That's so true. How you are perceived has a lot to do with how you carry yourself.
I learned it through hard lessons at a young age. My stature has always been smaller than average.
But I did it all wrong. I learned to do it in a way that just simply moved people out of my way.
Part the crowd, so to speak. I still do it, unconsciously at times, when I'm in a bad mood, or in a hurry.
As I age more gracefully
, and thanks to working with some really astute people, that's changing.
Less combative
. But I blend in pretty well at the same time.
Another lesson from my early twenties. To be effective at what I was doing, it paid to blend in.
I do that less and less, as I still retain that ability to just back people up who can't mind their own business.
So much has changed in the last couple years, especially in the last year or so.
I notice peoples general attitudes have mellowed, it's not just mine.
I in turn, smile more at weird comments and for the most part, get a smile back.
Nothing really big has happened to people, just small changes in their own perceptions.
I notice this in binary people, perhaps because I'm not.
But at the same time, I have to allow those same kinds of small changes in my own perceptions.
It is these little changes that make a bigger change in perceptions than say, a large event.
There is momentum towards people's acceptance of genders that are different than their own.
This plays out in binaries themselves, as they accept that they are not so different from each other.
The subtleties of that carries over into peoples general acceptance of others different than themselves.
I fully expected a severe backlash of bigotry from the event in Boston.
Instead, people were quicker to tell others not to jump to conclusions.
It's a good sign that we are, as a society, finally growing up and away from those who thrive on bigotry.
Those people and their 'news' stories and conspiracy theories were and are still being shut out.
It's a sad thing that happened, but at the same time, we stood up for ourselves as a society.
I hope it's a lesson learned that we don't forget. Today, the way it is playing out, I have hope for all of us.
Congress would do well to pay attention to us, as a society that is changing the way we think.
We are a lot smarter than they think we are. We have done well I think, and not just recently.
I am more relaxed in the way I carry myself, I suppose this translates into more confidence.
I'm not entirely sure if it is graceful ageing or just the small shifts of perception that I perceive.
Ativan
