Idealism, realism, optimism

IDEALISM, REALISM, OPTIMISM

I am surrounded by idealists actually, that sometimes when I'm with them I feel like the veritable Scrooge. I am a self-confessed realist. However, my realism is tinted in turn by optimism, pessimism and at times idealism and sometimes even romanticism *gasp!!

I can be very honest at the point of brutality but generally I opt for the policy of keeping my mouth shut if I don't have anything nice to say. However, as time goes by and I get older, I find myself taking the approach of "who cares what other people think" and the gradual onset of assertiveness I attribute to self assurance, self esteem and confidence that come with maturity and good like-minded company :).

If I have the balls to say it, I have the balls to back it up too. Not literally of course since I'm of the female persuasion- just as a metaphor. My realism stems from that too I think, I admit I started my life as an Idealist... like most people I think, but after being in the real world, your rose-tinted glasses start to slip little by little. And I think mine almost come off now. Time and again I feel them slip up before slipping down again. I seriously think that working with the government is the contributing factor to the crash of my idealism. Not to say that my previous jobs didn't have anything to do with the fall of idealism from my cognitive and emotional makeup. They have their own special little ways of chipping at my idealism.

Let's trace back the rise and fall of my ideals, shall we?

In the beginning, I was a tabula rasa... sort of... hating my surrounding for its hediously hypocritical religious flavor. Hmm.. come to think of it, it wasn't so much of tabula rasa... The tabula rasa is mostly the battleground where two ways of thinking fighting over each other for dominance. On one hand, we have the conventional, more generic values that surrounded me- with the inconsistencies and hypocracies called traditions and customs. I come from a very traditional family where men are men and women are women. So I was brought up knowing how to conduct myself to be pleasing and decorus to the beholder- with demure smiles and lowered eyes...

On the other hand, I hated the injustices that I see as the result of the traditions. I struggled against them in my own small ways. I was sent to the religious boarding school since I was 13 and at 18 I graduated high school. I hated every single day of the time I spent there. Thinking back, I could've turned into a serial killer or something. The students who go to that school are divided into 2 categories, day schoolers and boarders. It was without a doubt an extended cruel and unusual punishment for me.

Although my house is in the same district as the school, in fact it was about 8 kilometers away or something asinine like that, my parents insisted that I joined the boarders. My parents went to that school, 4 of their offsprings went there too... some got lucky and got sent to other boarding school after a while. Not me!! No siree, I was stuck there for 5 miserable years. Not fitting in with the cackling hypocritical witches at the dorm, I was an outcast...not a very good place to be for a 13 year old girl. Luckily, my big brother went there too... my handsome, popular big brother, so the senior girls thought that overtly bullying me wouldn't score points with my brother so they sort of like left me alone. That put me in a very interesting situation actually because I got away with thing that would normally warrant a torture session from the senior girls. Not that my brother would care one way or the other what happened to me but they couldn't believe the handsome Crescent wouldn't listen to his adorable little sister Joy...WHY? .. He's perfectly handsome, of course he listens to her and protects her... incidentally, that's how most women think of handsome men... that just because they look perfect, they must be perfect too...yeah, and Ted Bundy was really perfect, I guess. But that let me off the hook, so I was kinda ok with them thinking that.

So I became some sort of an america... you know.. bring me your blind, your downtrodden, your prosecuted, that kind of thing and my brother inadvertently acted as my insurance policy and here, I would like to thank him for that... for unknowingly protecting me haha.

So that was my first dose of realism, I think. No wonder why I can't stick to being an Idealist. I've seen too much shit in from a young age coming from people who you'd think wouldn't do something like that. The ideals came later....