The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.
It's Relative
I'm not talking about when one is entrusted with necessary secrets by another, e.g., when a friend confides in another and asks that friend not to reveal what he or she has told him or her, or when one is entrusted not to give away trade secrets by one's employer.
I'm talking about my natural orientation and sense of what is private and what is public. To me, the less that is private, the better. I'm not sure if it's a case of trying to make up for a decade of secretiveness, from ages 11-21, when I was resolving my sexual orientation, and so I'm super-open altogether ever since, or that I'm no different than the most private of private people, i.e., that I wish I could control people's information about me (not to flatter myself that people seek it routinely, but...) and I just use an opposite strategy to the private peoples': I tell everything I can think of, so that no one can catch me off guard and reveal something that I did not want revealed.
Someone marveled recently, "When I began analysis [(therapy)], I was so reserved and so afraid to let go of that reserve. You seem able to share everything so readily."
Well, expressing my thoughts is relatively easy, I agree, and probably is even a compulsion at times, e.g., this entire blog is evidence of that, but sharing my feelings is much harder. Recently, I told a former girlfriend, "I always wanted you to show me some tenderness -- verbally -- and you never really did." That was so hard for me to say aloud. I don't think I ever put it that directly before, or at least not since we were together. It was a pure feeling, and not just a thought, and therefore much, much harder to express.
What Is and Is Not, Off Limits
Friends' secrets and job secrets are unmentionables, but otherwise, I don't think anything I want to share needs to be kept private. Paradoxically, I'm pretty sure I have an disproportionate sense of shame due to perfectionism, and so maybe this defensive entry about feeling that it's my right to share so freely is a strike at that perfectionism-shame cycle.
What is the purpose of privacy? To keep people intrigued; to avoid anyone, feeling ashamed....Other reasons don't come to mind.
What is the purpose of visibility? To help others and myself feel less alone in the world, and to help people learn. For example, my grad school launched "Pocket Knowledge" a couple of years ago, which features papers by faculty and students, and on which any faculty and student is welcome to post. I have posted some of my best papers on it, but relatively few of my colleagues have done so. I asked the librarian who helps troubleshoot the site why that is and she said she believed it was because people were afraid of others, stealing their content. Oy. I don't even think that way. And that's a third reason for my preferring the public to the private; I prefer that my stuff see the light of day and that it be useful to others, rather than that it be hidden, in the event that it's misused. I guess that's the risk-taker in me, and my abundance, rather than scarcity, mentality.
Visibility trumps a sense of intriguing, personal mystery for me, too, and I do try to follow my own rules of maintaining friends' anonymity, so that their shame, if not always mine, is not risked.
"You want to be known," my therapist said. I think I shared this here before; she continued, "Most people want to be known, but have given up; not you. That's hopeful." I have chutzpah and a big dollop of self-absorption that makes me believe that people are interested in knowing me, all the more so, the more honest I am.
Self-revelation is also meant, I'm sure, to weed out the less intense among people I come across, to socially engineer future encounters, i.e., if I scare you with my openness, and we have a choice of speaking again or not, then we don't need to have exchanges ever again.
Facebook apps are like astrology forecasts in my experience and so not something I take very seriously, yet one of them is about characteristics people have labeled as among my strong-suits and the chief among them is "Trustworthy." If I take the app at all seriously, I conclude they feel that way because I'm so open about myself that they trust me more than the usual as a result.
Showing posts with label abundance mentality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abundance mentality. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday, April 27, 2008
New Standard of Living?
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
Or Just a National "Bad Patch?"
This morning at breakfast, I read portions of an article from today's "New York Times" aloud to Pat. Typically, she doesn't like when I do that, but this one compelled her. It was all about how, regardless of whether or not we're in a recession in the United States currently, people seem to be "tightening their belts."
The last lines of the article put a lump in my throat, until I spoke with my mother this evening about them. They described a grocery store cashier, who bought a lesser brand of steak sauce, at 85 cents a bottle and poured it into the A-1 bottle, saying that her husband couldn't tell the difference.
"Did you take Economics, Sarah?" asked my mom. "Unless there's real differentiation among products, there's no reason to buy the brand-name version."
"Why did I buy Armani yesterday then?"
"Because there's product differentiation with Armani. It's a better brand."
