While Googling for pictures to take to my stylist, I found this from Toothpaste for Dinner.
Is it true? Yes. Does it have to be????
I guess what I had in mind was this quote I hate but still remember the first time I heard, so it obviously had an impact.
"You might take a careful inventory of your habits, your speech, your appearance, and your eccentricities, if you have them. Take each item and analyze it. What do you like in others? What personality traits please you in others? Are your dresses too short, too long, too revealing, too old-fashioned? Do you laugh raucously? Are you too selfish? Are you interested only in your own interests or do you project yourself into the lives of others? Do you have annoying mannerisms? … Do you repeat old stories till they are threadbare? Are you too anxious or too disinterested? Can you make some sacrifices to be acceptable? Are you dull or are you too exuberant? Are you flashy or are you disinteresting? What do you do to make yourself desirable? Do you overdo or underdo? Too much makeup or too little? Scrupulously clean both physically and morally?
“What are your eccentricities, if any? I think nearly all people have some. If so, then go to work. Classify them, weigh them, corral them, and eliminate one at a time until you are a very normal person” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], pp. 295-96).
Doesn't it seem like we are all told to be the same? That we need to eliminate those things that make us individual to be desireable to others? That I really could, if I thought hard enough, figure out what is "wrong" with me and why I'm not married? I don't really believe this about my bangs or anything else, I think it's more of a feeling with the right person rather than a checklist of qualities, that some great people will never get married (I have far too many wonderful single friends to question their efforts or worthiness).
Please...correct me if I'm wrong...Or don't, maybe this post was just for my sanity and to talk through some ideas in my head, maybe I just need a personal private journal for some of my thoughts. Still figuring out the level of disclosure I want in my blog.
9 comments:
Oh Sweetie, no.
You might be independent, but you're none of the rest. You're classy and feisty. You're a woman. And you might not be dating anyone, but you're certainly dateable.
Cut your hair shorter and I'll tell you the same thing!
Thanks for the comment Tam.
I added lots more to the post after you saw it to try to explain my thinking, realizing y'all can't see what is going on in my brain.
The cartoon was meant to be a funny version of the quote I just added, and hate, that one thing can keep you distanced from people and be the "reason you aren't married." It's all too ominous and impossible to think you have to be perfect to find someone.
I'm really happy to have cute bangs.
That quote horrifies me. I guess only perfectly "normal" people get married? Yikes. I think in your case Ansley it all comes down to the length of your dresses... or maybe you haven't made enough sacrifices to become "acceptable"...hhrumph.
Ridiculous.
You are a beautiful, smart, polished, interesting, scrupulously clean woman and knowing your sense of style, I bet your bangs look fantastic!
The only part about the qoute i really don't like is "and eliminate one at a time until you are a very normal person"
But taking a realistic inventory of oneself is not a bad thing - it can be quite maturifying (that's a new word btw)
but, whatever...
congratulations on joining the bangs club ;)
"What do you do to make yourself desirable?" -Spencer Kimball
"I like to smear chocolate ice cream all over my body and put a maraschino cherry in my navel." -Ryan Remains
Ryan, I can always count on you for some quirky humor, or scary truth, whichever this is.
I think I was sitting next to you in Sunday School when I first heard this quote.
I agree with firefly, it is the feeling that we have to correct anything just because it isn't normal. I know plenty of people with weird tendencies and annoying habits and all the rest who are perfectly happy in and out of marriage.
I find it really annoying when "marrieds" continually talk about the struggles of being single in the church and what us singles are doing wrong but were the people who got married when they were in college at the ripe old age of 21 and don't know what it is like to date out in the real world. Yep, that was a really long, run on sentence and I don't care.
I remember this. We should have called SHENANIGANS.
Honestly, when I first heard that quote oh so long ago, I was living in Idaho so you can imagine the inner turmoil I was going through.
I agree one must should be willing to look within themselves for improvement; some more often then others. But, to do so to the degree you become someone you are not in the pursuit of becoming like everyone else is false. Also, who says those you are gauging your improvement upon are right? What is right? What is "normal"? Haven't we been encouraged to be the "peculiar people"?
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