Inertia (self-perception)

I don’t like to consider myself an angry person. Anger was an emotion that only my father was allowed to feel, back in my childhood home. I didn’t like what anger did to him, and I did my best throughout my life not to be angry. And if I was angry, I didn’t show it, sometimes not even to myself. But I do get angry, both legitimately and illegitimately. But what does that mean? Who gets to decide legitimate anger? My definition of legitimate anger has expanded quite a bit throughout time. I’ll save that for another post. But still, I don’t like to think of myself as an angry person.

I used to think of myself as someone who could handle anything, someone very much “go with the flow”. What that translated into was “doormat”. I’m working on that one, but I still like to feel that I am an open-minded person with few prejudices. Uh huh. I have prejudices. I don’t like being reminded of them, though.

Journaling is something that’s been suggested to me by professionals, either through mindfulness classes or support groups or books, but it’s not something I keep going for any length of time. I pick it up now and again, but I drop it readily now. Back when I was still fooling myself about how I felt and what I thought, I wrote in my journal on a much more regular basis. But now that I know myself better, now that I’m no longer lying to myself about what does or doesn’t hurt, about whether or not I feel anger, about whether or not something upsets me, I don’t journal very much any more. If I’m going to lie, I may as well write fiction. If I’m going to talk about someone else, I may as well blog. To journal honestly, I’m going to have to take a look at myself, and my self perception might not match with reality.

That’s another of inertia’s weapons – self perception, closely tied into pride. There are dark spots in everyone’s souls that they just don’t want to peer into very closely. For me, journaling shines a light into those spots. For others, it may be something else. Someone might not exercise because doing so would remind him that he isn’t young any more, that he doesn’t have a 20-year-old’s body any longer. Someone might not try out a sculpting or acting class, because she’s brilliant in her own head and doesn’t want the possibility of seeing something else when doing these things in real life. For others, starting something isn’t the problem. Ending something is. If she stops all her volunteer work, she’ll have to stay home more often with her husband, and she doesn’t want to see that that’s not something she wants to do. Inertia works both ways – it’s the continuation of your level of motion, whether that be not at all or way too much.