A Pleasant Relief

I went to Cleveland this weekend for my fraternity's reunion celebration. It was a pretty good time, on the whole, but there was one thing that really sticks in my mind. Allow me a little back story before I get into the meat of it.

I consider myself a storyteller, it's how I remember things and how I relate things. Facts, for me, are irrelevant unless they are somehow connected to some plot or some greater whole. It has been like this ever since I can remember. When I was a kid, at dinner, my dad would tell stories and we, the kids, would be encouraged to make one up and tell it to the family as well. It was, and still is, not a problem to hear the same story for the 20th time... it might have some new fact and the act of exchanging the story is often more important than the story itself. My first girl friend in college was quite of the other mind, and had a big effect on my story telling habits... insofar as reminding me early into a story that I'd already told her that one. With the people I work with, I have (as I perceive it) a bad reputation around storytelling. I have a reputation for telling stories that are anticlimactic or end disjointedly. The disjointed ones are a more recent addition, of my own reaction to facial feedback to a story already started. Keeping a story inside me can be really difficult, if it is a story I was in, although if it's a story someone else told me then it's no problem keeping it quiet. It is like there is some weird storyteller's covenant or something.

One other important aspect of background information is that I don't identify myself with very much. For example, I 'went salsa dancing' for over a year before I considered myself 'a salsa dancer.' I was in my fraternity, as opposed to being a member of it. So the list of things that comprise my identity is not as long as one might suspect, which means that when I when I get a continual stream of negative feedback about a part of my identity... I don't have as much to fall back on.

So, I was relaying some story or another to some of my buddies at a bar on friday night and in the middle of it one of them interrupts me to tell me how I am a very "captivating storyteller." Now, it is critical here to understand that the line between deadpan sarcasm and legitimate compliments for this guy is usually distinguishable only by diction. So my first reaction is to be a little stunned, not being used to being insulted so upfront, directly, and personally. My opinion of my storytelling skills already being questionable only made the whole thing worse. So I kind of stammered out, "Are... are you serious?" "Yeah, dude. You're really captivating." It was the word 'captivating' that had triggered the sarcasm-o-meter in the first place and it is registering again. So I re-stammered, "Nah, man. Are you for real?" "Yeah. Take a look at Donkey [the nickname of the guy sitting next to me], here. No one listens when he tries to tell a story, but everyone here is looking at you. You tell good stories." "Oh. ... Oh, Thanks, man."

That's the best compliment I've gotten in a long time, and a much needed one at that. I hadn't realized how weak my opinion of my storytelling had become, but when I was put back in familiar territory with a need for stories of substance and quality I didn't miss a step. And now, as I think of it, someone has got to be emotionally involved in a story in order to be disappointed by the ending. If there is no belief in the rising action, then the falling action, equally, has no meaning. So thanks, Hammad. Thanks for an antidote to a poison that hadn't even registered yet.

On a somewhat related note... I think I've gotten funnier lately or something. Maybe I really did level up in Chicago or something, but I've been told how funny I am in the past week or two. Which is not a comment I'm used to hearing. A friend told me today, "God! Why don't I hang out with you more often? I'm crying here." (Crying out of funniness, mind you). I had a momentary sarcasm meter reaction, before realizing he was serious. Which makes that one the second best compliment I've gotten in a long time.

Begin with the Antithesis

I like words. I like long words, short words, funny words, and hard words. I like the way they feel when I say them. My favorite word to say to myself right now is "smag" ... the name of a dance company in Dayton... it just sounds so dirty and I can 'sit on' the 'A.' The Structuring (my dept) Word of The Day (which we've only ever had one of, as proclaimed by me) a few weeks ago was "pleonasm." That's a fun one, too. I was reading an article about some statements the FERC Chairman, Joseph Kelliher made and I found myself thinking, "Damn, this is a smart man. He really has his stuff together." This is as weird a reaction to a press conference for me as it is for you... so I began to wonder why I thought this dude was so cool, when it hit me. He had used the word "inchoate" in referring to arguments for electric re-regulation. The truth is that I just eat that shit up.

Being a lover of words, it is important that I use them either correctly or wrong on purpose. So, this morning I looked up the definition of "antithetical" to make sure I was using it right. Reading the definitions, I come across the words that will be guiding most of my spare time for the rest of the workday "Hegelian Dialectic." I encourage you to check the Wikipedia article on it, there is alot of good stuff in there. I'm going to move on to my own interpretations and conclusions about it, rather than sum it all up.

The part that got me, the part that really made it all sink in, was the 'criticism of dialectic' section. Specifically Karl Popper's critique that a dialectic will 'put up with contradictions.' Suddenly the spiral, negation of negation, my hang-up on doublethink, my issues with the concepts of good and evil, and my belief that nothing will teach you nothing all came together in a massive mental whirlwind leaving me the storm polished stone that I have a dialectic soul. Anyone that has had much in the way of serious conversations has discovered (often to their vexation) that I will happily stand on both sides of an argument. I also firmly believe that a significant amount of goodness is introduced into the world once a person's truths are in logical alignment. (I thought I had blogged about that recently, but maybe I only got half done and axed it). The most important part about my newfound understanding of a dialectic is that the goal is not to determine who is right... cause we both are and we both aren't. Lets line our truths up and shake out our falsities and make something better than either of us had to begin with.

I think almost all of the women that have danced with me have at one point or another heard my salsa catch-phrase. "No worries. What are we going to do? Win? At salsa?" It is an attitude that, like alot of realizations, has come with me off the dance floor. The shift from right/wrong to better/worse has profound repercussions. Taking a position of firmness and flexibility, as opposed to rigidity, has a tendency to encourage productive discussion... which is always a good thing.

The pursuit of truth, outside of the constructs of right and wrong, is the sole goal of any conversation