Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Whose side are you on anyaway?
The measure of human integrity is how much you care about other people's opinion.
The less you care, the more free you are.
In my family, my dad's family care the shit out of themselves about what other people think: The right schools, the right clothes, the right connections....they're artists, musicians, business people, teachrs, dentists, craftsmen, plantation owners, architects...
In my mum's family, nobody gives a damn: They do waht the want when they want, and people call them "eccentric". They're musicians, engineers, teachers, entrepeneurs, craftsmen, scientists and writers...same as my dad's side, but no business people and no land owners....
I used to think that eccentric meant exciting and colourful something dangerous. Until someone said MY family was eccentric, and I looked at them and didn't get, and to this day don't get how sleeping till 12, going to bed at three, leaving the milk out on the kitchen table, going on unplanned holidays, playing music all night, letting your kids turn allt he furniture upside down and genreally just being a hippie qualifies as eccentric. Only thing I remember thinking we were different was that when the phone rang on weekends and my parents were still in bed, they told me to tell the people who called that they were in the shower or out shopping. Normal people couldn't stand the thought that they were still in bed at 12.
Imagine! Now I think, time must have moved on, and if someone calls me and I'm still in bed at 12 on Saturday, no matter who it is, I'm not going to hide it.
I think the best gift my parent's ever gave me, was not caring about other people's opinion, and by teaching me that their life was normal, gave me the strength to stand by my life in public, even when I'm sitting at a dinner table with all the burgois people I know. And I know a lot of them, because my dad's family taught me something else: You gotta know the people in power to get anything done, even if that means going behind enemy lines.
But it's a lot easiere to do this abroad - differences are biger and more accommodating. In Denmark I'm being asked to choose which side I'm on all the time. People are pushing me and asking me to show colours constantly, they don' just accept the inherent contradiction that I am, as people do aborad.
So I'm leaving soon again, to somewhere with more space to experiment and opportunity not to care about other people's opinion. To just be myself, without feeling like I need to choose sides, between the people in power and the people who are against the people in power. To play with both sides, otherwise how can you understand the nature of things?
The less you care, the more free you are.
In my family, my dad's family care the shit out of themselves about what other people think: The right schools, the right clothes, the right connections....they're artists, musicians, business people, teachrs, dentists, craftsmen, plantation owners, architects...
In my mum's family, nobody gives a damn: They do waht the want when they want, and people call them "eccentric". They're musicians, engineers, teachers, entrepeneurs, craftsmen, scientists and writers...same as my dad's side, but no business people and no land owners....
I used to think that eccentric meant exciting and colourful something dangerous. Until someone said MY family was eccentric, and I looked at them and didn't get, and to this day don't get how sleeping till 12, going to bed at three, leaving the milk out on the kitchen table, going on unplanned holidays, playing music all night, letting your kids turn allt he furniture upside down and genreally just being a hippie qualifies as eccentric. Only thing I remember thinking we were different was that when the phone rang on weekends and my parents were still in bed, they told me to tell the people who called that they were in the shower or out shopping. Normal people couldn't stand the thought that they were still in bed at 12.
Imagine! Now I think, time must have moved on, and if someone calls me and I'm still in bed at 12 on Saturday, no matter who it is, I'm not going to hide it.
I think the best gift my parent's ever gave me, was not caring about other people's opinion, and by teaching me that their life was normal, gave me the strength to stand by my life in public, even when I'm sitting at a dinner table with all the burgois people I know. And I know a lot of them, because my dad's family taught me something else: You gotta know the people in power to get anything done, even if that means going behind enemy lines.
But it's a lot easiere to do this abroad - differences are biger and more accommodating. In Denmark I'm being asked to choose which side I'm on all the time. People are pushing me and asking me to show colours constantly, they don' just accept the inherent contradiction that I am, as people do aborad.
So I'm leaving soon again, to somewhere with more space to experiment and opportunity not to care about other people's opinion. To just be myself, without feeling like I need to choose sides, between the people in power and the people who are against the people in power. To play with both sides, otherwise how can you understand the nature of things?
# posted by Unknown : 6:26 AM
