A Dragon’s supposed Wisdom
Posted on Friday, September 10th, 2010Today I think I’d like to talk about this about the “mask”. In psychology the mask was used to show the difference between our inner and outer selves. It was a very quiet child and I learned early that most people did not seem to see the world the same way I did. Thus I created my mask very early on. Irregardless of the fact that I have a blog, I don’t tend to let many people into the secret place when my true self was contained. A lot of this is due to the low self-confidence I developed as a child. However, even then I wanted to be strong. So when I was lonely or scared, instead of hiding I stood behind the mask. That aspect of me I had made brave and perhaps as stupid as any heroine in a book I’d read. Somehow, it allowed me to pretend that I didn’t mind the loneliness or the isolation we all feel.
Somewhere along the way, I started acting brave as my natural defense to anything happening to me. Someone picking on me? Well, I’d use my intelligence to stomp them down into a twig. Someone laughing at me? Of course, it was because they were simply “too common” to understand what I was about. After I met my husband, he helped me to come out of my shell, I realized that the mask I’d thought I was just hiding behind, was just as valid as the small terrified child I that I had always envisioned as me. I learned that instead of hiding behind my mask I could be my mask . I still feel terror at trying new things or explaining to people that they can’t bully me; however, I also learned the wisdom that being brave doesn’t mean that you’re not afraid. It simply means that you can find the heart to stand up for your beliefs.
I firmly believe that this truth is one of the hardest to learn, and like all truths it sounds deceptively simple. We can all learn the ‘truths’ and speak the maxims by heart, but only by learning what it feels like to understand those words can we begin to speak those words to others. Otherwise, we are just speaking maxims that we know nothing about. I am considered a wise person by those who know me, even if I am not usually thought of as smart, mainly because through my experiences I have learned much. Through the grace of the Gods I also seem able to convey that learning through to others. It is a true blessing to be able to help those I can, although I will admit that my heart always races when I speak of wisdom to others because of a quote I heard once.
“All Wisdom truly says the same thing… be more like me.”
It is quotes like this that have stuck with me and so I try to make certain that my wisdom is not simply repeating age old maxims and/or telling people to be like me.
Moving to a different topic before I start getting preachy about how we dispense wisdom, I would like to change the current topic. Without going into too much detail (since if you follow my blog you already know) I developed tendinitis just over a year ago. Usually it’s not much of a bother but just in case last year I purchased a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It’s one of those awesome talk-to-text programs that allows you to speak instead of type. Now I know I’ve been pretty bad in trying to actually use it, mainly because I prefer the feel of keys under my fingers. Tapping away the keyboard has always been very relaxing to me ever since I learned how to properly type. While I suppose that talking to my computer will eventually be very relaxing as well right now I do feel rather slow.
It’s working rather well I will give it that. So long as I’m not sick and the longer I use it the easier it gets and the more correct it becomes. Right now, I have trained it enough that only one word in every 30 to 40 needs to be corrected. I’m also getting much better at remembering the commands for it. However, and this is what’s really slowing me down, I really have to stop and think about what I’m going to say. This was a very odd concept for me and even now it still sounds very odd. I mean if you don’t know if you’re going to say how are you supposed to say it. Shouldn’t saying it immediately mean that you know how you want to say it? What I’ve learned is that this is apparently not the case.
When I type I must admit I’m one of those people who will delete a line three or four times to make certain I have gotten it out the way I want it. Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t really take away that option, but it does make me think more about my words. After all, what it takes so much longer to get something out the last thing you want to be doing is correcting every fifth think that learning how to use this property will actually make my writing better. What I’m doing now, in addition to actually writing, is learning how to properly think about what I want to say so that I don’t have to think about it when I’m typing.
While this will be slower now I believe that this will make me a faster and much more precise typist in the future. While I don’t think I’ll ever be surely happy with my hand being injured like this, it is very comforting to know that my stories will still be able to be told, even if I do have to talk to my computer to do so. One thing I will have to keep in mind is my propensity for run-on sentences. When you’re talking a sentence can go on and on and I for one don’t generally notice if it’s getting too long. After all, if I start to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, it doesn’t automatically mean that the sentences too long. Knowing that I’ll be looking over my writing much more closely because of this should help my predisposition towards writing longer sentences.
This post is going rather long, so I’ll stop for now. I am 31.2% of the way through Brandon Sanderson “The way of Kings” and I went to go see the new movie earlier today. Resident Evil: Apocalypse will probably be in my next blog… expect it!
Tags: "Mask", Blog, Dragon Naturally Speaking, Novels, Psychology, Sociology, Tendinitis, the mask, wrist pain, Writing
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