In a fit of extreme boredom (which, honestly, most people in medicine should NEVER experience), I decided to browse my list of Facebook “friends” to see what the other people I publicly claimed to know were up to. I stumbled upon one young lady’s page, a woman with whom I went to high school, and found that she had fallen victim to the epidemic raging through all of my social circle as of late: She was engaged! Usually when you see someone is engaged, your first thought is something along the lines of “Oh! That’s nice,” or “Well congrats to her/him.” I, on the other hand, am unashamedly a bit more effed up in my assessments. In this particular case, my first thought was, “Damn… Even the hoes are gettin’ engaged before I am.”
It was out of place and rude, I know. I don’t care either. It’s what I honestly felt. While I didn’t smash personally, I could name at LEAST 8 other guys with whom I played football that have put the sauce in or near her body. And who knows how many more penises she was exposed to by the time she graduated from college?
Ok, so I know I’m making an unfair assessment, (1) because I’m calling her a whore (like my number is suggestive of sanctity and purity) and (2) because I was judging her based off a past stigma/rumor that I cannot prove was true or held true through any period beyond high school.
What’s to say she hasn’t changed?
I think it safe to assume that ol’ boy probably wouldn’t have wifed her up if she was still settin it owt to the crew, so there likely had to be SOME changes in her life, but there was just something about accepting that possibility, that in this fairy tale world a ho actually did become a housewife (or at least a wife) just seemed psychologically displeasing. I just could not wrap my brain around the idea.
A damned shame, really.
What about you? How often do you encounter a scenario, in particular as relates to another person that you know, where your brain has done so much work to define a person by one thing they used to have or be that was in great need of change that by the time they actually did change you just could not believe they became anything other than what you knew them as? It happens quite often with children, be they our own or just younger siblings. Take me, for example. The little girl who used to ride on my back and fight me to get in her car seat and whose favorite breakfast item was “OAT-mee-OH” (oatmeal) is 18 years old, applying to college, and is having thoughts of nappy headed niggas. And sure, the memories I spoke of came almost 14 years or so ago and were inevitably going to change given the fact that she’s not actually mentally retarded (we’re all just really sill), but my mind just won’t let me get the image of that cute little girl out of my head. Alas, the very things that are in great need of change are the things we are slowest to accept changing.
Why is that though? Why do we gripe and complain or talk shit about how xyz or so and so needs to change, yet when it or he/she finally does, we spend so much time talking about how it used to be and these memories we have of it from the past at a time when we were often much more displeased? Is our need to categorize and define something SO great and concrete that we physically wish for something that we cannot psychologically accept? I too am obviously guilty of this very human flaw, of being unable to embrace that most Buddhist principle of reflecting what’s in front of me and letting it go once no longer there. I hope that we all, myself included, can become better able to adjust to our steadily changing environment and circumstances that we might also be able to evolve and avoid irrelevance. In doing so I hope that I am showed the same consideration and allowed the same space for growth and improvement/change that others ask for as well.
Yes, that includes even the other former whores of the world.