Cringing Butterfly
Listening to one of the stories of fabulous "This American Life", called "Cringe", some old memories of a workshop, that I joined at Hagenberg university, came back to me and actually put me in a kinda happy mood (besides of course making me sentimental and sad missing old friends).
"Cringe" talks about, why certain stories create this feeling of "cringing" within us and others don't: Something, which makes us cringe the most, is the moment, when we realize, how our environment, how the rest of the world, perceives us - especially if this perception is different from our own peception we have from ourselves.
During this workshop I took part in (something like 2 years ago), we got the task to get together in groups and choose animals for the members of the other groups. Choosing an animal as a metaphor to describe the personality of the other - to describe the picture we have of this person. It was exciting and frightening at the same time. I looked at my class mates whom I knew for more than 3 years in a more critical, but also more personal way than usual.. and we found for each one of the other group's members a to us well-fitting animal. The interesting thing was on the one hand, that almost all of them could identify with the animal we chose and on the other hand, we could more openly talk about each others' weaknesses and strengths, without hurting or offending us.
The animal the other group chose for me was a butterfly. And I remembered my surprise and very positive "cringing" feeling I felt when they described, why they picked this animal: A Butterfly, they said, is an animal who loves to move from one place to the other, who is never still, always looking for something new, looking out for new things to experience. Sometimes it's afraid and its fragile appearance might make us think it can not make it, but it always finds its ways and cheers its environment up in doing so.
I would have never described myself in that way or even compared myself to this animal. I was thrilled that the others have seen me in this way - open, flying around, experiencing myself and the rest of the world, but also fragile, sometimes very afraid of doing the wrong thing. And at this moment I decided that I want to live this image, to live what I obviously already was to my friends and class mates, that I will support this strong and open side of the butterfly that wants to explore and fly around, than rather being too fragile for this dangers out there or being too scared to sometimes cringe.
Recently, I again came across this fragile and timidly side of mine - I guess each time before the butterfly arranges to leave for the new place it shrunks, looks at its thin wings suddenly loosing all the trust in them and tries to convince itself it can never make it.
I decided I can be like this butterfly: cringe, but then start off again for the next adventure.
"Cringe" talks about, why certain stories create this feeling of "cringing" within us and others don't: Something, which makes us cringe the most, is the moment, when we realize, how our environment, how the rest of the world, perceives us - especially if this perception is different from our own peception we have from ourselves.
During this workshop I took part in (something like 2 years ago), we got the task to get together in groups and choose animals for the members of the other groups. Choosing an animal as a metaphor to describe the personality of the other - to describe the picture we have of this person. It was exciting and frightening at the same time. I looked at my class mates whom I knew for more than 3 years in a more critical, but also more personal way than usual.. and we found for each one of the other group's members a to us well-fitting animal. The interesting thing was on the one hand, that almost all of them could identify with the animal we chose and on the other hand, we could more openly talk about each others' weaknesses and strengths, without hurting or offending us.
The animal the other group chose for me was a butterfly. And I remembered my surprise and very positive "cringing" feeling I felt when they described, why they picked this animal: A Butterfly, they said, is an animal who loves to move from one place to the other, who is never still, always looking for something new, looking out for new things to experience. Sometimes it's afraid and its fragile appearance might make us think it can not make it, but it always finds its ways and cheers its environment up in doing so.
I would have never described myself in that way or even compared myself to this animal. I was thrilled that the others have seen me in this way - open, flying around, experiencing myself and the rest of the world, but also fragile, sometimes very afraid of doing the wrong thing. And at this moment I decided that I want to live this image, to live what I obviously already was to my friends and class mates, that I will support this strong and open side of the butterfly that wants to explore and fly around, than rather being too fragile for this dangers out there or being too scared to sometimes cringe.
Recently, I again came across this fragile and timidly side of mine - I guess each time before the butterfly arranges to leave for the new place it shrunks, looks at its thin wings suddenly loosing all the trust in them and tries to convince itself it can never make it.
I decided I can be like this butterfly: cringe, but then start off again for the next adventure.
posted by lia at 8:17 PM
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