You and I Are Too Old to Make Rude, Blanket Assumptions About Everybody Else

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

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Smart people, projection, and the assumptions that make us look like fools

If you went to college, even if you didn’t go, chances are you were exposed the fundamental concept of “projection.” It’s Psychology 101. For those of us who write, those of us who work with people, the concept is critically important.

Here’s what Britannica has to say about it.

From that article:

…projection, the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds. For example, individuals who are in a self-critical state, consciously or unconsciously, may think that other people are critical of them.

For the purposes of this article, I’m adding this from the above:

This presumably universal tendency of the human social animal has both positive and negative effects. Depending on what qualities are projected and whether or not they are denied in the self, projection can be the basis of both warm empathy and cold hatred.

Including cold hatred of ourselves and others who embody some aspect of ourselves that we despise.

Here’s where I’m going with this:

You and I are WAY Too Old and have been around WAY too long to project the shit that’s in our lives onto others.

Especially if we’re writers. If you and I are going to write in ways which are transformative, we might want to mine, and mind, our own minds.

I stumbled on a quote this week which raised the hackles on the back of my neck. Not because it offended, but because of the seemingly rank judgment by the writer, the dearth of empathy and understanding and the blanket assumptions.

Out of respect I am not going to name the writer, but here’s what got my attention:

I was at the gym today, and I was looking around at all the people huffing and puffing on their elliptical trainers and I had this realization that everyone here was only here because they don’t like the way they look, only here because they think they need fixing or improving, only here because they have judged themselves in some pathetic external way Not Enough, and that if they were all just suddenly granted a minimum dose of self-esteem, if someone sprinkled some magical self-acceptance dust into the ventilation system and they all breathed it in, they might just find an modicum of self-respect, a sliver of self-worth, and that if they did, they would all leave, they would all just step off their elliptical trainers and pick up their gym bags and go home, maybe even stop on the way for a forbidden muffin, for a tragic croissant, and for once not beat themselves up for failing to live up to some ugly standard of impossible beauty, which would be great because I ate way too much yesterday I and felt really fat and all the elliptical machines were occupied. (author bolded)

I appreciate that this ended on a funny note, and I also get the sarcasm about the tragic croissant. It’s hard to say whether the author’s primary message was to castigate all gym goers, or to parody them and himself. Maybe both, it’s unclear.

That said, it did provide me with the chance to make some larger points irrespective of the author’s motivations. I’m addressing how this landed with me.

First, none of is privy to anyone else’s motivations. Only our own. Period, full stop. We have no clue and never will know what is anyone else’s brain pan.

Titles of articles that begin with “Everybody likes, Everybody thinks, Everybody (fill in the blank)” insult Dear Reader. None of us speaks for everybody unless we claim that Everybody is full of shit (including this writer).

That would nail it, surely.

Before you bark at me: if we eat, we make shit. Our colons are full of it. Therefore we are all full of shit, assuming we eat (please don’t get political on me about famine, that’s noted and that’s not this article).

It’s a joke, please.

Second, as someone who has lifted and worked out in gyms for fifty-one years, this insults millions of other people who are at the gym for every reason under the sun. That would include, hey, maybe, I LOVE lifting weights (check), am doing PT given me from my doctor (check), am training for competition, would like to walk again, happen to love a challenge, was inspired to try out a new sport and need upper body strength.

Maybe I’m at the gym because it’s part social experience and the yoga classes allowed me to make friends. Being in the pool was soothing. Doing reps was zen for my relative insanity.

Or wait! Here’s one: Had cerebral palsy and the gym allowed me to walk; please see this story.

I wrote:

One story about a seriously disabled, spastic cerebral palsy sufferer named Zak seemed to raise some ire in one of my commenters. Zak, who spent his early years with a helmet, a walker, braces and uncontrolled movements, has sculpted his body into extraordinary condition. That dedication also got him off the walker, out of the braces (at fourteen) and in stupendous control of his unruly body. And he won in competition against able-bodied men.

