Posted by Dory on October 7, 2007, at 11:22:21
In reply to What is the silver lining of child abuse?, posted by happyflower on October 7, 2007, at 10:52:23
i don't know.. don't take this the wrong way, but i don't think there is a silver lining. There is no way to tell, because one can't compare what a person would have been like without it.
qualities may develop because of it.. but who knows? Maybe they would have developed anyway.. maybe even moreso or in a more productive way. It could be that someone is stronger than they might have been otherwise, but there is no way to know... and the trade-off is kind of poor.
it's like being bipolar.. some people like to believe in the idea that it makes them be a more creative person. i don't think so. i don't think my illness brought me anything positive. i think i was creative before and would have been anyway. If anything, i think the illness scattered my abilities so much that it has made it hard to make use of my positive qualities. People also have the romantic notion of the "mad artist," ie Van Gogh, but that was a deliberate fabrication of a critic at the time.. one that stuck in public consciousness. He was ill, no doubt, but madness and creativity became linked in a false way.
i hope that isn't deviating from your idea too much, i just thought it was a good comparison.
i feel like the events in my life scattered my abilities and positive traits.. rather than be the source of any of them. i see it like losing a handful of marbles (sorry for that analogy) and trying to catch them afterward. You might have had the most beautiful cat-eye marble in the world, but it's rolled under the couch and you'll never even know you had it. The ones you do regain become precious.. maybe that's more the point... that the positive qualities which develop become more precious to us.
so.. i'm willing to conceed that point.. that i have become more aware of what i have, and some of what i don't. i am more aware of these things and i guess i appreciate them more than maybe i might have otherwise. i am creative, and i am grateful i was able to develop that. In another universe i might have taken it for granted.
i hope this isn't pooping on the party so to speak. i hope you can see it as just another side of the coin (did you ever notice just how many sides this hypothetical coin actually can have?).
i wish i were writing about something i cared about.. or was even interested in. No. No, i get stuck with blah blah blah sociology blah blah blah ethnographic determinism blah blah blah. Pppffffttt.
poster:Dory
thread:787547
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070929/msgs/787552.html