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June 30, 2008 Thoughts -- random, indeed. Pride.Many people like to talk a lot about pride. I'm proud of my high school graduate. I'm proud of my country, my president, my congress, my husband and my children. For me pride has always been a personal affair. (If you believe the Catholic Church, pride is one of the deadly seven sins; but I do not cater to any sort of puritanical, thousand year old guilt trip.) I have always taken immense pride in my accomplishments, my achievements. I'm almost forty and I have, as a writer and musician, a number of completed manuscripts and plays, as well as a wealth of experience. I take pride in the fact that my body has not atrophied, as I hope my mind has not, and I am stronger than I was in my teens. I attempt to live with a combination of strength, discipline, and honor; taking more pride than most in the simple effort of such a task. I was struck the other day by another instance of how I think this American society is skewed for lack of a better word; skewed within its' ideals and opinions and priorities. I overheard an employee with whom I work telling someone how proud he was of his new tattoo. This affected me as being a somewhat odd even bizarre thing to say. How can one take pride in a tattoo? The only thing a person is doing when they get a tattoo is paying to have another person draw on them. That's it. Nothing else. There is no accomplishment. There is no effort, beyond the meager effort of possibly designing ones own tattoo. More so, in Portland, Oregon, where I live, tattoos are as banal and pedestrian as ear rings. I, being a body uncovered and unmarred by the tattoo artists' needle, am actually more unique than any of the inked up youth, which seem to clog Portland's already rain swollen streets. Yet again, I am struck by the fact that part of me feels out of place. That this world and this city were never, nor will ever, be mine. I find pride within things such as: sacrifice, effort, discipline, and hard work. Seeing a project through, for example: finding the birth of an idea like the bulging root of some new plant in the muddy quagmire of my brain, looking at it, analyzing it, wiping away soil and mud until it is revealed to me; then extracting it from the ground, bringing it home, and seeing if it has a life of its own, a life it wishes to lead. Starting, then finishing - that simple. Pride does not come from payment. Not in my world. [Add Comment] 0 Comments |
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