It was only recently, while considering an essay for a contest that I realized how much they had affected my personality, my intellect and my curiosity. The most important was fear. I am a person who is very curious, who wants to know 'the truth', but because of the way I was raised, I was really afraid to SEEK it out-to really turn over rocks and maybe see the slugs. Obviously I did eventually with regard to the WT, but I had trouble for years doing so regarding the entire Bible, religion, etc-because I kept seeing glimpses of things I wasn't able to deal with and still maintain my mindset-which was pretty fundamentalist as regards the Bible, conservative regarding politics and in general, you get the picture.
I started examining the idea of how Americans sense reality-whether we have a sense of reality or if we ever did. It really made me examine MYSELF. I was very afraid to turn over rocks that would upset my reality. I wanted life to be very nice. I always want to be kind to people(that reality hasn't changed) and assumed that most people have good intentions, most people try to be honest, most people. . .well I had a lot of pollyanna attitudes about people in religion and politics. You know what? There is a lot of grey in the world. I was unwilling to see that because of my upbringing-even when I rejected a large portion of the upbringing, the impression remained. Now my upbringing wasn't pollyanna-it was negative and depressive-very cynical. But my need not to see things that would rock my world remained. Well, I had the 'epiphany', but I never did do the essay. It was due today and I only just got over the pneumonia. It might have been a good one, but if I had not been sick, I don't know that I would have realized it by now anyway.
I have been looking under the rocks of my life, my assumptions, presumptions, hopes, dreams and wishes. I have realized that I never went into law because I didn't want to come to a negative conclusion. I didn't want to KNOW evil things were true. I didn't want to face people who deliberately were bad. I didn't want to research things and learn things that shot down my opionion about a person, people, idea or law. For example, for years I would not read things politically that didn't support what I believed. Only in the last few months have I been able to really see things that made me uncomfortable (like the death penalty is used on innocents sometimes-ouch). Things that would throw me off my pedestal of surety scared me. It still does, but I have seen these patterns in others in recent years and didn't want to turn into those people, mindlessly spouting off the opinions of one person/party/idea. I don't fit in anyones box, and I don't need to. I can say what I really think, I can ACTUALLY express that I am unsure or have doubts-reality doesn't change, but my perceptions sometimes do-and change is good. Growth is good. So right now I feel like a snake working out of an old dried skin, but I am excited to see who I can become when I am brave enough to really look into things, rather than being afraid of what is really there. And if what is there is REALLY scary, then the good thing is I can at least try to do something to change it. That is kind of exciting.
