Sowing seeds of ugly weeds

You are constantly making exchanges. This for that. Giving up what you want for the need of the hour. Freedom sacrificed for the sake of livelihood. Love gives way to invisible pressures. Heat, dust and colour exchanged for a cool, clean greyness. Life given up for the sake of survival.

The question remains at the back of your mind, refusing to go away despite your efforts to deny its increasingly overbearing presence. There comes a time when facing up to it is inevitable. You grit your teeth and look at the question straight in the eye. You hope that the answer is different from what every instinct in your gut tells you.

Was what I traded in, worth more than what I got?

You wait, vulnerable and exposed, and you are met with nothing but silence.

No answer is forthcoming. Neither affirmation nor reassurance.

It is as you had expected after all.

The question wasn't really a question at all.

Rhetorical questions have a remarkable talent for making a frightening reality more palatable.

I know where to go if I ever need to find myself

Bad news is I have to go to an obscure fishing village in the Scottish highlands in order to do so.

Lattice

I am a team player, and that looks like two cuddly bears hugging

On a grey day made worse by a blocked nose and tired body, cancelled appointments come to my rescue.

Cancelled appointments, and something to write about.

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"I taste you and you taste me. I am your taste and you are mine,

but I do not taste your taste of me in your ear. One cannot both be

everything and have everything at once"

-R.D. Laing

The manager thought it would be a good idea to hand-out Belbin's Self Perception Inventory at a team meeting to assess the role we play within a team.

Her: 'Would you like to take one and fill it out?'

Implicit message: Take one and fill it

Me: Oh yeah yeah, sure.

Underlying thought: I couldn't care less about my team role.

A slight detour here to mention that if there is one thing I have mastered, it is the art of concealment. No, I am not referring to the cosmetic concealer (which btw, I still do not know how to use), but rather to the finely tuned skill of letting others see only what I want them to see.

Psychological tests I am particularly good at. I don't even understand why they are used as diagnostic tools. All one needs to be able to deceive is a basic level of intelligence. Okay, I just realised what I said and before you point it out, I hasten to add that it is missing in most people (at least people I seem to hear about). Seriously though, I think the average person would find them fairly easy to crack. But when one has administered them on unsuspecting others, analysed results and made interpretations, it becomes much easier.

Remember the Rorschach inkblot test being administered on Rorschach in Watchmen? Where he is thinking of dead dogs and hanging, rotting, bleeding flesh and answers 'that looks like a pretty butterfly'? That's the kind of stuff I am talking about.

Man, Rorschach is one of the greatest fictional characters ever.

Anyway, I picked up the pen and paper and went through the BSPI in a flash, ticking boxes, scoring them and arriving at my 'team-role description'

It was -

Monitor/Evaluator:

Sober, strategic, and discerning.

Sees all options. Judges accurately.

Lacks drive and ability to inspire others.

Uh huh. I see.

What it doesn't reveal is my sheer hatred for working in groups or as part of a team. Hmm.... I write this while the world cup match is going on and Slovenia have unfortunately drawn 2-2 with USA. I love watching football. But could I ever play it the way it is meant to be played? All this passing? All the uncertainty? All this relying-on-another-to-finish-the-job? My partner will testify to my inability to play a passing game. While playing FIFA '10 on PS3, I flourish and bloom the most when I play a one-man game. I am talking defensive tackle, a long, solitary run across the field, and a goal.

I am an individualist and a perfectionist. I genuinely believe that if I want something done right I am better off doing it myself. My experience working in groups (and this applies to forced, not selected groups) has been utterly disappointing and wholly frustrating. I am intolerant of stupidity, slowness and lack of depth and unfortunately have been dealt with all of these in varying combinations while working in a "group".

Methinks groups bore me a little. I have evidence to back this up. The only time I fell asleep while reading a book was when I had to read an entire book devoted to groups. The poor print quality and dull, mossy green cover didn't help either. I might find an activity by a so-called group interesting, and this might lead people to conclude I am interested in the group itself, but the fact is I would probably be interested in the said activity even if one person were doing it. Gymnastics is a good example. Curious rituals undertaken by people in a religious frenzy yet another.

I don't know what a "group identity" is to be honest. I don't think I have had any first hand experience of it. People have unsuccessfully tried to convince me of my group identity. I have successfully deflected all these attempts.

I think the very idea of a group is a myth. A big fat illusion crafted by the guardians of civilisation and all that sort of rot.

Freud said something about love thy neighbour being a cover-up for the allegedly more sinister and dangerous notion, kill they neighbour.

There is no way to express this other than as a paradox- we, a collective, are all individuals. The only characteristic that unifies us is our individuality. I have expressed my thoughts on the unavoidably solitary nature of our lives, even within the scaffolding of close interpersonal relationships.

Laing wrote that 'our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being'

He called this a potentially tragic paradox. To me, it becomes tragic only when it is accompanied by the hope of it being any other way.