Inspiration While Showering
Shortly after we hung up, Pat, who was cleaning up from our rock-hauling exercise, said, "I was thinking more about that article in the shower. We're probably starting to have a lower standard of living, and we're probably not going back; as the rest of the world wants more, like I was saying about eggs the other day, there's a re-distribution, and we probably won't have what we've been having forever."
"The same article talked about a woman, buying the house-brand of Lucky Charms cereal," I said, and, "Do you remember in the '70s, when everyone was buying the generic brand of foods?"
"Yeah, and we were kind of into it -- the black and white, generic labels."
"Yeah." Still, I wonder, if like the '70s, this is just a bad patch, and we'll bounce back. Pat suggests not.
Pat's point is about supply, and about how more of the world is earning the money to buy the supply. She has also used the same logic for why globalization is great -- because as more people get better work, more people will have the means to buy all of the products and services that are being produced.
And she has spoken nervously about our gross energy consumption compared to the rest of the world's and how if we think gasoline is expensive now, just wait till more people around the world can afford cars.
Farming Might Be in Our Future
We're thinking of growing tomatoes in our emerging garden -- the one we hauled the stones to in the backyard earlier today -- because Pat just heard that fewer farmers in New Jersey are able to grow tomatoes profitably, and their price is likely to rise accordingly. "Maybe," said Pat to our neighbors Meg and Ellen, as all of us stared at the bare patch, where the garden will go, "We'll return to being an agrarian society...." Everyone, which included a chiropractor, a former higher ed. CFO, and two IT industry workers, smiled.
Years ago, I learned the phrase, "abundance mentality," and I concluded that it was how I needed to approach the world. Instead of worrying about a limited supply, I needed to believe that reasonably responsible use of whatever the supply, plus creativity and ingenuity, always would yield relative abundance.
Of course, I didn't study Economics....
Or Just a National "Bad Patch?"
This morning at breakfast, I read portions of an article from today's "New York Times" aloud to Pat. Typically, she doesn't like when I do that, but this one compelled her. It was all about how, regardless of whether or not we're in a recession in the United States currently, people seem to be "tightening their belts."
The last lines of the article put a lump in my throat, until I spoke with my mother this evening about them. They described a grocery store cashier, who bought a lesser brand of steak sauce, at 85 cents a bottle and poured it into the A-1 bottle, saying that her husband couldn't tell the difference.
"Did you take Economics, Sarah?" asked my mom. "Unless there's real differentiation among products, there's no reason to buy the brand-name version."
"Why did I buy Armani yesterday then?"
"Because there's product differentiation with Armani. It's a better brand."
Inspiration While Showering
Shortly after we hung up, Pat, who was cleaning up from our rock-hauling exercise, said, "I was thinking more about that article in the shower. We're probably starting to have a lower standard of living, and we're probably not going back; as the rest of the world wants more, like I was saying about eggs the other day, there's a re-distribution, and we probably won't have what we've been having forever."
"The same article talked about a woman, buying the house-brand of Lucky Charms cereal," I said, and, "Do you remember in the '70s, when everyone was buying the generic brand of foods?"
"Yeah, and we were kind of into it -- the black and white, generic labels."
"Yeah." Still, I wonder, if like the '70s, this is just a bad patch, and we'll bounce back. Pat suggests not.
Pat's point is about supply, and about how more of the world is earning the money to buy the supply. She has also used the same logic for why globalization is great -- because as more people get better work, more people will have the means to buy all of the products and services that are being produced.
And she has spoken nervously about our gross energy consumption compared to the rest of the world's and how if we think gasoline is expensive now, just wait till more people around the world can afford cars.
Farming Might Be in Our Future
We're thinking of growing tomatoes in our emerging garden -- the one we hauled the stones to in the backyard earlier today -- because Pat just heard that fewer farmers in New Jersey are able to grow tomatoes profitably, and their price is likely to rise accordingly. "Maybe," said Pat to our neighbors Meg and Ellen, as all of us stared at the bare patch, where the garden will go, "We'll return to being an agrarian society...." Everyone, which included a chiropractor, a former higher ed. CFO, and two IT industry workers, smiled.
Years ago, I learned the phrase, "abundance mentality," and I concluded that it was how I needed to approach the world. Instead of worrying about a limited supply, I needed to believe that reasonably responsible use of whatever the supply, plus creativity and ingenuity, always would yield relative abundance.
Of course, I didn't study Economics....
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