Who Are Always Right (1/22/09 Thursday)

Thank god I get tomorrow off. I'm glad to be working Saturday, instead, if only for the free day in between. I haven't even been to work yet today, and I'm having to takedeep breaths as if in preparation for some extreme dread, as indeed this long day with Julie is. I'd rather be home here, on the sofa or in bed, surrounded by the six books I'm reading and pen and paper, wrapped in a throw, sipping tea. But that will be next week, which I've taken off, merely to get away from work. Oh, to get away from that forever, to run from my embarrassment and immaturity! One of the books I'm reading is Something to Blog About. It fell into my hands as a hold. The moment I saw it I knew it was my story, and a glance inside the jacket confirmed it--only, in this book, I am a teenage girl. I opened it up, about three-quarters of the way in, where I thought I might find the exposure of the blog, and read one line of dialogue that convinced me to place my own hold on a copy: "But you put it on the internet!"

So what has changed since high school? Has anyone grown up? The same emotions filtered through greater experience yields...nothing--no wisdom, no maturity. It's still gossip and backstabbing, but with slightly less overt intent. Cunning--that's what you have where wisdom should be--ever subtler ways of doing the same childish things in response to the same emotions. It's fair enough that the emotions would not have changed; their creation was wholly outside of our conscious power, given to us carelessly and accepted mindlessly by us impressionable vessels. But some always believe what they felt then and filter subsequent experience through these unquestioned emotions, instead of examining the emotions in the light of experience. They remain children because they never question their parents.