My slated work for the day is finished and everyone who could authoritatively review it for markup has left. I figured that before I delved into any tasks unrelated to work but beneficial to the office, I'd do a bit of cleaning. Rummaging through my murse, I found a notebook filled with work notes and musings largely from two years ago. This one struck me as a bit prophetic; though I'd forgotten about the entry the idea comes back to me time and again:
I seem to confuse others' rejection of personal philosophies as a rejection of me altogether, as if by their action of not following [my credo, they intend] to belittle or exclude me. This seems to be heightened by my experience with [name withheld], who, for a brief period, embodied a rejection of both my philosophies and my affection. My prideful anger and jealousy towards people who are apparently comfortable in living unlike me must be dealt with and not allowed to control my behavior.
Interesting. I must written it in the spring of 2001; while I was on a personal incline from where I had been months before, I do not remember that period of time to have been a particularly stable or happy one.
The feeling still persists, however; being an abstract thinker and innate ethicist, I tend to equate personal beliefs and moral code with the very stuff of one's soul, and understand a wide enough divergence between belief systems to be indicative of incommensurable behavior, and therefore incompatible living in proximity.
But that divergence needs to be quite wide for that bottomless chasm to appear; particularly over the past two years, I've warmed to the idea of difference and relished the many moods of Myers-Briggs populating my world.
And even then, in that maudlin little legal pad, I wasn't so far gone into psychology that I'd lost my sense of humor:
If I were both gay and a robot, I'd be See-Threepio, and that's not all too bad.
And here I am, neither. Right. Back to cleaning.