I’M OK With Me

Daily writing prompt

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

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I have no desire to escape into some sort of alter ego, even for a day. It’s not that I consider myself perfect, but I’ve reached a sort of agreeable truce with who I am. And I’m pretty pleased and satisfied with him – foibles not excluded. I’ve paid attention to the pulse of my life, and understand that almost anyone else would feel alien.

This is not some sort of smug way of petting myself on the back. As a matter of fact, I can do a great job of kicking myself for faults. It’s just that deficiencies and all, I’m OK with myself. If someone else occupied my shoes for a day, they might not be.

Faullts

I can be really irritating. Last year, when I was ill with some odd virus, I put an entire raised bed in the garden out of place. While I’m not into creating formal symmetry in the garden, not twisting into odd corners to provide irrigation to the beds is preferable to the current layout. Everyone has heard me kvetch about emptying the bed, relocation, and refilling. I now get looks from family members when I start in on this

I’m pretty sure that whoever’s shoes you might want to step into has some similar irritating quirk that was not in the press release or short bio.

Who Not To Be?

We might spend time more profitably considering who we would not want to be. Come on, some politicians come to mind, some tycoon who was an Epstein affiliate? Rather than try to escape your own set of circumstances, be appreciative that you are not an ICE agent, pedophile, grifting politician, or that cousin you can’t stand.

This is not an idle exercise. Empathy allows us to place ourselves in another’s shoes, understand their position, and sympathize with them. People like those I’ve mentioned share the same range of emotion and behavioral characteristics as the rest of us. But somewhere they went off the rails, did awful things, damaged people’s lives, and perhaps enriched their own in perverted ways.

Rather than simply condemning them out of hand, we should appreciate the fact that their motives were distortions of the norm, and under other circumstances, it might be us doing those things. Consider, if you will, why you would not. And be thankful that you are you. Not them.