"who cares if I'm pretty if I fail my finals?"
Tuesday afternoons & self-contemplation go hand-in-hand. I'd like to fancy you with one today.
The first time I heard this line in Gilmore Girls, my studious self found herself madly agreeing with the main character.
Though I’d sketched my whole identity around my academic rigour, amusingly I also knew that underlying it all was a personality that was traditionally served onto a platter— & one that’d be easily digested by everyone.
Well, hate it or love it, for this “perfected” archetypal quality - you’d imagine one in love with the smell of old & rustic books, finding peace in the solace of the library, and even sitting underneath a tree while one is beguiled by some book with the birds chirping in the background. Oh yes, don’t forget the scads of dark roasted coffee in the oh-so-Grande plastic cups, nearly brewed to romantic perfection.
But underneath this ‘pinterest-y’ glamour, what was enticing in the long run? The boring & tedious aspects of the process of studying, or simply the social snacking of Instagram stories (aka snaps of snippets of pages of books in the golden hour etc etc) and a string of likes and views with, well again, the approval of its untroubling and inculpably ‘untriggering' undertones of personality.
Alas, sometime in the future, one is made to face that hardened exterior, that was formed over the years. And that’s the beauty of it— that sooner or later, there occurs disjunction of the personalities. The sly, unconscious self gets a taste of the ‘chaotic’ underlay and absolves itself to complete surrender; and you realise you had an eroded soil, completely unearthed and unrooted. All the more this might be introduced to the outside world in an ugly, frantic fashion.
But isn’t that needed to lay out decent legroom for growth? The growth being, one experimenting with merging their ‘other-selves’ into a ‘self’. Unfortunately, you might get disgruntled with the journey. This might even be muddled by the kind of people you surround yourself with on this journey. So you’d find that playing out a façade & carpeting away the ‘other’, that being slightly unseen & unfashionable you, costs a lot less energy.
Answer this— has making friends with people who’re isolated and timid, and rather unpopular people ever been in the ambit of your comfort? How did you think you’d be able to befriend those undesirable slices of yourself so quickly. Wouldn’t you rather satifice yourself with a shiny semblance of an embellishment addition rather than the grubby work?
Like Rory in Gilmore Girls, I was unprepared for what lay ahead to truly know what you like to pursue that passion into tangibility. But unlike her, I aim to ground myself, slowly but gently, watering those unearthed aspects of myself, watering into warm sunlight— those “not-so-polished” parts of myself.
Obviously, soon after, you’d come to realise that your skeletoned grit is being tested, and many unseen aspects of your psyche would demand to be seen and exposed. And in this extremely mucky process, you’d lose your drive because surprise surprise – it's extremely boring. But again, how does one deal with that?
You could once again choose which seeds you want to sow that’d be nourishing and sprout you into a sapling with strong roots. Of course, you’d have doubts. You’d be gullible too and want to submit yourself to the disposed self created by the people around you.
And I bet it'll be new too; you'd want to question if that sapling will ever weather the storms and will be as tall and robust as you’d expected at the start. Instead, this time, why don’t we stop for a moment and water our own inimitable story bit by bit, and with a little bit of faith?