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From: mat@hou4b.UUCP (Mark Terribile)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Open suggestion to Jeff Sargent
Message-ID: <1249@hou4b.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 14:02:06 EST
Article-I.D.: hou4b.1249
Posted: Fri Dec 28 14:02:06 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Dec-84 03:53:16 EST
References: <3209@alice.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 66


>>>If you want to be accepted,be yourself rather than putting on a
>>>"pretty face".

>>But myself isn't all that nice.  I have a very difficult time taking the
>>initiative in being warm, loving, and accepting. . . .
>>. . . even as I, to carry wands of drain life with which they zap everyone
>>around them); . . .
>>those who met me . . . and who thought I was a reasonably nice guy were
>>fooled by an act so well-rehearsed that I even believed it
>>myself. . . without a disguise, I am . . . awfully difficult to accept. 

Jeff, I met you and I think that you're just a little off the mark here.

	``Before you can settle the issue, you have to settle how to
	settle the issue'' -- Larry (the hated) Bickford

You didn't simply believe the person you were when I met you, you accepted
yourself as that person.  A bit uneasily, perhaps, you weren't quite at home
with it, and it showed, but that's alright.

Look, the first step in becoming the person that you want to be is liking the
person that your trying to become.  Changing yourself doesn't mean that you'll
be going through life pretending or lying to others about yourself.  Sure,
putting on a new face feels like you're selling false goods to everyone you
meet.  But you're not!  You really will be offering them the person that you
will be.

That won't make it easy.  I've been going through it for ten years, and it's
been slow going.  I'm not ashamed of it, though.  I used to be, and I get angry
at the people who think that I should be ashamed (hence my hot ``cut the
macho'' reply)  I AM ashamed of how often I use that same ``drain life'' staff.
I usually don't even know I'm doing it!

>	As for having a difficult time taking the initiative in being warm,
>loving and accepting ... what *exactly* do you mean by this?  [Henry Mensch]

Henry, I think I know what Jeff means.  I am scared to death of some things
like this myself.  It means being scared, just like being scared of heights,
or of any of the other things that people get scared to death of.  Scared
into a bowl of jelly inside, until you CAN'T feel any of these good things
for other people.  Until the other people can smell the fear a mile away, and
can't stand to be near all that pain.

Confrontation doesn't work here.  It just doesn't.  Accepting not only who
you are but who you WANT TO BE might help.


>Although innumerable beings have been led to Nirvana
>no being has been led to Nirvana
>Before one goes through the gate
>	. . .
>no one ever found a gate
>no one ever realized there was never a gate

But sometimes there is a gate.  I'm facing one, after trying to find a
way around it for the last five years.  It will be interesting to see
if the gate looks like a gate when I look back on it.  I sort of think
that it will.

Pax
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	hou4b!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.