It is interesting to watch Belladonna's love-life unfold.
Right now, she doesn't have a guy.
Every week another invitation to a wedding or baby shower shows up in the mail. Bella's friends are dropping like flies.
I shared the "banana" theory with her. She will sit on the shelf until she is "ripe" and then she will last about two minutes before she runs into a ripe boy-banana.
She did NOT like that theory. She wants a guy NOW.
In talking with her, it is pretty clear to me that she is still a green banana.
From a different perspective
Developmental Psychology suggests that we go through different stages of life.
Socially, we start as members of a family, a finger on a hand so-to-speak.
Then around age eleven, we push away from our families and join a "tribe" or clique or posse. What has sixteen arms, sixteen legs, eight mouths and one brain? A lunch table in the middle-school cafeteria.
The kid pushes away from family and clamps onto their tribe like a limpet mine. All individuality is forsaken because membership in the tribe trumps all. To be pushed out of the tribe is social death.
Finding your-guy or your-gal is to push away from the tribe and to make that person your priority. It does NOT mean forsaking your values. But it also does not demand that your-guy or your-gal be a clone the way the tribe demanded.
The members of the new family needs to have different strengths and outlooks on life if they are to withstand the shocks and vicissitudes life throws at them.
A strong family requires members with strong values. A guy who rolls over and pretends to be identical to you is not who you want. He is pretending. You don't know who he really is. You can never trust he will stick to his guns (and defend you) when times get tough if he rolls-over just to get close to you.
Bella still has not sorted out the differences between "tribe" and potential life-mate. She is still using the filters of tribe as she looks for her-guy.
For example, in Belladonna's current tribe the "Confederate Flag" is beyond the pale. It unequivocally proves that somebody is racist, believes in slavery and is evil-to-the-core.
She was completely unable to entertain the thought that inanimate objects cannot be inherently evil.
Her tribe decided that there are NO value-neutral or positive value reasons why a young man might fly a Confederate flag. It was a waste of time to try and tell her that many young men see the "Confederate Flag" as a symbol of Honor: The Flag is an emblem signifying that they will do what they think is right regardless of the social and economic costs they must endure.
To say it a different way, Bella had zero interest in WHY
somebody might fly the Confederate Flag. The flag simply proved they were not
of her-tribe and consequently she had not interest in them as romantic partners.
The banana is still green.
She is definitely not ready for a mate yet... Few people are at that age, but don't try telling them that!
ReplyDeleteReal life is messy; viewing anything, let alone other people, is rarely a matter of black and white.
Unfortunately many young people these days see too many issues as black and white and have accepted a narrative that is intended to not reflect reality.
Maybe you should re-post those pictures of you and her cutting fire wood and going hunting. I found those very stimulating. If I was single and fifty years younger I'd be down there with candy for her and flowers for Mrs. ERJ.---ken
ReplyDeleteI am sort of glad you are not fifty years younger! I would hate to have a son-in-law that much smarter than me.
DeleteI think it just needs to play out.
God works in mysterious ways.
Why somebody might fly a Confederate flag - they are a Civil War reenactor and just happen to be wearing their gray uniform that weekend.
ReplyDeleteOpie Odd
My great-grandfather was a Union cavalryman for all 4 years of the war, in the West Virginia 6th Cavalry Regiment . He was involved in most of the Shenandoah campaigns, was at Bull Run and a dozen other less well known dust-ups. I never knew him, as he passed away in 1918, but I heard some of the stories second-hand from my great uncles (his sons). They indicated that he and his brothers (who also served) would sit around the kitchen and talk loudly about their adventures; loudly, because they had lost much of their hearing from cannon fire.
DeleteGiven all of that, you might suspect I have a certain bias about the CSA and seeing the battle flags. I do, but it probably isn't the one you think.
I believe that both sides fought fiercely but honorably. That descendants of Confederate soldiers have every right to fly the flag and be proud of their ancestors; i.e., that is more heritage than hate. That succession is not the same as treason. That being on the losing side is not necessarily the same as being on the wrong side. That slavery was an evil institution that was dying out anyways. The war just hastened it. That the war was not about slavery (until it became politically convenient), but about federal power and northern industrialism wanting to stamp out southern agrarianism. It was, surprise, surprise, about power and money.
...and yet it sounds as if Ms.Belladonna, from your past descriptions, might have quite a bit in common with a rurally-oriented country boy with strong ideas about right and wrong, and a sense of character non inconsistent with the better (non-racist) points of the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteWhat else does she have in common with her current crowd, one wonders?
They went to college 2016-2020.
DeleteThey marinated in Woke culture.
The up-side is that she has ample, personal experience with well-directed-effort creating desirable-outcomes. At a gut-level she is invested in equal opportunities not forcing equal outcomes.
Anybody in America can sign up at a gym and lift weights. Everybody has the opportunity to lace on a set of running shoes and making miles.
Everybody can get on the internet and have access to information that was unavailable to Harvard students forty years ago.
She sees that most cannot be bothered to go to the gym, bend over and lace up their shoes or drill into sites that have high-quality information. Why should she be penalized for their laziness?
Sigh... Reality is going to smack her sooner or later...
ReplyDeleteShe will find the prize in church.
ReplyDeleteShe will find the prize in church.
ReplyDeleteThe Mrs. went from "thinking about not marrying" to married in 4.5 months. It will happen when it happens.
ReplyDeleteRipe. New one to me.