Ever feel a lot of pressure to be smart? I have to think smart thoughts and put them into words. I have to be smart here. I have to be smart in class. I have to be smart in my free time. I have to be smart in my term papers. I have to be smart in my presentations. I have to be smart when I go abroad to study. I have to be smart when I apply for grad school. I have to be smart as I read. I have to be smart as I eat. I have to be smart as I breathe. I have to be smart.
Or I suppose a better word would be intelligent.
I have to be intelligent.
Of course, this necessarily begs the question: why do I have to? Well, it's simple really. Because it's who I am. I don't mean to say, "Oh, I am just so intelligent." What I mean is that it is part of my personality to value intelligence and to strive for intelligence. This directly relates to the part of my personality that is obsessed with perfection. It's not exactly the best part of my personality. It's caused me a lot of psychological strife*, this inherent desire to be perfect. And for me being perfect is not just being skinny and pretty and well-dressed, it's also being smart.
I need to look smart. I need to act smartly. I need to be smart.
This means I have to take all my thoughts on Gym Meet, performance theory, obedience, and the philosophy of female education and put them into a paper that makes sense and actually says something. I can't just produced the required word count and be satisfied. I have to say something and I have to say it intelligently.
But I don't feel smart and at this exact moment. I don't know how to arrange my thoughts in any kind of imitation of intelligence. It's times like this, when I have a piles of books and papers fanned out around me as I stare at a blank word document, that I feel completely inadequate. I just can't do it. I just can't want to do it anymore.
But I have to.
Tonight/today this act of blogging has been to let loose my frustration. Over the course of the month I've been seriously considering the value, worth, usefulness of this act of writing. What does it matter that I type these words and put them on the internet? Is it just the writing of these words that has worth or do they have worth in being read? Or do they have worth in even just the possibility of being read? Is it the making of these thoughts public that gives them worth? If I kept them to myself would they mean less? Do they mean more when they become a performance, as anything created to possibly be viewed by an audience is a performace? What is the point of these thoughts that I put here, in a "space" on the internet that doesn't have a physical manifestation? If these words are my thoughts made tangible, where exactly can I find them made physical? They aren't printed on a piece of paper. They exist in the incoherent codes of the images that apper on our screen and make up the internet. If making thoughts tangible is important, does it make a difference if they are only put out into this massive cyberspace that is an abyss, a black hole, of overflowing information? Why do I write? And specifically why do I write this blog right now in this moment?
I don't have the answers to these questions. Just like I don't know how to be perfect and I don't know how not to want to be perfect. I get by. Tomorrow I'll send in my assignment. I'll finish my work for the semester. I'll go abroad. I'll graduate. But through it all I will be constantly questioning myself. I will always feel inadequate as long as I strive for this notion of perfection. I know that to be perfect is impossible. I just don't know how to accept the impossibility. I don't know how to not want to be perfect, even though I know it's impossible.
*Ask my parents how much money all of this strife has cost them in psychiatry bills**. Then, ask my pediatrician why I was underweight for a while in highschool. Then, ask my roommate about that time I had a mental breakdown right in front of her. And, finally, ask my bank about the number of times I have overdrawn my account just to buy the right clothes. All the results of my pursuit of perfection. And, of course, all failures in the very fact that I thought perfection could be something performed.
**Because our health insurance doesn't cover it. Obviously because mental health is not important. Wait. What's that you're saying, Gabrielle Giffords? Oh, you thinks mental health is a serious issue and that our country's health care and insurance system needs to address its utter failure to properly treat mental health disorders. Interesting thought, Gabrielle. Sorry that crazy man shot you, by the way!
No comments:
Post a Comment