queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2001-08-07 07:59 am
queerbychoice) wrote2001-08-07 07:59 am
Insight
from frank episale:
"you clearly want to help and teach people; there's no way to do that without sometimes being hurt by their pain."
No. No, I don't want to help and teach people at all. I don't want anything remotely to do with it. I just don't want them to be in need of help and teaching, so I get stuck trying to help and teach them. But what I want is to be surrounded by happy healthy well-educated people who never need anything from me.
I mean, I like to feel useful. But there are only a few little areas that I'm really god at helping people with, and I wish that everybody around me weren't in such desperate need of so many other things that I'm just not really very good at helping with.
I'm a specialist. Not a generalist. If you want to hear about queerness, I have information galore. If you want to hear about literature, gender, or David Bowie, I'm usually pretty good with those subjects too. And there are a few related subjects (other types of art, other types of prejudice and social problems, and musicians that David Bowie has worked with or influenced) that I can usually get by on those without making too much of a mess of things. And I know how to spell. I know the correct postal abbreviations for all 50 U.S. states. I know the names of over 300 universities, and I know all the correct names for whether every law school in the U.S. is correctly referred to as "Law School" or "School of Law" or "College of Law" or "College of the Law," et cetera. I know the correct names of all the U.S. states' state bar associations and most of the citywide ones ("State Bar of California, Bar Association of the District of Columbia, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York"). I know the names of the presidents of most of the PFLAG chapters in the world. I've picked up a lot of miscellaneous information here and there.
But a generalist I am not. So don't come to me for the solution to Life, the Universe and Everything. I'm not God and I'm not Goddess. I don't have all the answers. And I wish people would quit needing things that I don't have and can't give them.
"you clearly want to help and teach people; there's no way to do that without sometimes being hurt by their pain."
No. No, I don't want to help and teach people at all. I don't want anything remotely to do with it. I just don't want them to be in need of help and teaching, so I get stuck trying to help and teach them. But what I want is to be surrounded by happy healthy well-educated people who never need anything from me.
I mean, I like to feel useful. But there are only a few little areas that I'm really god at helping people with, and I wish that everybody around me weren't in such desperate need of so many other things that I'm just not really very good at helping with.
I'm a specialist. Not a generalist. If you want to hear about queerness, I have information galore. If you want to hear about literature, gender, or David Bowie, I'm usually pretty good with those subjects too. And there are a few related subjects (other types of art, other types of prejudice and social problems, and musicians that David Bowie has worked with or influenced) that I can usually get by on those without making too much of a mess of things. And I know how to spell. I know the correct postal abbreviations for all 50 U.S. states. I know the names of over 300 universities, and I know all the correct names for whether every law school in the U.S. is correctly referred to as "Law School" or "School of Law" or "College of Law" or "College of the Law," et cetera. I know the correct names of all the U.S. states' state bar associations and most of the citywide ones ("State Bar of California, Bar Association of the District of Columbia, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York"). I know the names of the presidents of most of the PFLAG chapters in the world. I've picked up a lot of miscellaneous information here and there.
But a generalist I am not. So don't come to me for the solution to Life, the Universe and Everything. I'm not God and I'm not Goddess. I don't have all the answers. And I wish people would quit needing things that I don't have and can't give them.
Re: no such thing
WHY??? I know useful information about some emotional subjects. I do not know useful information about all of them. In fact, a whole lot of them just plain terrify me.
but more often than not the only help you can give will be a sensitive, intelligent, available ear, a presence, a shoulder.
A shoulder is precisely what I am terrible at giving. My shoulder has a very shallow basin, see, and once they put five tears in it it's all full and their tears just start spilling off onto both our laps and getting us unpleasantly wet.
(although actually i wasn't talking about "meaning", specifically).
You used the word.
the phrase "good person" usually worries me. it can be dangerous to believe that there is any such thing.
Personally, I think it's a hell of a lot more dangerous to believe that there isn't any such thing. Again, that's why I'm not a nihilist.
Gayle