Internal Musings

Yesterday, I brought the incoming freshmen I'm working with (new international students taking part in the program I'm helping out with) to get USA cell phone plans taken care of. While I was waiting, the representatives from the cell phone carrier started trying to get me to convert to their plan, asking me questions about what carrier and plan I was with now, if I was a student and could qualify for their student discount, etc. etc. They were pretty good salespeople, but I politely declined ;)

In the midst of trying to shy away from their attempts to demonstrate how much better their prices were, I mentioned how I was already on a family plan and had a pretty good deal with my current carrier. When they asked me how many people were in my family, I told them without hesitating that there were four of us--my dad, mom, sister, and me. 

I really need to stop doing that. I don't continue to say that my mom is still a part of my family because I haven't come to terms or her passing from cancer; in fact, I have long since accepted that my life now no longer has that maternal figure (which is why, I think, I become very attached very quickly to almost all maternal figures I meet). Instead, I believe it is because I know of the societal expectation of the idea of a family, and that even with increasing rate of divorce, teenage pregnancy, and single parents, people confronted with atypical families are taken aback. This leads to questions, both voiced or left unsaid, about where a parent has gone. 

Herein lies my problem--when those questions have been asked of me, the questions "where is your mom," "what does your mom do for a living," and I have to tell them that she passed when I was in high school, the person asking almost always becomes awkward and apologizes, and it is difficult to get back into the previous conversation without a more somber air. As a person, I dislike inconveniencing people, and perhaps I avoid mentioning it to save the other person from that feeling of awkwardness, although I don't at all mind people asking. 

And that, my friends, is where I have fallen into the trap of the Looking Glass Self, a concept born by Charles Cooley, which is the idea that a person is not only shaped by personality, but also societal perceptions of him/her. Even though I am comfortable with the topic, I am made uncomfortable of it because of how society views it, and that unconsciously forces me to present myself dramaturgically. I need to work to be unafraid of the societal compression of characters and fall out of the "sameness" that it produces. 

I oftentimes wonder how my life would be different if my mom was still here, if I never took martial arts classes or played an instrument, if I hated school (yes, I have almost always liked to go to school), if I hadn't had certain experiences. But character is built so much from different aspects of life that it would be hard for anyone to imagine the answer to that question in their own lives. 

Rambling complete. Continue on with your lives. :) 

RL