Jeff's Opinion: About Jeff

Opinion Sunday, all bets are off. I'm rolling up my sleeves. I'm going to tell you exactly how I feel about something, anything, myself, for instance.

What I mean is my origin, my reasons for being, the self-belief I have, I need to talk about it. I need to communicate what it's like to be me so that when I piss people off, when I make dumb statements or arguments, that at least it's understandable.

Not that everything or anything I say is dumb... okay, well you know. This is what we're here to talk about.



I think I want to do something big. I want to write the next great american novel, and I'm not ashamed of saying that. I am also, and have always been okay with not accomplishing that, but I want that to be a result of just not landing where I want to, as opposed to it being because I told myself it was too pretentious because I attempted it.

Pretentious is a word that gets thrown at me a lot, and that I own. I am pretentious. Why am I pretentious? Because I think it's okay to be. It's okay to care about things, it's okay to give a shit and pretend to be smart about it, as long you're really actually trying to be smart and learning about it. I express what I believe as I believe it until someone or something proves me wrong or improves the definition and accuracy of the belief.

Why?

Well that's where I think it gets back to my childhood. I lived a happy life (live a happy life really) but we're all products of what we survived with. I survived with this belief, this idea that I was capable of doing anything. That grew out of coming from a family for which there was always a reason to believe they couldn't do something. The extent to which that's bullshit became clear because this was their belief. Their belief system was that it's okay not to believe you can do something, and as soon as you accept that, it's okay to do whatever it is your doing. I think this enters into a larger problem of living in poverty in this country (hence where some political beliefs come from).

I realized the importance of this history as my cousins came of age. They started smoking and some began to do drugs, and I didn't get it. My Dad told me how bad those things were, and I had heard their parents say similar things to them. What was different about them versus me? The difference was that I had watched my Dad kick his habits. I watched him give up smoking and that had a huge impact on me. Meanwhile, the rest of my family continued to smoke, some continued to do drugs, and that had an impact on an entire generation. But it was fine because, it's not like they could have done anything about it, right?

So when I grew up I decided I was not going to be that. We inevitably end up defining ourselves by a level of opposition. We all wish that we were objective and made sense, and we articulate ourselves as these objective intelligent beings when the reality is that we're ruled by our subjective experience.

What I mean is. I have to believe that I am capable of doing the biggest things, because I've been surrounded by people who only believe, because they only express, the things they are incapable of.

This impacts everything from my writing, my relationships, my communication, my religious beliefs, and it's something I virtually could not do without. And that's called survival.

But if there's anything we can all take away from this it's that the thing we need to survive our lives and survive our childhoods can also, or maybe has to be the thing that also becomes our Kryptonite.

In fact, that's a great metaphor.

Kill Bill includes a scene where it's bad guy talks about Superman, so why can't I?

Kryptonite are pieces of Superman's home planet, Krypton. When Superman gets close to it, it begins to sap his energy. He can't be super when he's close to home, he has to be far away from it. That's because he needed to be far away to survive.

And I think we all work that way.

We define ourselves in opposition, and when we do, we create survival techniques that can, if unchecked, become very damaging to us. For me, it's self-belief, it's the belief that I'm not only this, but bigger too. I want to be bigger. I desire to cater and care and be something more than just one single man. But sometimes, I need to realize I am just a man and that's okay. That satisfies plenty of people. It should satisfy me.

And it should satisfy us all.

So think about what in your past encouraged you to be who you are today. And think of a time that the thing you believed the most put you into conflict with someone or something you loved. Why? And which side of that argument was right?

-----

Did you like this post? If so, consider signing up for the e-mail list so you never miss out on the latest film, tv, music, or video game post from Expository Conundrum! (Hint: It's in the upper right-hand corner of the page!!)

Also, consider donating to the blog! Your eyes are enough, but generosity and support can go a long way to making us both feel a lot better. Support your local artist (by local I mean Internet local.)

And finally, you can hang around the Facebook page or Twitter to keep up on Social Media. This doubles as the easiest way to harass me, but you wouldn’t do that would you?