Wanzology

Hypocrisy_Pt.1
 You know, there ain't no cure for the summertime blues. Summertime, summertime. Well, it's the summertime, isn't it? Well, to me, it is. Welcome! Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY. I am your host, The Wanz, and I am going to read a very interesting chapter. today from #THEBOOKOFWANZ, of course!! Pay attention, okay? Pay attention:

HYPOCRISY SEEMS TO STEM FROM ONE WHO BELIEVES THEY KNOW WHAT'S BEST FOR EVERYONE AND NOT CONSIDERING WHAT'S SAID FROM THAT EVERYONE.

I am amazed at how many people believe they know everything that's right for everyone else. I'm not complaining, just fascinated by the way that even a complete stranger can know what's best for you. No matter what the topic, it seems there’s always someone who knows more about it then you who has gone, or is, going through it. This is different from, say, losing a loved one or being in an unhealthy relationship. I dig that there are those who have survived those experiences and who will, in some way, be scarred for a very long time. But, what about those people who haven't been through the same experiences as you? What about you? Do you know more than your friends? Maybe. Probably not though.

Isn't a hypocrite someone who judges another person who is doing the same thing they themselves do? I've been in many a discussion with those who believe that they know more about my life, my feelings, or my experiences than I do. It's Amazing to me when they speak at me (not to me), as though they honestly believe they know what I need to do or not do. Did they grow up like me? Watch the same shows I used to watch in college? Probably not. So, what to do about them? Try very hard. To let them talk.

I was in a relationship for a long time, where most of the time, I didn't feel my opinion was respected. After a long while, I started to doubt myself. Why, you ask? Why did I stay? I stayed because I loved her. I trusted her, and worse, I believed her. My life had been filled with many mistakes. I wasn't the smartest in school. Wasn't the most athletic or the best looking. I was average. A ‘C’ student. All through secondary school and college. After leaving that relationship, I began to hang out with people who showed me a different way of looking at the lives of others. They showed me That everyone is walking a path. At points along that path, we cross paths with others. Then, either they move on, or we do. They showed me how to tolerate someone who is being something other than what I thought they should be. I'm not perfect at it, but I have gotten much, much better at letting other people be themselves. I practice and I let myself believe I'm okay for letting others be who they are. I hope they will do the same for me, but since I control no one other than myself, tolerance is the objective.

Boy, oh boy, oh boy. In today's political climate, social climate, economic climate, hypocrisy is everywhere. There are tons of people out there saying, “you need to do this”, or “you should do that”. “Why didn't you?”, “How could you?”, “I don't understand why you would…”, I hated those sentences, I really did. Those are the things that really ate away at my self-esteem. Because I had to explain what I was thinking and what I was thinking usually didn't jingle-jingle, jive-jive with the person I was explaining it to. Hence them looking at me tilted head like a curious dog and asking, “What?”

I've gotten much better. I'm trying very hard to lose this one sentence, “You don't seem to understand…”, that for me is something that's left over from my childhood. Because I grew up in a household where my parents were kind of strict about manners and respect. Oh yeah, these are southern folk. You don't speak your mind ‘at’ southern folk unless you're ready to take the consequences. When I'm trying to explain to them why it is massively important that I have a certain style of clothing, certain shoes, certain pants. My mom was, ‘that does not compute’. You could almost see the words just bounce off her forehead and hit the ground, “Michael, you don't go to school to be in a fashion show.”

“Yeah, Mom, but you know, I'm the only kid wearing those Sears tough skin jeans with a reinforced knee on them.”

She had no idea what it was like to be emotionally tortured for looking the way that I looked, and when I did finally explain it to her in a way that she would, or at least I thought she would, understand, “Michael, you just have to ignore them.”. Ha-ha, easy for you to say, Mom. You're taller than I am and you're older than I am. They will respect you! They didn’t respect me.

So, I ended up in the principal's office a lot. Third and fourth grade. Man, that was my Vietnam. I had to find different ways to get home a lot of days, I mean, it wasn't every day, but boy!! Teacher left the room in the middle of the class day, I had to be ready. I had to be aware. Minded my own business, because anybody who talked to me might try to set me off. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they just left me alone. Which is cool.

But I get back to, what does this all mean? It's our personal expectations of how people ‘should…’ fill in the blank. We think that because it works for us, whatever it is, it’ll work for somebody else and we're half right. Because, my experience will never be your experience with the same thing and vice versa. I mean, that's just one of those mind-boggling things that I've never understood. I've never understood why anyone would intentionally focus on things that made them different. I didn't understand it. Today, it's different because it seems that young folk have more license, more agency, more autonomy to express who they are, how they appear, what they do and don't do what they like and don't like, and I just I didn't have that kind of latitude, Bro! I just didn't. If I didn't want to experience pain, I just did what I was told, which worked great at home. Not so good at school. Because, you know, I was there with other kids. I was there with other people's kids. Who didn't have the same level of whatever, they just didn't. So occasionally there were problems. Boy, oh boy, were there problems.

Now, by the time I got to college, all those problems, I mean, I spent a lot of time in junior high and high school seeing these patterns repeat, and I had learned how to get out of these situations rather than getting into a physical confrontation. I became a smartass. I became a very, very good smartass. I became, I don't know, I don't know how to put it, I became like 14th century or 15th century France, you had to learn how to wield a sword. And in 1975, six, seven, and eight, you had to learn how to come back on somebody who insulted you or you were ASS, END, OUT!! Meaning, you're going to get laughed at or you're going to get pushed into a locker, you know. People are all of a sudden going to avoid you because it's been said that you're a leper.

I was so happy to get to college because I thought, “Now I'm going to be high above those sort of ‘tiddly-winky’ stupid things.” Oh no. Little did I know that the first two years of college were basically an extension of high school because everyone was doing exactly the same thing I was doing, learning. How to behave. How to treat people. But I had this background, that I was raised with all this respect for other people. Thinking that it would be reciprocated. Now the hypocrisy part of it is usually those people who were the worst behaving people were the most devout and religious. Not always, but man, oh man, preacher’s kids.

Everybody knows preacher's kids used to be dangerous, just dangerous! Because they could do, say, be, all these things I couldn't, and because they lived in a household that had ministry at the center of everything, they could get away with it. I began to see a lot of people who got away with a lot of things. Still do. The hypocrisy can be debilitating. “It's just not fair!”. Nope, it's not. But that has nothing to do with what you're going to do about it not being fair. And this is what I had to figure out. I had to figure out what I was going to do when I was seeing something that I didn't agree with, I didn't like, coming from another person. Because I can't do anything about them, really. I can only do something about me. So, I started to get really good at that.

I started to get really good at separating somebody else's behavior from my feelings. Because people are just going to ‘people’ all over you, but that doesn't mean you're going to like have stains, “Oh, you've got people stains on you, bro! You need to like get a tissue, maybe some vinegar. Wipe that off!!” Club soda, got some? Don't work like that.

I think this is going to be the first of a two part episode, because it's a big topic and there's lots of other things to talk about, or at least for me to talk about, hopefully for you to listen to.

So, I'm going to end this podcast episode. Putting a ‘fork in it’. Coming back next Wednesday and let's, let's move on this whole hypocrisy thing, okay?

Be good to yourself and then be good to somebody else, all right?

Take care.