Snobbery

So tired of judging. So tired of people who promote judging.

Intellectual, aesthetic, musical, comedic, and lifestyle snobbery cause so much mental dissonance and general anxiety.

Disgusting.

However…ARE each person’s perceptions of life equally valid?

If one person finds Stravinsky to be the peak of musical expression and another selects Christina Aguilera ballads as such…is the Stravinsky lover more sophisticated in taste or merely different?

If one person’s ideal life includes being a housewife in a suburb somewhere and another’s includes traveling the world and living in an Epicurean style…is one of them incorrect about what is idyllic?

Generally, I am quick to judge these questions and I spend a lot of time around others who are quick to judge them as well. This has led me to carry around a lot of resentment and hostility toward people (especially Americans) in general. I do not want to shoulder this angst anymore. I want to be free of judgments. I want to see the world through all kinds of lenses and I want to be surrounded by other open-minded people. Oh wait, there is another judgment. Can I really draw a line between open-minded and closeminded people? Perhaps all these questions of superiority which constantly plague me are valid. Otherwise we would not have so many words to describe differences between people. I don’t want to live in this tiered world. In this unofficial caste system. I want to appreciate everybody equally.

Last night I saw somebody in a completely different light. Somebody I have labelled as simple minded and lacking ambition. But this person is actually fulfilled in a way that I can only dream of. They spend their time as they please, enjoying nature and food and all of life with great relish. I could not see what valuable lessons there were to be had for myself in this friend because I immediately assumed that my intellectual superiority distinguished me from him. There is no fucking definition of intelligence anyway. If there is any scale involved in intelligence, though, I am definitely on a low rung for not being able to connect with/relate to people on a ‘different level.’

So last night, after having this sort of revelation of how interesting my friend is, then vomiting out all the liquor which led me to being open enough to experience said revelation in the first place, I vowed to open my mind and try to understand each individual as a whole. I seek to find each person’s unique genius and to learn from it.

But today I ran into so many fucking stupid people.

Goodnight.

@2 years ago