Experience

While I was procrastinating earlier, I discovered WeeWorld, where everyone has been making those little WeeMee avatars.  Naturally, I had to make my own.  I figured it could be my new Myspace or Livejournal icon, you know?

Only I didn’t get that far.  None of the hairstyles really matched mine.  The eyecolors didn’t match mine.  I was torn between which little outfit to pick out. Should I go with dance club slut or boring student or Shabbat clothes?  Any of them would suit me depending on the situation.  Should I make myself chubby, average, or thin?  Which shoes should I pick?

It sounds really stupid, but it represents an issue I’ve struggled with, my lack of accurate perception.  One could argue that if one of my friends were designing my WeeMee, they’d have no trouble at all because they aren’t aware of the inner complexities and contradictions in my inner nature and those who are aware would simply select one of my identities to reflect in the avatar.  I realized I could design one of my friends with greater ease than I could myself.  So maybe it’s just a matter of how one views oneself?

But I feel as though I have a deeper inability to accurately perceive things.  It appears my perceptions and experiences are never correct.  If I have a good time in a lecture, everyone else thought it was awful.  If I found the community service work meaningul, others were full of criticisms and suggestions to change/improve it.  If I thought Student Council had little respect and participation at my school, last night awards ceremony proved me wrong.  I had characterized the student body as politically apathetic and clueless and I discovered recently that I was wrong about that too.  I had characterized my family experiences and felt my reaction to certain events was universal, and I learned only recently, it was not.

It makes me uncomfortable with describing events/people/situations.  I try not to give a bias (though that’s impossible), but my descriptions seem to be stunningly inaccurate without me intentionally trying to distort them.  I cannot give objective descriptions: if I hate that song, everyone else thinks it’s great and if I enjoyed the class, everyone else hates it.  If everyone else liked the restaurant, I didn’t.  I feel as though I cannot say whether I am pretty or smart or talented because I just don’t know.  I cannot recount to my boss what the highlights of the conference were because what if my perception of the highlights was wrong?

It is why I never responded to the movie review I read.  Oh I didn’t agree with it at all, I thought and still think An Inconvenient Truth is a terrible movie and I know it’s not just my politics.  If it were merely an issue of politics, that wouldn’t bother me.  But I was afraid I had seen the movie wrong, if that makes any sense.  I wouldn’t have minded if someone had questioned my politics, I write op/ed and that doesn’t scare me.  I was too afraid someone would question my perception.

I’ve already made so many mistakes this year because of that.  I mischaracterized certain friendships, relationships, and family member relationships.  I saw them to be different than what they really were.  It led to disasterous consequences.

Experience is supposed to be a primary tool for learning.  I cannot trust my own experience.  It scares me.