Thursday, April 20, 2006

Three

My answers:

. Name three books that have truly shaken your world view.

This is from a much longer list, but…
1. Still Life in Harlem – Eddy L. Harris
2. Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko
3. Relating – Liz Greene


. Name three movies that make you wish you’d written the script.

1. Crash
2. The Year of Living Dangerously
3. The Dresser

Name three things you like about yourself.

1. I don’t respect authority unless “authority” is proven to my satisfaction.
2. I am self-taught in almost every skill I value – and (with the exception of things like surgery) feel I can learn anything I need to learn – with a few good books and ingenuity.
3. I’m not afraid of much anymore.

Name three careers you think you might have been good at.

1. Profiler
2. Geologist
3. Writer

Name three things you say to yourself all the time.

1. “Get over yourself.”
2. “It won’t matter when I’m dead.”
3. “I don’t have to answer that.” (The phone.)

Name three things you know now that you didn’t know three years ago.

1. I finally feel like I know (instead of think) that “If you have a choice between guilt and resentment, choose guilt.” My friend Weedy picked that up somewhere and it’s standing up well. Resentment, as Weedy points out, is other-directed, whereas guilt is yours, and you can own it and deal with it as you see fit.
2. That niceness is mistaken for kindness all the time. That kindness has a shadow and is rarely selfless. And (thanks KD) “No good deed goes unpunished."
3. That I know what’s right for me. That no one else gets to define it. And I don’t get to define what’s right for anyone else. (An honesty PS - I actually THINK I know what's right for everyone else. It's disgusting. But true. I only pretend fairness, in this case.)

4 comments:

Mary said...

I relate to 'Relating' ... of course. :-)

No 1 of the last point is (guilt vs resentment) is very interesting ... need to think about that a bit more.

I am coming to the same conclusion about kindness ... the shadow. You should do a post about it (only if you want to of course).

Looking forward to doing this one.

phlegmfatale said...

I LOVED Ceremony - excellent book! I'm fearless, too. We have lots in common, but we already knew that!

LJ said...

Sheetal & Mary...
That's one of the greatest lines I've ever heard. It stops me, all the time from being manipulated into doing things I really don't want to do. You always know when you're about to do something that will involve resentment because you're self-talk starts with, "I should..." And maybe later, when I didn't volunteer for the committee, didn't return a call when I truly didn't want to talk, didn't give to the office fund for a baby shower for someone I would barely recognize...I suffer two seconds of guilt. And then I let it go. It works.

Pfatale. "Ceremony" shook the hell out of me. Much of what I've read that I'd consider paradigm changing is non-fiction - but this one picks you up and sets you down in a whole other place, doesn't it? We do appear to have a lot in common, don't we?

Zhoen said...

Thanks. Done.

That was a good one.