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In the late '60s there was a parlour game in which you described yourself in five or ten attributes. I was never clear whether these were to be nouns (wife, mother, writer) or adjectives (emotional, instinctive, apoplectic). Since the game allowed you only a limited number of words with which to sketch your essential nature, it definitely made a difference whether you chose to identify yourself with nouns or with adjectives.
Nouns are easy. No judgment. Straightforward. No major revelations, even, except perhaps as to the ranking. Do you consider yourself, for example, a mother before a wife? Cook? Homemaker? Citizen of the world? Intellectual? Describing yourself with nouns could almost be done by another person, except for the ranking. In fact, maybe that was the game, now that I come to think of it. Maybe you were to describe not yourself but someone else.
But it's hard to imagine someone-not-you being able to capture your essence in adjectives, because it is in the nuances of adjectives that we hide ourselves. There are so many. So many possible adjectives, and how many of them would you like to acknowledge publicly? Who is to say whether you are honest in choosing attributes? Perhaps you choose the ones that fulfill a fantasy rather than reality. For example, which of the following possibilities are actually true?
seeking popular pretty
humble thoughtful unpopular
proud thoughtless loved
ineffective inattentive unloved
thorough asleep grateful
slapdash enlightened ungrateful
reliable unenlightened secretive
unreliable careless open
You see the difficulties? "Who am I?" might be the question. But who among us can be boxed into the space of five or ten or even an infinite number of adjectives? Notice how many adjectives call forth their opposites. Faithful demands unfaithful. Loving evokes unloving. Because we contain multitudes, all of us. Within each of us is a bit of everything. All is possible.
Perhaps the key is emphasis. Or intention. If I know that I am at the same time loving and unloving, can I not learn to enhance the former part of my being and diminish the latter?
We're coming to the nub of my thesis here. I must admit I believe in mutability. In our perfectability, even. Change is possible, for each of us. And it is never too late to change (that's the part I like).
Mired in old habits and old personal mind-sets, we might want to say, "This is how I am; take it or leave it." But is it not liberating to realize that "this is how I am today"? And that I am capable of changing any part that no longer serves me.
Food blog: http://fastandfearlesscooking.blogspot.ca
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