More about Quirks

My last post really got me thinking about quirks. One thing I know about myself is that I am quirky. I believe that is a family characteristic. My girls joke about "Wilcox women." They mean that we are out-spoken, opinionated, maybe even bossy sometimes. I don't think I am bossy, but I do often think that if people would just let me organize them, my life and theirs would be better. Probably other people think I am bossy. I know they think I am opinionated. Wishy-washy is definitely not a family characteristic. I have a sister who is a business consultant. Everyone knows she is very opinionated. I do a lot of work for her. For the last couple of years she has been trying to teach me that in some situations I should just keep it to myself. I am learning that. Recently I have learned that there are a lot of other situations where I should keep it to myself. Nobody in my family ever believed that in family situations you should keep it to yourself. In fact, it can be hard to get a word in edgewise at those gatherings. I was raised by quirky people to be quirky.

In talking about this in terms of quirkiness, I seem to be de-emphasizing the importance of my quirks. I am not very interested in writing a philosophical treatise on the difference between quirks and faults. I do want to say that, to me, the ideal Christ-like person is one who loves others, is willing to make sacrifices, give service, and is unselfish. My ideal person, which may have nothing at all to do with being Christ-like, is also constantly learning, open to new ideas, and not offended because someone disagrees with them. That is harder than it sounds. I went to a lecture this morning at the ATA science teachers' convention. The speaker started out in Physics and has a doctorate in Astronomy. He also has a web-site de-bunking popular science myths. He said it is tough going - most people seriously want to hang onto their misconceptions. Did you know that "Armageddon" is one of the worst movies for science inaccuracy and therefore for promoting myths? He says he gets hate mail for trying to promote scientific facts that de-bunk myths. It's the mind open to new ideas thing - one of my values - that the majority of people have trouble with. It always surprises and shocks me when I tell someone my opinion and why I think that, they don't answer or say what they think or why, but I find out later that they were offended. They thought I was telling them what to think. Maybe I should just consider this a quirk! But people don't want to change how they think, and they don't want to discuss it even when they think I am wrong. Maybe I don't sound like I am open to new ideas. Too bad. A quirk maybe I need to change.

In my life, a great proportion of my friends have been seriously quirky. I named one to my husband today as an example and he said, "She was just plain weird!" Isn't weird seriously quirky? But also interesting. The areas of quirkiness of these people has included how they dress, what they talk about, how they talk, what they believe, why they believe it, how they relate to other people, to name a few. Most of these very quirky people had only a small circle of friends that included me. I am not sure whether that makes me seem less judgmental and more tolerant, or if it just means that maybe I myself am seriously quirky. I will have to think about that. I have a lot of main-stream friends too, but maybe that just means they are more tolerant. How can one know these things? Does it really matter? Here I am, right back to the philosophical question about the difference between faults and quirks. I still don't want to write a philosophical treatise on it.