Perceptions

Once a year I get to meet up with my best friend from high school when she comes to Indy for GenCon. It's always around my birthday and she always brings me a gift.

This year she brought me a hat. A fedora-type hat.



She said the moment she reached out for it it screamed "DEZRA!"

I stared at it for an eternity in stupefaction while watching myself take the hat into my hand and smiling hugely and saying, "Oh, it's perfect!"

Huh?

Not that I don't appreciate the gift. What dumbfounds me is that Laura's perception of me includes this hat. A hat I have no idea what I'm going to do with. Where did this perception come from?

I'm finding this an interesting meditation. What is it about me that makes Laura think this hat screams my name? What does the hat represent to Laura that she attributes to me? What is the meaning of the hat and it's relationship to me in Laura's experience of me?



And then the flip side is, why don't I see this in myself? It must exist because Laura is able to pin that hat on me because of some perception I've given her of myself.

Granted, I used to wear hats when I was in high school but I've moved on from then. Maybe she sees me as an artist and the hat represents a certain artistic styling. Or perhaps it comes from my desire to be sophisticated and perhaps that hat represents some degree of sophistication. Urban sophisticate? I don't know.

It is something I will need to think about. And perhaps I should give the hat a try. Maybe it'll bring out the inner...um...hatness that is me.

Screwing Up

I was watching "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch (very inspiring btw) when he made a comment about screwing up. He said that one time when he was young and on a football team, the coach kept pushing him and riding him and making him do push ups for not performing, etc. Afterwards, one of the assistant coaches came to him and told him that it was a good thing--it meant that the coach thought he was worth the trouble. Then Randy said, "When you're screwin' up and no one is saying anything anymore, that means they gave up."

This comment struck me forcibly. I wrote the quote down but I don't know why. I thought at first that it was a reminder to myself that it's ok to screw up as long as I keep trying so that others want to continue to help me better myself. But it wasn't until today that I realized that, no, the comment wasn't directed towards me.

What I discovered today was that it was directed towards my relationship with someone else. I didn't realize this other person was screwing up until today when I finally gave up.

The quote then made sense to me.

The assumption, though, is that giving up is a bad thing. I don't believe that for a moment. Giving up means letting go of expectations. I don't know what will come out of this "giving up." My relationship with this person will definitely change, but the question is, "how?" Will it survive? Oddly enough, the giving up part makes it easy to be at peace with the possibility that it won't survive. And I suspect it won't survive.