You Don't Know What You're Doing

Language:

That illusive pet that we each engage in the morning; that irritating reminder that we sometimes don’t measure up, language is the vehicle for all thought, action and intention.
I often wear my heart on my sleeve, I'm entirely too sensitive at times and succumb to bouts of depression when I'm not cognizant of where my head is at. I take more than my share of things personally and as if they’re at attack on my heart. I often can’t explain what I'm thinking because there simply seems to be too many words and one, in particular…that I’m thinking of as the main descriptor.

On many occasions this is a “flaw” so-to-speak of the Type-A personalities and often, one of the most difficult issues to compete with. I’ve sat countless hours in therapeutic seminars and stress-relief classes where I’ve felt the need to correct the speaker or have inserted my own set of verbiage in order to clear the air for the way I could feel my mind processing what I was hearing. This…Is not a good thing.

This morning, the thought occurred to me that there is a power given to language depending on the context, form and tone of the message; mostly tone. When handed an insult say, it becomes insulting depending on the way that we perceive our own self image. If someone were to call a name that has no meaning in our mental dictionary that word would then cease to have any power. On the other hand if someone insulted our ability to be a “good” person, a “great mom”, or the way that we look – reacting as if an insult is in a sense, to say that we have agreed with enough of the statement to feel powerless against it. That we additionally think we’re not “as good” a person as we should be/could be, that we’re not a “great” mom, that we are: ‘ugly, stupid, ignorant, etc.’ enough so, that hearing the statement from someone else is as if they’re exposing our vulnerabilities to everyone…and how dare they!

It’s probably the reasoning behind why I have such a difficult time developing a resume. Whomever played with the chemistry set for making a ME must have eye-balled the recipe and put in way too much idealism because I find it very difficult to fib about having the ability to do things or be something that I don’t feel 100% about doing or being. You know, cutting and pasting in all those action words and power phrases for grabbing the attention of a perspective employer: managed, detailed, organized, lead, prioritized, supervised, and so forth. It never seems to measure up to enough of a description for my real abilities and always lacks in what I'm intending to present as a one-page descriptor of my self. And while we’re on the subject, who ever said that resumes should only be one page? I’ve read enough of the self-help resume starter kits for creating something fabulous to know that it should be original and spectacular like an action thriller movie trailer, but yet be in compliance with margin settings, highlighted name and contact information, font size and be in Times New Roman style. Dumb. Whenever I get to step 4 of the “create your own masterpiece resume”, I indefinitely quit because my urge is rather to scrap steps 1 through 4 and start over with a poster board, some finger paints and a medley of candid pictures, a sharpie marker, those shape-cutting scissors and a glue stick. I’d fill little comic bubbles with quotations from past employers and coworkers and then sum it all up with a highlighted statement (in much larger font) from someone prestigious that I’d cunningly convinced to speak as to my abilities and standards. None of it would be a lie, so I wouldn’t be stumbling over what to write where and how to phrase the statements, yet stay in the lines of what constitutes a proper representation of me. And it would be catchy, brightly colored and give the reader a face to identify with a quirky, glittery past because of all my candid shots.

Back to the original message however, language is the problem. It’s the drive and the road block – and how much of a conundrum that something can exist two-fold like that. The root cause of all internal battling, at least on my count it is.

“You don’t know what you’re doing…”

“Yes I do! No, actually I don’t. Wait. What did you say? What am I doing? I know! I know what to do!”

From the perspective that language is a mirror being held to our faces, or more appropriately, that insulting language is a mirror – that it can enable us to identify our problem areas…well, that’s much more pleasing that it being a constraint restraint to our delicate psyche. It’s like being a student rather than everyone else always being our jailor. So the next time I catch a phrase of “you don’t know what you’re doing…” I can mentally respond with the: “You know what? No. I don’t. Gotta work on that.” And then go about whatever it was that I didn’t know I was doing. Inevitably, it all works out in the end anyway, so vehicle or not, language is the voice-over for life. Heh. And to think that all I wanted to know what why resumes have to be limited to one page?