Meme: "Words!"

Via Ren:

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your blog and explain what they mean to you.

My "Word!" from Renegade Evolution:

Fun-loving

Despite suffering from depression, I do celebrate life quite a lot, and I take a fun-loving, irreverent approach to just about everything. If there's a pun or wordplay to be had out of it, I'll probably go there, even when I shouldn't! Good, old-fashioned, Anglo-Saxon filthy humour ("It's not that I have a one-track mind, it's just, all the tracks lead to the same place" ©SnowdropExplodes 2009), a proper engagement in the physicality of life, a willingness to make nonsense and be silly or childish. These are the qualities of my fun-loving nature.

Thoughtful

I don't know whether Ren meant the sense of thoughtfulness as in "considerate of others", or as in "has the tendency to ponder things". Both meanings are kind of covered by the other words she's given me. I certainly think a lot about all sorts of things! But to me, the word always conjures the sense of "thoughtfulness" meaning "considerate", and this is supposed to about what the word means to me. For me, I have struggled with thoughtfulness. Things that seem to come naturally to others about it are hard work for me to spot in human interactions. In a way, thoughtfulness requires me, personally, to think about it quite hard (which makes me thoughtful in the other sense!) so it means a lot to me. I have never wanted to be inconsiderate or to hurt people, but too often found myself doing so without inetnding to do so. So I worked (and work) hard at avoiding and eliminating those inadvertent errors. I still make plenty of them, and have got very good over the years at apologising unreservedly! Developing as a BDSM Top, thoughtfulness has been a key area in which I have grown better - you simply can't afford to be thoughtless or inconsiderate when a loved one (or anyone else, for that matter) is at your mercy.

Introspective

This is another "tendency to ponder" word for me, and yup - it's true. I ponder things. I ponder things about the world around me, and I ponder deeply about things in myself as well. You know that ever-present radfem cry of "examine your desires!"? I'm ALWAYS examining my self in some way or another. That's my introspection at work, I can't help it. Of all the puzzles in this universe that engage me, the puzzle of figuring out my own mind and what goes on there is sometimes the most complex and incomprehensible of all (and yes, I would even occasionally count it above the quest for a Grand Theory of Everything to unite quantum theory and relativity; the conundrum of, "Is there a God?" and all the rest - it's that big of a puzzle to me). I like to claim I know myself, but I usually just mean that I know myself better than a lot of others seem to know themselves.

Introspection, for me, is also about taking the time to be able to express my thoughts and ideas in the best way I can. If I pause while speaking, it's because I'm coming up with the right word, "le mot juste", to express precisely what I mean. If I am quiet, it doesn't always mean that I have no thoughts on a matter: maybe someone else already said what I think; maybe my thoughts aren't yet coalesced into a coherent form; maybe I feel that what I have to say is not actually all that helpful; or maybe I just feel like engaging is not good for me for any of all sorts of reasons. I'm introspective, but equally, will speak when I have something worth saying!

Open

This word means a lot of things to me. Some good, some maybe not so good in some ways. The first meaning I have is simple honesty. I am open in the sense of being honest, if someone asks me things I'll answer truthfully if I can. Iw won't lie, and on one or two things I will close the door, but yes - honesty with people is a big part of my openness.

On the other hand, openness means to me vulnerability - being open to attack. This is also something that is true of me, I find myself emotionally very vulnerable in some ways, and without a doubt I have been hurt sometimes. I take this vulnerability as a necessary price for being open in other ways, and I cannot bring myself to be closed even if it would mean less pain.

Another meaning of being open for me is related to the first. I do not hide who I am, it's all out there (either here or at The Other Place) in one way or another, and I don't shy away from it - the good, the bad and the downright ugly, I share it all. About the only thing I hide is my real name and my exact postal address (and hey, they're not hard to find out either if you know how to look). Heh - maybe for me another synonym for "open" should be "dumb". Like I said already, being open also means to me vulnerability, but I don't know how not to be open sufficiently as to not be vulnerable. It's the biggest problem I have in terms of my desires to be a supervillain with a volcano hideout!

I already spoke about emotional openness in the paragraph on vulnerability. I don't think I am as open as I seem to be emotionally. I will let people get inside my shell, but there's usually another gatekeeper before you get to my heart. After the openness I spoke about in the last paragraph, there's more steps. The thing is, if you get through the barriers, then there is nothing held back. Everything is at your mercy. in that sense, I am totally open. When I love, it is with my whole self; I will bleed when betrayed. My only saving grace is that I heal quickly; but every wound has left its scars. As I said - the price of being open. For me, the only defence is not to love. And if I do that, I lose. Heck, XKCD even has a cartoon for that, too! (the hover-over message is "Wait, no, that one also loses" - also, how many of my readers get the film reference in the cartoon?)

So yeah - openness is a double-edged sword, but I'd rather have it than a shield.

Polite

What can I say? I was brought up proper-like! I have impressed people with my ability to send incredibly polite "fuck you!"s to people in authority. I am a mild-mannered man most of the time, and I am sure people will have noted that I reserve as my highest term of disgust and anger for something, "that is Not Okay". I have a wide range of Anglo-Saxon words in my vocabulary, and use them happily and without shame, but I still come across as polite, because that's the manner I have. I may talk about arse, slut, fuck, shit and all that, but never to insult, demean or anything, so yeah - polite. I think my politeness (as well as having had parents who instilled it in me) comes from the same source as my introspective nature. That same thing of wanting to express myself well means that when I take the time to consider my words, it means I'm dealing with the arguments, and not the rage-y feelings. I put my insults into my arguments as proper arguments; instead of calling someone stupid, I try to prove them so!

Another side to politeness is what might be termed "courtesy" or "etiquette". This goes back to the "thoughtfulness" or "consideraton" that I discussed in the first section. I will hold the door for other people, not out of chivalry or "romantic" notions (which are sexist) but out of a desire to assist others - so men as well as women will be the beneficiaries of my door-holding. As I said in the piece on "thoughtful", I have to think about it, but some of the behaviours are sufficiently in grained in me that I just do them automatically (like door holding). Others, I take some time over. Indeed, it frustrates me sometimes when I see a situation walking on the pavement, and I plot a course through the people ahead of me assuming everyone else is also going to try to minimise the inconvenience to one another, just as I am. And then they just walk on, oblicious to their surroundings so my cleverly plotted route is completely messed up! Not to mention, everyone (including themselves!) ends up taking that much longer to get wherever they're going.

Politeness for me definitely comes from my Christian faith; the love that Christ teaches we should feel for our neighbours has been described as "compassionate concern" for others. It seems to me that this concern for others must require the courtesy of which I speak; it also calls me to be careful of how I speak to or about others. By respecting them (in the Quaker terminology, "That of God in everyone") I serve God. That doesn't mean I should allow them to go unchallenged, if they're misguided or just plain wrong; but it does mean that hurling insults is not acceptable, and if ever I do that, then you'll know that someone somewhere has seriously pissed me off to the point that my self-control has been broken. That takes some doing!

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Okay, over to you - if you want my words for you, just post a comment!