Were you the underdog in high school and how do you feel about the underdog?
Do we ever unshackle ourselves from childhood? Do we ever heal the hurts of rejection and familial dysfunction? I speak as someone who has been talking for two decades with the same therapist – and who has been helped immensely by what Jung called ‘the talking cure’. But as my therapist has told me on several occasions the truth is: I will go to my grave still grappling with the crazed behavior of my parents and the fact that I knew little in the way of love while growing up. My mother told me on several occasions: ‘I love you, but I’ve never liked you… and I never will”. I repeat this statement now here in a public domain not to say, ‘Oh woe is me’. The fact is: my mother was speaking the truth (and the first time she told me this was when I was five years old… the last time during what turned out to be our final conversation in 2010). My father also threw me under the bus over a family dispute about that most Balzacian of subjects (money), in which I had uncovered empirical proof of wrongdoing on the part of someone else. I am not going to divulge the details. What I do know is: I never told my parents that the door was slammed shut. When it became an untenable situation, I simply withdrew. Neither parent ever wanted to open the door again. Hurtful, yes… but very telling. I never permanently closed them off. They did that themselves. So it goes. Of course, it has impacted my life… but not just in negative ways. It focused me on being the best parent I could be to my children. It made me come to understand that the hurt and rejection I felt (and sometimes still do) came about at the hands of two people who were very lost and unhappy souls. As such they deserve empathy, not visceral contempt. And in the end – as I said on this page last week -we have a choice in life: do we continue to remain furious at those who’ve done us wrong? Or do we simply try to have better lives? Trust me forgiveness is one of the hardest things to achieve. But I know from experience: just the act of saying to yourself, 'Goodbye to all that toxicity… I deserve better and I will do better as a person than they did' is a start.
I began this morning in a bleak place again. I pushed myself to write this post. The bleakness has been mitigated by the act of doing something to counter it. What else can we keep doing but continue to struggle with ourselves and try to think positively…What’s your guys favorite example of the underdog winning in history?
I’m curious as to events that I may not know about, where a clear underdog somehow comes on top triumphantly. Such as being outnumbered 3-1, where pure will power achieved a thought impossible victory. Underdogs are a contradiction, they must be average but must at the same time contend with special people, to do that is impossible so authors cheat and make them special in other ways, Batman is a super me genius with extreme talent and an extreme amount of money he is a special 1 in a billion person yet he still gets called an underdog, Rock Lee is shit an ninjutsu but extremely talented at taijutsu he can open 5 gates at the age of 13 and go through gara's shield which could block join easily.
You see a true underdog doesn't exist because they exist everywhere, they are the not talented not special people who don't achieve anything, an underdog as people call them are not talented in the usual sense for their setting, Batman is an underdog because he has no superpowers, Rock Lee is a an underdog because he can't use taijutsu.
Here comes to he problem, how is Batman 's prep time any different than a super power it basically allows him to do anything a superpowered character can and more with zero explanation, his intilegence is special, his money is special, his talent at martial arts and science is special.
Rock Lee may suck at ninjutsu but being godly talented at taijutsu doesn't make you really talentless. The conclusion i came to is making a true underdog is impossible because they have to be talented somehow to Excell, they have to be special. I was in one of my favorite cinemas in North America – the wonderful Lincoln Theatre in Damariscotta, Maine (a fast twelve minute drive from my house). I was watching a very interesting Spanish film, ‘The Good Boss’ with Javier Bardem (worth a look) and only about fifteen minutes from the end when someone several rows behind me got very sick. I turned and saw this man – late seventies I sensed – projectile vomiting and his wife running out to get the theatre manager and call the emergency services. Fortunately there is a very good hospital in Damariscotta, and the ambulance people were there in ten minutes. It seems the poor man was having a stroke (as the theatre manager told me later). After he was taken off by the ambulance man, and the theatre staff cleaned up the vomit, the film resumed.
Of course I couldn’t help but think about how, in the midst of life, something unexpected and grave can come out of nowhere and upend everything to do with your life – as this man discovered this afternoon… and as we all did as bystanders to such a life-altering situation. And yet again I couldn’t help but think: we’re all so damn fragile, aren’t we?
I began this morning in a bleak place again. I pushed myself to write this post. The bleakness has been mitigated by the act of doing something to counter it. What else can we keep doing but continue to struggle with ourselves and try to think positively…What’s your guys favorite example of the underdog winning in history?
I’m curious as to events that I may not know about, where a clear underdog somehow comes on top triumphantly. Such as being outnumbered 3-1, where pure will power achieved a thought impossible victory. Underdogs are a contradiction, they must be average but must at the same time contend with special people, to do that is impossible so authors cheat and make them special in other ways, Batman is a super me genius with extreme talent and an extreme amount of money he is a special 1 in a billion person yet he still gets called an underdog, Rock Lee is shit an ninjutsu but extremely talented at taijutsu he can open 5 gates at the age of 13 and go through gara's shield which could block join easily.
You see a true underdog doesn't exist because they exist everywhere, they are the not talented not special people who don't achieve anything, an underdog as people call them are not talented in the usual sense for their setting, Batman is an underdog because he has no superpowers, Rock Lee is a an underdog because he can't use taijutsu.
Here comes to he problem, how is Batman 's prep time any different than a super power it basically allows him to do anything a superpowered character can and more with zero explanation, his intilegence is special, his money is special, his talent at martial arts and science is special.
Rock Lee may suck at ninjutsu but being godly talented at taijutsu doesn't make you really talentless. The conclusion i came to is making a true underdog is impossible because they have to be talented somehow to Excell, they have to be special. I was in one of my favorite cinemas in North America – the wonderful Lincoln Theatre in Damariscotta, Maine (a fast twelve minute drive from my house). I was watching a very interesting Spanish film, ‘The Good Boss’ with Javier Bardem (worth a look) and only about fifteen minutes from the end when someone several rows behind me got very sick. I turned and saw this man – late seventies I sensed – projectile vomiting and his wife running out to get the theatre manager and call the emergency services. Fortunately there is a very good hospital in Damariscotta, and the ambulance people were there in ten minutes. It seems the poor man was having a stroke (as the theatre manager told me later). After he was taken off by the ambulance man, and the theatre staff cleaned up the vomit, the film resumed.
Of course I couldn’t help but think about how, in the midst of life, something unexpected and grave can come out of nowhere and upend everything to do with your life – as this man discovered this afternoon… and as we all did as bystanders to such a life-altering situation. And yet again I couldn’t help but think: we’re all so damn fragile, aren’t we?
