Tag Archives: bellybutton gazing

What was I doing?

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Longtime readers know I occasionally get fixated on bellybutton-gazing-type pointless ponderings, and then feel the need to share. This weekend was all about the human capacity to consume mass amounts of information, and then fuggetaboutit.

In college I had this professor, who was absolutely phenomenal, in spite of the fact that her classes never actually covered what they were meant to. She spoke several languages, and said she had forgotten several as well. She spent a year in the Amazon doing research for her doctorate, and learned to speak the local dialect, but not long after her study was complete forgot most of what she learned. It’s not uncommon, tons of people grow up and forget a language they knew quite well as a child. Or perhaps you took French all four years of high school, and then in college, and spent six months in Paris for a study abroad program, and now you can barely order foie gras (gross). It’s amazing, really, to think a person could spend the time to learn a language fluently, only to have it slip away from disuse.

I have two degrees in Anthropology, and spent countless hours studying, writing, and cramming my head with theories. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, I retained 15% of what I learned. Yes, I remember the basic principals and theories and whatnot, but no longer the specifics of who said what, when and in what context. That’s pretty pathetic, especially considering the amount I have left to pay off my student loans, and years of my life I dedicated to my studies. On the other hand, fifteen percent is a hell of a lot more than I remember from high school, and if I had to put a percentage on the information I retained from those years, it would probably be .00000001%. So maybe I got my money’s worth in college after all.

Anyway, I’m more interested in the things we forget aside from what we learned in school. It’s one thing to fill your head with information for a test, vomit it out, and then forget about it when it no longer serves a purpose. It’s an entirely different thing when we forget something physical, like pain, which we fortunately have the ability to push out of our minds. Just ask anyone with multiple tattoos or piercings, or better yet, a mother with multiple kids.

To me, the most bizarre form of forgetting is when it’s personal, like names of people and places and restaurants we once knew. Sometimes we forget things we shouldn’t, and as a result end up making the same mistake repeatedly. I’m sure everyone knows a person that swears off dating assholes, and then conveniently forgets all about it when the next douche bag comes along.

Our capacity to forget about heartbreak can be both good and bad. Yes, it’s harmful when a person consistently falls for the wrong person, each time neglecting (often purposefully) to remember how painful it is when the relationship goes south. However, forgetting heartbreak is probably more useful than not. It allows us to get over that bad relationship, or maybe the good one that we thought would never end but did, and move on with life. And how could one possibly bear to start anew with another person if they couldn’t let go of their previous breakup?

Okay, end bellybutton time. I have errands to run, and of course, forgot where I put my keys. Happy Monday y’all.

I have a bellybutton.

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Disclaimer: Total navel gazing post ahead, feel free to move on to the next link in your blogroll.

I find it interesting that in our current culture it’s okay to be weird. Television and books are filled with ‘quirky’ characters, and the blogosphere is overflowing with folks pronouncing their strangeness, real or invented, to the world. Being called normal has become almost an insult of sorts. I actually don’t think we’re getting weirder, it’s just that we no longer have such rigidity to live by, which in many ways is a good thing.

Personally, I like that so many people want to be strange, because it means that I do seem normal. I have a lot of oddities, the most unusual ones I choose not to write about because, well, while they certainly make up part of who I am, they aren’t everything about me. It isn’t like I collect toenail clippings, or anything bizarre like that, so don’t worry.

Anyway, because the column of peculiar is pretty long for me, I like it when I find something to put in the normal column. It gives me a feeling of ‘whew, well I don’t have that to worry about’. Which, finally, brings me to the point of my post. Lately I’ve read a smattering of articles and book reviews about research on the topics of envy and unhappiness at a perceived unfulfilled life. There seems to be a general agreement that mobility and technology are largely to blame, because it gives us so many more options, and also because we are constantly being exposed to ‘updates’. Basically, we are a culture filled with woulda’s, coulda’s, and shoulda’s, as well as why me?, which is often found alongside why him/her and not me?

I can understand this notion of having so many options that it’s difficult to choose a path, especially for women. For some, the fear of making the wrong choice essentially paralyzes them, and so instead of choosing something, they wallow in a perpetual state of inactivity. As for envy, with people constantly updating their facebook page to reflect all the wonderful things happening in life, it’s easy to understand that, upon discovering friend A just hit the gym, friend B just bought a top of the line big screen television, and friend C just kicked ass at work, you might wonder why your life is so dull.

Fortunately, I hardly ever log on to facebook, so I have no idea what anyone is doing, or if it’s more exciting than my own existence. And even if I did, envy, in my opinion, is pointless. The grass is rarely greener on the other side, in fact, it’s probably Astroturf. As far as my life’s potential and the choices I make, while I do put thought into my decisions, I also have a tendency to run forward like a maniac with a machete in a hurry to do…something, and I’ll find out what exactly it is when it happens. I have this philosophy that things will eventually work out. And they do, just not like I expect.

So, initially, I felt rather pleased that I seem to be doing okay on the envy and perceived potential fronts. But then I started thinking – well doesn’t that make me sound like a smug asshole? And what does it say about me that not only do I not have envy, I typically think there’s falseness to whatever I’m seeing? Because that’s not exactly a positive. As a matter of fact, that’s it’s own problem. And with regards to life fulfillment, while I live my life under the philosophy of no what-ifs, should I be asking that? Would I benefit from contemplating the path not taken? Should I think more about what might have been had I not chosen to just wing it? Is my contentment really masking something else?

If the phone rings, and nobody is around to hear it, did it really ring?

And that would be my cue to end this pointless post. I don’t know how I get so caught up in the endless vortex of self contemplation, it never comes to any good.

But, I’ll leave you guys with something else that has been bothering me. A few days ago, the search term why would my husband dig two holes for 1 little dog brought someone to the Cowardly Feminist. What the fuck does that mean? Is it a riddle, and did he or she find the answer? Because I really need to know why he dug two holes.