I have waffled back and forth between contradictions in lifestyle and tastes all of my life. I suppose this is one way of attaining balance, though not the best or most comfortable way. It's helped me develop empathy and insight into other people's lives. I am in no way perfectly empathetic or understanding, but I've experienced a few different sides to life. I haven't even been extreme enough to be labeled saint, sinner, or both, but I have come to develop a philosophy of life and people as multi-faceted and deeply complex, too complex for rapid, clear judgment or black and white thinking. I still judge, I still think in black and white, but I am able to catch myself sometimes and elevate my consciousness as least a little bit.
I was born outgoing; the kid loading the conveyor belt and chatting up the cashier in the store after my mom had turned her back on me for a moment. I can remember the day this changed, or started changing; some family friends showed up at our little green house down the street from the gas station, and I hid in my mom's skirt even though they'd been to visit many times before. My mom commented on how this was unusual for me. I thought it was a bit strange too. All the same, I felt shy for a short while before warming up to them once again. That shyness lingered and deepened, and hit critical elevation when I was eleven or so. It's still a little difficult to meet new people, and harder work to get to know them. That too is starting to change again, though. At a concert some months ago, I sat next to a photographer I know and shared smiles and comments over the lively bluegrass music we'd come to listen to. I also saw my art teacher, we exchanged pleasantries and rearranged something we'd planned for a few days later. Many people have recently become acquainted with our family, one lady urged us to try a couple of the three dozen cookies she'd brought to the concert, and we were enthusiastically hugged by our friends the Convocations Professor and the Town Potter at the door when we'd arrived.
I am becoming more socially adept, albeit slowly and haltingly. Late Friday afternoon I fell into a hole of anxiety, stress, and slight depression, dreading the thought of having to leave the house but also desperately wanting to be far away. It felt a little bit like it was from an overload of socializing this week. I am pretty well balanced between being introverted and extroverted, but if I get too much of one or the other, I fall apart.
Over the course of my life I have been devoutly Mormon, sorta Mormon, and Fallen Away from the LDS church. When I was younger I would wait in my front yard in Logan and ambush unsuspecting passersby in the possession of cigarettes, urging them not to smoke in my sincere, self-righteously childish way. Later on in another town, another place of residence, I would try to cajole my neighbors across the street, Mormon, but not in attendance, to go to church. I was around eight years old, and Sunday school teachers liked to emphasize reintegrating "lost sheep into the flock". Older, still fairly mormon, I was judgmental, and to be honest, slightly disdainful of those who wore clothing not considered modest by the LDS church; tight pants and shirts, low necklines, spaghetti strap tank tops or dresses, skirts and shorts above knee-length, and midriff-baring clothing. Now I dream of hiking in a bikini, soaking up the sun on skin that hasn't seen the outside world since I was small. I wear shorts well above the knee, and skirts a few inches above the knee. I'm still fairly modest by Mormon standards --I just don't like wearing revealing clothing for my own reasons, but I no longer negatively judge people who do.
Sometimes I'm a little afraid that it will be my fate in life to experience the opposite side of everything I initially gravitate towards, as evidenced by these examples, but I hope to avoid that possibility by applying what I've learned from these simple experiences to all areas of life and learning. Like I said, I am not perfect, most of the time, I'm not even particularly "good", as subject to relativity as that concept is, but I strive for consciousness, kindness, and compassion for myself and other human beings, perfectly imperfect, imperfectly perfect as we are. All struggling for balance, consciously or not, all learning, and all living.
