The point was the rope.
What happens to us when we get into our forties? After a lifetime of appeasement and making nice, I have absolutely lost the knack for putting up with people's crap. I'm practically brawling with people in the streets. Granted, transiting Pluto has been squaring my natal Mars seemingly forever, so mine is perhaps an exaggerated case. But it's worth noting that at around the age of 45 (I'm currently 44), all of one's solar arc directed planets are at semi-square angles to their natal placements. You're literally at war with yourself.
My advice: Even if you're a notorious placater, as I am by nature, blow off some steam in your twenties and thirties. Make it a point to piss somebody off like, once a week. Otherwise you arrive at the threshold of your fourth decade of life feeling like a high-pressure water heater, just ready to blow. Example:
For anyone who didn't catch it, my article Letting Go of the Rope is posted at my website. It chronicles my inner struggle dealing with the Katrina fiasco, a struggle illustrated by my reaction to a fellow patron at my hair salon who had a different response to the disaster. Since I posted the article - and it appeared also at MoonCircles and Beliefnet, so it's been seen by a number of people - I've received some surprisingly rabid mail from people who chose to (a) take me to task for my refusal to engage in a public screaming match with someone who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble or (b) defend people who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble, since "those pesky black folks down in New Orleans obviously refused to evacuate just so they could steal shoes."
Brother.
People, beyond the fact that I entirely disagree with you, you completely missed the point of the article. True, I deliberately used an emotional situation from my own life to provoke an emotional response in my readers... but neither the guy in the salon or my response to him was the point of the article. The point was the rope. The point was letting go of the tension of opposing viewpoints that we seem willing to defend to the death, rather than find any way to compromise and listen to each other.
That includes me, by the way... I'm not just accusing people who disagree with me of being intractible. As I said in the article, I'm no saint. The fact that people can still get me pissed off enough to write a blog entry about them is proof of that fact.
My advice: Even if you're a notorious placater, as I am by nature, blow off some steam in your twenties and thirties. Make it a point to piss somebody off like, once a week. Otherwise you arrive at the threshold of your fourth decade of life feeling like a high-pressure water heater, just ready to blow. Example:
For anyone who didn't catch it, my article Letting Go of the Rope is posted at my website. It chronicles my inner struggle dealing with the Katrina fiasco, a struggle illustrated by my reaction to a fellow patron at my hair salon who had a different response to the disaster. Since I posted the article - and it appeared also at MoonCircles and Beliefnet, so it's been seen by a number of people - I've received some surprisingly rabid mail from people who chose to (a) take me to task for my refusal to engage in a public screaming match with someone who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble or (b) defend people who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble, since "those pesky black folks down in New Orleans obviously refused to evacuate just so they could steal shoes."
Brother.
People, beyond the fact that I entirely disagree with you, you completely missed the point of the article. True, I deliberately used an emotional situation from my own life to provoke an emotional response in my readers... but neither the guy in the salon or my response to him was the point of the article. The point was the rope. The point was letting go of the tension of opposing viewpoints that we seem willing to defend to the death, rather than find any way to compromise and listen to each other.
That includes me, by the way... I'm not just accusing people who disagree with me of being intractible. As I said in the article, I'm no saint. The fact that people can still get me pissed off enough to write a blog entry about them is proof of that fact.
posted by April at 8:21 AM
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