I love Danielle’s post about “what your repulsions have to say about you.” It is, as usual, wise and concise. (sidenote: I can’t wait to meet Danielle this weekend!)
I’ve been thinking about what really pisses me off. I have tons of little annoying peeves, but what really really aggravates me and grosses me out is a shorter list.
Lateness (100% for sure the first and most important one)
Entitlement
Over-familiarity
Clowns
Laziness
Complaining
Clearly many of these come from my family’s puritan roots. I was brought up to decry entitlement, laziness, and complaining. What one has doesn’t make one better than anyone else: this was a very strong lesson that I internalized into a profound truth. No single person has more inherent value than any other person. I could not believe this more strongly.
Everybody should pull their own weight and not whine about it. These beliefs are part of my family’s essential rubric, the power of which I am realizing now. Hard work and dedication are prized most of all, and there is a belief that most things can be solved if you try hard enough. This last part, I am learning, may not always be true.
Clowns are just creepy. Lateness and over familiarity, each in their own way, demonstrate disrespect for another.
What can you learn about what you dislike? As Danielle says, contrast can be a great teacher.
Hi Lindsay… you are so right about the family roots of our worst repulsions. I have the twinned treat of having similar repulsions, then being repulsed by my own repulsions.
I followed a few of your threads and discovered you also hate typos (Goldman Sach's.) My apologies for the ones you will find in my blog; as Bill pointed out, it's rife with them, in part because I read my own prose too quickly.