My personality antecedents

In a discussion with a friend this morning I mentioned a meeting (online) I had had to go to - I would still be in it now but it ran much shorter than I was told it would [and I cancelled my classes for nothing today])

But at any rate, I thought of this image, which my dad had hanging up for YEARS in his office as a department chair:

I remember finding that REALLY funny the first time I saw it (I was about 20). He and I had similar senses of humor (and similar low tolerances for "time wasting" meetings)

 

But we were somewhat similar in other ways. I know I've posted this before but this was something I rescued from his old files after he died, when my mother and I were going through all of them and sending most of the stuff to recycling

 

 

 

I have it up on the side of the file cabinet next to my desk, where I can see it as I work. On good days I still believe it even if more and more it feels like the outside world would mostly reject this.

 

(One of the things I find most frustrating about the New Reality is how much of it is pure transactionality: the worth of something is only what you can charge someone for it, and things like beauty or virtue or nature are literally worthless. It makes me sad, because what the world now (and perhaps always has) views as worthless are the things I value most)

 

Oh, there are other things that he and I shared that maybe aren't so great - extreme self-criticism, a tendency to be anxious about certain threats, a desire to control what one cannot control/take responsibility for things that aren't one's responsibility

 

But also another thing: one thing i remember about him, some years before he passed, he was given a sort of "distinguished service" award from the congregation he belonged to (for having served in the choir, as a deacon, later as an elder, still later as a trustee, having been on ministerial search committees, and providing advice on some matters related to his specialty) and his response was a sort of bafflement: "Why are they giving me this? I am only doing what people are supposed to do!" And yup. It set a pretty high bar for me, too, and perhaps that's also why I quietly rage to myself (not to the other person, I can't to the other person) when someone "flakes" or doesn't step up and carry a responsibility they should. 

 

But yeah, I find myself thinking about him at times and what I inherited from him - not the small IRA, not the rockpick or the pocketknife, but the personality traits....