The Wilful Sunflower

This week I've been rather lazy and didn't accomplish much of anything. I was telling Ben so when he replied, "No worries; it's not wrong to be lazy."

It's not wrong to be lazy?!!

When I was in secondary school, Dad used to tell me, "You are clever, but lazy," which I ended up internalising this way:

Lazy = Bad = Wrong = Failure

How's that for an equation?

The problem is, laziness is generally not lumped together with the virtues, you know, just like being messy and disorganised are generally frowned upon. On the other hand, tidiness, discipline and efficiency are considered praiseworthy things -- and things that most people in their right minds do aspire to. Unfortunately, I have great difficulty being any and all of those things.

On Tuesday I was saying all this to Sherman, but instead of agreeing with me about what a terrible failure I am as a person, he asked why I allow others to impose their values upon me. Why don't I figure out the way I want to live and what is really important to me, outline my own values, and stop trying to fulfil the expectations of others around me?

Deconstructing is hard, and painful, and slow. Mom was in town at the end of August and happened to drop by my house and catch a glimpse of my room (she doesn't stay with me when she's in town, coz there's no guest room in my house). After that she told me she feels like she failed as a mother because it's as if she never taught me to be neat! When you have your own mother saying such things to you, how can you not hear disapproving voices in your head all the time?

I feel so pressured to change, and I feel pressured to change quickly because I'm scared that others will run out of patience with me if I take too much time to change. Especially in a job situation -- if you can't perform up to expectations, the boss isn't going to wait forever for you to get your act together. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself out in the cold.

The funny thing is, my relatives seem to have gotten the impression that I'm blaming my upbringing & my parents for the way I am, using this as an excuse to evade responsbility, when in fact I'm so hung up about changing that I end up getting trapped in cycles of guilt and self-condemnation each time I fail. Sherman put it this way: "You start with some kind of minor failure. And because people tell you it's horrible, you believe them. So you punish yourself. And after that, you feel worse about yourself. Then you get really depressed about yourself and you lose your confidence. So what else could be ahead if not another impending failure?"

In the midst of it all, because I identify God as the ultimate authority figure, I think He must surely be siding with the other authority figures in my life and thinking / saying all the same things about me. Which wounds me even more deeply and makes me feel like I have no refuge. If you cannot run into the bosom of your family, and you cannot run into God's embrace, what happens? You end up feeling alone and anchorless, with nowhere to belong. That's how I feel almost all the time.