work out intellectually (I'm getting my Ph.D. too), to trouble over... If there weren't, I wouldn't have a reason to live. I'm serious about that. The impossibility of stability is what moves me. I love my "drive" too. I love a lot of things about myself. Maybe I love that about myself -- that I am able to appreciate and articulate my self. :)
ReplyDeleteOh, here's a quote from Nietzsche that I find inspiring, from "The Will to Power": "The belief that the world as it ought to be is, really exists, is a belief of the unproductive who do not desire to create a world as it ought to be.... It is a measure of the degree of strength of will to what extent one can do without meaning in things, to what extent one can endure to live in a meaningless world because one organizes a small portion of it oneself."
In other words, we are courageous ones, those of us who can never "settle."
-- Lisa at Onely
Uhhhhhh. A body part? My vagina!
ReplyDeleteI am so stunned because if asked what my favorite thing about myself is, it would never occur to me to name a body part. Even if I had really flat abs for the first time in my life that I was super proud of, I wouldn't say "my abs". I might say "the fact that I now know that I have the discipline to turn a buddha belly into THIS --come on, hit them, you know you want to--" but I would never name a body part. That thought totally bamboozles me.
So, my favorite thing about myself: my ever-changing-ness. I can be rock solid in myself (I am not a flighty or flakely person) but I am not stalled out either. I keep growing and changing and I can be compassionate one moment and a hardass the next.
Maybe it's just young girls who say a body part?
ReplyDeleteI love your drive...and am partial to your severed jelly foot pictured atop too! Hmmmm, in me - my ability to get "thorough" with a true interest. Or is that OCD?
ReplyDeleteI didn't even think of a body part...when you're just hotness through and through, what does one choose?! (Says the girl with unwashed hair, clad in spit-up encrusted PJs).
Hmmmmmmm, My best feature. Still trying to figure that one out. I'm all over the map on that question. Now I'm not saying that I have too many great features, but the ones I do think are really good keep evolving. Ok, Ok. I'll just stop beating around the bush. My curiosity to continue to keep learning and to keep an open mind to what others have to say. Though not 100% perfect all the time. But trying.
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