Another Person’s Burden

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Clarissa

February 13, 2015

Somebody posted a cutesy pic on Facebook where a kid says: “Love is when you are missing your front teeth and your friends still love you!”

Another person, an adult woman, responded: “Yeah, but do they still love you if you have some extra pounds? :-(“

An adult woman. Actually asked this question. And ended it with a sad smiley.

I’m just extremely happy to be me right now.

Gosh, people, seek help, take care of yourselves. This kind of worldview must be an enormously heavy burden to carry. It’s not like my life is a bed of roses but I have never hated myself like this. I can’t even imagine what it must be like.

P.S. I don’t want anybody ridiculing this woman in the comments. Some people’s burdens are heavier than others’. That’s cause for compassion and reflection.

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5 responses to “Another Person’s Burden”

musteryou

February 13, 2015

Once you get the lay of the land, things do not necessarily improve, but it all makes sense. I just came from watching at TED talk posted by one of the Rhodies (diehard colonialist/homelover) on the Rhodesia Military site. It was about why soldiers miss war. I took a deep breath because I know by now that the defining factor of American culture is their gender essentialism. Sure enough, he mentioned that men are physiologically suited to extreme adrenalised states. Since women were not also mentioned, I assumed he must have considered that women were not. People in the audience looked at him with bland, empty faces. (I have a certain horror of audiences, much more than speakers, because of the passivity they embody.) I thought his speech was good for the most part, but imparted in a very binary fashion as a knower to un-knowers, and he sounded like a protestant preacher when he resorted to stating tired old truisms about gender.

Similarly women in America (I am presuming that the one mentioned in the post might have been) are extremely infantalised. They are culturally conditioned to try to up your mood or put a smile on your dial when you are looking down and pathetic. If you are looking normal — or normatively aggressive — they have no idea what to do with you. It’s like you don’t exist.

I’ve learned to stand back and observe and respect the fact that people often are zombies. There’s also a predictable zombie nature to many people, based on culture and political land mass (modern Zimbabweans are very close to Americans in attitude and temperament, I find).

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 13, 2015
  “Sure enough, he mentioned that men are physiologically suited to extreme adrenalised states. Since women were not also mentioned, I assumed he must have considered that women were not. People in the audience looked at him with bland, empty faces.”
  
  Yeah. . . I know what you mean. The audience experience, during such moments, an almost orgasmic feeling of contentment because familiar words have been uttered. Scary shit.
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    February 13, 2015
    
    little protty-hoppers. I wish they would come out of their protestant wombs.
    
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Shakti

February 13, 2015

TEDtalks never really challenge their audiences. They’re intellectual lullabies.

This kind of worldview must be an enormously heavy burden to carry. It’s not like my life is a bed of roses but I have never hated myself like this. I can’t even imagine what it must be like.
It’s not all internalized aggression. I’ll tell you what that worldview does: it makes you tired. Either you’re sad internally because you believe it and wholly buy into it or you’re arguing with yourself or you don’t believe it and you’re fighting others with that worldview.

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Jones

February 14, 2015

“Some people’s burdens are heavier than others’.”

Wait … was that supposed to be tongue-in-cheek? 🙂

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