One commenter penned this:

These shots (of bodybuilders) make me want to quickly lose my dinner--if possible, lunch and breakfast also.Been lately watching videos of Stones performances from back when; my God they were lean and handsome before they turned lean and less so. Lean, and talented.Who has the time or vanity to waste on sculpting oneself into inhuman artifice?Nope, not buying it, the great American glorification of superficiality, of being pumped, being dumb.

What’s dumb is the attack on someone whose transformation has inspired thousands of palsy sufferers and many others.

The reasons people are at the gym are as varied as we are. The assumption that all of us are bereft of self-esteem, that if we had the slightest self-respect we’d dump the gym, and go gorm a croissant? That’s what’s dumb.

Again, I can’t tell if the writer meant to be funny. It didn’t land that way.

Which, kindly, maybe that means that I’m the one who needs the tragic croissant, just saying.

What we write about “everybody else” has nothing to do with others and everything to do with ourselves.

I did go look at this person’s material. While I didn’t see a similar vein in other work, here’s part of what might help. Even if the whole thing was intended as a goof, it does give me a chance to offer perspective.

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Three kinds of being

At the risk of being simplistic, here’s a way to understand ourselves. We are born into three basic preferences (and like all such definitions, there is plenty of crossover, so bear with me).

Some people are born to live their lives almost exclusively through the physical. They experience life through their bodies, and can often utterly miss the emotional and intellectual potentials of our being.

Some people are born to live their lives exclusively through their emotions, blotting out the physical and intellectual spheres of existence.

The third group is born to the intellectual, eschewing the physical and emotional.

Each group, understandably, looks down upon and judges the other two groups from what they perceive as their own pinnacle of existence. For the first group, for example, think Arnold Schwarzenegger, who judged the entire world by bicep size.

The same goes for the compulsively emotional poet who sees the world through passionate colors. They consider a physical person a brute and the intellectual an unfeeling monster.

And the intellectual? That person paints those who are hoping to find a way to better health or whatever their journey as insecure, and lack of higher education a moral failing.

Each has its advantages and blind arrogances.

Photo by Christian on Unsplash

If we’re fortunate, our life journey allows us to dip a spoon into all of these aspects, as well as the spiritual, which transcends all the others which tie us to this existence. The ability to put effort into all three, and in addition to develop that part of us which wishes to rise above what keeps us anchored to earth, is what allows us to come into the fullness of what it means to be human.

I offer this only as perspective, because we are always and forever judging each other. In a culture which worships the body, the poet and the emotional bon vivant may feel horribly insecure. In an intellectual society where one’s worth is determined by IQ, books published, schools attended and the like, the perfect body is deemed a waste of a life.

My mother was an intellectual. When she got heavy after childbirth she was horrified to realize that if she wanted her thin body back, she’d have to sweat for it. It was just too…too…common.

You get it.

We will always judge those who don’t worship what we worship as “less than.”

Worse, we kill them. God has ever been behind the best of all wars, but I digress.

What we worship owns us, body and soul. That said, it behooves us to notice, watch where we paint the rest of the world with judgment and ask what that is saying about us.

If we are wise, then, we try to develop each of these spheres into a more balanced whole, infuse it with the wonder of being informed by whatever faith sustains us, and appreciate the variety of humanity as it is, not whether or not it reflects ourselves.

So with all respect to the original poster, whose humor was noted but it was overshadowed by the overwhelmingly negative judgment of we poor foolish insecure gym rats, I’d like to aspire to this: may I be in fine physical shape, may I be well-read and broadly-experienced, may I confidently enjoy the full rich range of my emotions without fear, may I use all of this to better enjoy the life I’ve been given.

Above all, may I PLEASE not be an asshole and look down on anyone else who doesn’t happen to live life like I do. Amen.

Let’s play.

Photo by Aaron Brogden on Unsplash

I hope you thought, laughed, and laughed while you thought. If so please consider

And if someone else could use this, please also

Either way, please enjoy the path you chose.