a SoW-approved public service message

"Really, now. All I ask is that you not treat the way I've come to see the world as a subhuman aberration, or, even worse, a hasty pretension. When you break it down, it's not a huge challenge.

Not everyone has lived your life. You have not lived everyone else's lives. You may not realize it, but there are people who yearn for the things you take for granted; there are people who thoroughly despise the things you love, the things you think it's only natural to love; there are people too who love the things you can't help but fear and hate. There are people who take for granted the things you yearn for.

Life is not scripted; we may live in the same society, share components of the same culture, but we don't owe it to each other to strive for, or believe in, or accomplish the same thing. I may or may not have access to everything, or anything, that you do, things that probably seem natural and normal and necessary to you, the only way things could ever be, for anyone - just as there are, without a doubt, things that are natural to me, necessary even, that would shock and confuse and even revolt you - but that does not legitimize your unwarranted conclusions about the way I must be, the thoughts I must think, or the passions I must have. Or vice versa.

A few basic epistemological reminders. Your belief in something has no bearing on its truth value. If something is true, you can disagree and disbelieve all you want; it will not change the fact of its truth. If something is false, neither hearty, enthusiastic agreement nor zealous, overweening faith will magically render it true. You are free, of course, to delude yourself otherwise, but in doing so, you forfeit the right to be taken seriously. This should not be that difficult to grasp.

People, at the same time, don't consciously choose their fundamental, defining beliefs. Nor do those beliefs arbitrarily come into being. Beliefs emerge, and are developed, cultivated, through individual experience and observation, the ways in which one adapts oneself to one's circumstances and the lessons one accrues from them over time. This shouldn't be all that difficult to grasp either.

You see, if someone sees something disconcerting in the world that you don't, that's not because she's weaker than you. It may be because she's seen similar phenomena before that you haven't, and she recognizes in a particular situation symptoms of a larger, more threatening dilemma that you don't even realize exists - and rightly so; in the context of your life, the dilemma may not exist. Or it may just be because what she perceives as a serious cause for concern, you perceive as a laughably minor obstacle. But if she's alarmed at something that you're not, maybe, just maybe, that's because you're fortunate enough to benefit from the security and comfort of a safety net that she lacks.

If other people can't stand up to the world to your satisfaction, that's your problem, not theirs. And so, my advice to you: in future dealings, when you find yourself in a situation where you're just itching to pass judgment, stop for a second and ask yourself: Why do I feel so unnerved, so threatened by this person that I have to label them weak? Does this person really imperil my own sense of security so much that my only recourse is to reconstitute them, in my own idiosyncratic rendition of reality, as less than human?

I would never have demeaned or laughed at you for the inferences your own experiences have led you to. Some people call them neuroses or insecurities; I am enough of a realist to omit the condescending rhetoric and call a spade a spade: a fear is a belief, and a belief is a conclusion drawn from experience. I may not share yours, but I have my own, and I know what it is to look uncertainty in the eye and flinch. If you've felt pain, you've felt pain. I would never deny that you felt it. My opinions on the origin of that pain aside - whether I think you're being irrational aside - it would not make me a stronger or more honourable or more noble person to deny the reality of your isolation.

Why then, why would you deny the reality of mine? I simply don't understand your reasoning. Because while it's very difficult, nigh impossible, to hurt or offend me, it's really quite easy to pique my curiosity. I'm intrigued, I'm curious. I'm fascinated.

What were you hoping to accomplish?"
- Goddess of Tactful Lit-Prose