Agent provocateur

It's interesting to see how seriously you take yourself. Can you laugh at yourself? Can you understand that something which is precious to you, sacred in it's own way, might plausibly be ludicrous to someone else? I realise that I take myself very, very seriously. That I have a sphere of issues that I can be punched about, but if a punch is thrown outside of this, off goes the fuse in my head. And beneath the simmering temper is spread this black surface of self doubt. And that, even now, it is incredibly easy for it to boil over. And this is slightly disturbing. It's incredible that the slightest provocation can set off, not only the temper, but also the doubt. And the most dismaying part is that the provocateur need not necessarily be someone whose opinion counts. In fact, it need not be someone who is capable of having an opinion which might count. Or someone who is incapable of having an opinion which counts and who was maybe kidding in the first place. All it takes is a sneer. Weird, eh?

And the side issue which I started off with: Why is it so hard to understand and accept that you can't be universally and uniformly appreciated? That there are always going to be many, many people who don't understand and perhaps don't care. This seems so very obvious, yet it seems hard to accept when you are confronted with disapproval, contempt or amusement. The last one is perhaps the most serious offender though.

Side, side issue: how do we decide the group of people whose opinion counts? Are they those who appreciate you in the first place? But this seems like a loop of positive feedback. It's maybe a mixture of people who appreciate you and people who are important to you for other reasons. People whose opinion counts, no matter what it is that you do. And these are people you admire for something they do. So yes, you always look to your heroes for judgement. Damn, I landed up with a trivial conclusion. Everyone knows this already.