Thursday, September 16, 2010

Twisted Thoughts

I appreciate that I do rub some people up the wrong way, sometimes by my insistence on merely existing and sometimes because I do tend to tweak the tiger’s tail. But then there are those who seem to be intent on persuading themselves to dislike me, regardless of anything I say and do.

If I express remorse, these people say I'm playing to the gallery. If I write a piece that doesn't begin with a trail of tears, them I'm a heartless bastard. If I mention victims, I'm callous. If I don't, I'm self pitying. If I started walking on water and healing lepers, these are the ones who would complain I was disturbing the fish and practising medicine without a license.

There is, then, a constituency which can't be pleased. And so I'm not going to bother to try. They do interest me, though, from a psychological perspective. Their need to keep me as the Other, to twist and turn in their own minds until they can produce a representation of me that suits them, is really quite fascinating.

3 comments:

  1. Ben, had you not done what you did there'd still be two schools of thought about you -- because you're strong-spirited and feisty. Hostility is flattery and affirmation. You're cool.

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  2. If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one, so your on a hiding to nothing. Just say whatever you want, you can't help the person you are. One exception, Probation, just tell them what they want to hear, just to get out.

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  3. My friend Janet and I think you must be a very tolerant man, because we would find such people who twist and turn things in their minds to suit their own prejudices a flippin nuisance.

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