Saturday, March 12, 2011

Keeping Up Appearances

Why is it so important to us, as humans to look good -in our social circles, to our families? Why do we crave approval? What biological impulse calls us to do things that we perceive will make us look more favorable to others? 

It's hard to make the right choice if you only take the views of others into account. You have to think about yourself, what your gut is telling you and work off of that, too. 

Example: When I revise I get a lot of different, varied feedback. When I wrote Six Keys, it was everything from "You need more Paul" to "you need more stuff with Sibilant as a palm reader". Well, okay. I considered all of it. I want to please my readers. So after some major consideration, I added more Paul. 

It was hard to know what would be good for the story, versus what was a personal preference. 

Man, is my life like that. It's worse if you're pregnant. Nice, well-meaning people coming up to you and asking many things that are none of their business. 

"Who is your doctor?" "Are you having an epidural?" "Are you going to breastfeed?" 

There is no good answer to these questions!!! If I say yes to epidural, I'm a horrible mother who wants to drug up my baby. If I say no to epidural, I'm a crazy hippy woman who enjoys lording her strength over regular human women. 

If I say yes to breastfeed, the question then becomes how long. It seems like 6 mths to a year is optimal, but if you nurse longer than 2 years, you are a crazy person who plans on nursing her baby through high school! 

To my mind, I always wonder... "Why can't we all just get along???"

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