Had to write website bios for everyone in my department at work - including myself. Thought it would be neat to ask each person for a quote that defined them. Each person out-pithed the next with profound thoughts. Someone quote Napoleon Hill...another Plato...and so on. Then it was my turn.
"What quote defines me?," I asked myself aloud, which would have annoyed Kagee no end. (She hates it when people ask themselves questions, especially aloud and when it's one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey).
So I thought of a few that I used when I wanted to be glib, or sound more upbeat and carefree than I probably ever was.
"Go real slow; you'll like it more and more...take it as it comes...specialize in having fun." Jim Morrison said that. Maybe if I changed it to "James Douglas Morrison" no one would know I was quoting one of the Doors.
On second thought, I realized it was a terrible idea.
Then I came up with another:
"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." Katharine Hepburn said that. But it wasn't really me - it was the "me" I liked to project to the world, because in all honestly I don't really break too many rules. I don't even run red lights in the middle of the night, when there are no cars or cops anywhere in sight.
Then of course, I turned to Joni Mitchell.
"All romantics make the same fate someday...cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe..."
I ran that one past my boss.
"Don't you dare!," she said, "they'll think you're drinking on the job."
A friend used this one "Gentle if stroked, fierce if provoked."
Couldn't make it mine. It belonged to a batallion. I was only one person, afterall, and having a hard time coming up with one line...how could I hang my hat on the slogan of a fearless batallion?
So, where did that leave me? With a bunch of over-used cliches? Things people have said so often that they no longer know if they are true? "Today is the first day of the rest of your life...the only thing to fear is fear itself...to thine ownself be true...blah blah blah...I might not be as irreverent as Katharine Hepburn - but I was surely not mainstream either.
What should have been a simple exercise turned out to be an overly analyzed debate in my mind when - in the relative scheme of things - I knew it really wouldn't matter what my quote said. Then - why was I tossing it around so much in my mind? Why did take on the proportions of a doctoral dissertation or last will and testament?
Actually - I knew the answer to that question - I wanted to feel secure that whatever quote I used to define me would present the right image - and help me blend in - and stay in the march at the risk of being left behind.
Then serrendipity struck. Well - not really...I turned to Google and searched under "inspirational quotes that make you feel less insecure about what you write." And I found this:
"Security is a superstition...it does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the longrun than outright exposure" - Helen Keller.
So I decided to go with it...feeling exposed - outright.
And tonight...maybe I'll run the redlight?
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