Saturday morning rambles

Thankfully, most of my married friends are a lot like this writer: supportive, not smug. It's been years since I've continually experienced smug marrieds, at least at a sustained level. And not really ironically, the smugs, like the other bridesmaid referenced in the story, ended up divorced. The writer attributed it to karma, but there's more to it than that: if you're really happy, you don't need to go around feeling superior to people and vocalizing that perceived superiority. I would argue that the only person who goes around preaching "I'm so happy I'm married, you must be so miserable, being single" is the person trying to convince herself she's happily married even though she's not. Maybe she's trying to convince herself that being married is worth being unhappy, because look at the pathetic single people. Or maybe she's just trying to convince herself that she's happy, period. But if she were, she'd feel no need to manufacture superiority out of her married status.

There's another issue here, though: that of the metaphorical cheesecake. Sure, there will be people who will want to dangle it in front of (metaphorical) diabetics, and those people are assholes, but as with every area in life where there will be assholes, it's up to the you (the target of the assholish behavior) to be so happy in your life (and with the food you do eat) to shrug it off. I'm not jealous of happily married people (probably because, as I've mentioned, the ones I know are not smug and obnoxious) any more than I'm jealous of people who eat cheesecake. Not to go all self-helpy on you, but we, as a society, have got to acknowledge any negative jealousy that pops up within us and channel it into positive aspiration. See happily married couple, think not "f* them for having something I don't" but "how great that they have that connection." I don't have a cheesecake follow-on to this part of the analogy, because frankly, I don't aspire to cheesecake. But that's also part of the point: I don't aspire to cheesecake because there's so much other good food available to me that doesn't contribute to animal abuse or environmental degradation and doesn't make me feel like $hit.

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I moved offices at work this week, or, specifically, I moved from a cubicle into an office. I lost no time: I made phone calls I had delayed making, and I was able to talk on speakerphone while I unpacked. But I digress.

The old "stuff" I came across in the process of packing included various brochures and printouts I'd picked up at health fairs. These ranged in topic from ideas for stretching at your desk to the nutritional content of certain foods to how to better focus to how to cultivate a healthy body image. It was this last one that caught my eye; one of the bullets said to take note of your reaction to others to others and channeling it away from the external and toward the more meaningful. For example, when you catch yourself thinking, "wow, she's in great shape" or "she's so put-together," redirect your thoughts to, "wow, she seems like a really good person." This is very pertinent to me: I'm not judgmental about women's shapes, but I'm sometimes judgmental about their style. For example, a week ago, the coordinator of the volunteer event--whose general inefficiency and ineffectiveness encouraged me to mentally roll my eyes at her appearance--was wearing the most horrendous mom jeans. That she was generally overweight was none of my business; I just wished she'd chosen a pair of jeans that better flattered her figure. Of course, her choice of jeans was none of my business, either, but my mind did go there.

I can't help noticing people's style, for better or for worse. I'm not going to stop thinking, "good lord, why would someone leave the house like that," or "oh, honey," or, for that matter, "wow, she has a great sense of style!" I'm not focused on it to the exclusion of more meaningful characteristics; it's just the first thing we all notice. I can think, "she has a great sense of style but she's embarrassing herself at that dais," or "I wish her sloppy appearance weren't distracting from the valuable content of her presentation." It's just too much to ask not to notice the external. Right?

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Okay, time to shut up and do yoga.