Five Points - author unknown
3:35AM on September 27, 2008
#1. When people admonish you to "be more original," what they really mean is "be more like me." When people admonish you to "be a free thinker," they really mean "try to think more like me."
#2. Everyone knows you can't turn a ho into a housewife…but turning a housewife into a ho ain't no picnic either.
#3a. Always keep this in mind when trying to win someone's love or respect: people care more about how you treat yourself than how you treat them. If you treat someone better than you treat yourself, especially if you help them at great expense to yourself emotionally, financially or psychologically, they will actually end up loving and respecting you less.
#3b. If you treat someone better than they think they deserve to be treated, they will punish you for it. You may think treating someone better than they think they deserve to be treated will raise their self-esteem and make them see themselves in the same great way you see them. This is not the case. Most of the time, they end up losing respect for you for seeing such great things in them that they are unable to see in themselves, and they label you as weak, foolish, naive or in possession of poor judgment and will try to punish you for it. Oftentimes they are so sure they'll disappoint you eventually and prove unworthy of the faith you placed in them that they self-sabotage things (consciously or unconsciously) sooner rather than later just to get the "inevitable" disappointment over with. That is why so many relationships where a girl tries to redeem a hopeless bad boy with her love or a guy tries to play Captain Save-a-Ho with some hard luck case girl usually ends up with the charity case dragging down the rescuer rather than the rescuer redeeming the charity case. This human nature tendency is perfectly illustrated in the famous Groucho Marx quote "Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
#4. People see weakness in a woman and their natural instinct is to protect from harm and nurture it until it's strong. People see weakness in a man and feel revolting disgust and their natural instinct is to crush it out of existence and get it out of their sight as soon as possible. (This is a paraphrase of a quote by Norah Vincent, author of Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man). Feminism has been teaching women for decades that it is acceptable for them to express themselves emotionally and sexually in the same ways men traditionally have. This has lead men to gradually accept that the reverse is also true for them, that it's now acceptable for them to express themselves emotionally and sexually in the same ways women have. And when they do it the results are disastrous. They bare their souls to their girlfriends and wives and cry regularly in front of them, thinking they're bonding. They talk about their feelings nonstop. They think of any attempt at being macho as an outdated and unenlightened throwback concept and get totally comfortable with showing weakness, emotional wishy-washiness and sensitivity publicly. And instead of being rewarded as enlightened and progressive by the new age modern women they love and the peers they want to impress, it blows up in their face. Despite how our culture changes and celebrates gender equality, our biology hard-wires us to expect strength and leadership from men yet excuses the lack of these traits in women. Maybe it's an unfair double standard, maybe it's not, but it's not going anywhere anytime soon, so you better accept it and adapt. People, and especially women, are ruthless about their disgust at weakness and lack of leadership in men.
#5. Brutal self-awareness can go a long way toward overcoming a surprising amount of personal shortcomings. Consider the following generic statement: He is [x], but he knows that he is [x], and that almost makes him [not-x]. Let's see some specific illustrations. John is stupid, but John knows that he is stupid, and that almost makes him smart. Jill is a cliche, but Jill knows she is a cliche' and that almost makes her unique. The substitution works with an astounding array of shortcomings.
Brutal self-awareness on its own is not enough to fix a shortcoming; decisive and directed action must be taken, but it goes a long way to fixing it and is a major first step most of us never achieve.
Do you agree?
CalifStyle (note: I did not author the essay above but found it intriguing so I share it with you.)
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