Personal Experience with Self-Evaluation

When thinking about this blog, the goal was to make it more scholarly and academic as opposed to a young woman's diary because, well, who wants to read about a nineteen year old's personal life; however, I feel compelled to share a story about the epiphany that I had in looking at myself tonight, conveniently occurring just a few hours after my last post dealing with self-evaluation.

This evening, my roommate (and best friend) came home from a busy weekend and after spewing out her weekend in the matter of minutes, she looks at me and says, "Talk."  I looked at her questioningly and she added, "Talk about anything... Life."  And so I did, talking about my weekend, my boyfriend, my homework, and everything in between.  Then I brought up a conflict that I had had just a few days ago and we began to dissect.  Essentially, it was an explosion of figuring out that my nurturing manner was both a flaw and a positive characteristic.  We discussed the ways in which I displayed my mothering nature - making dinner for, cleaning compulsively, checking in on people.

At first, I was completely offended.  I did not believe that being a caring person could possibly offend or annoy anybody ever.  It all seemed very black and white to me.  After the initial shock, I began to feel defensive.  I started spitting out reasons why I do those things and that it's necessary.  Luckily, my best friend is the most reasonable and sensible person I know.  She caught onto my feelings and began to make the situation less black and white, and more gray.

She talked about how it was not a bad thing, except when it was.  This "when it was" concept struck me.  I thought, "Who doesn't want to be taken care of?"  As we discussed the idea more and more, we came to the conclusion that it was not who did not want to be cared for, but when any given person needs to be independent for the time being.  It whittled down to perception.  If somebody perceives themselves as caring, they see it as good.  However, another could see it as overbearing and nosy, which is hardly ever a good thing.

As we look at ourselves, it is our job to look at both the good and the bad with multiple sets of eyes: our own, our friends, and even through the eyes of a stranger.  We must be open-minded and willing to look past the obvious commentary and dig a little bit deeper, reach for the "why."  Only after we find that out can we learn to control our behaviors and change the way that we act.  Maybe one day we can even alter the way that we think.

And that is the story of how I came about a seemingly harmless characteristic, nailed down the way, and started on how to change it.