I’ve been having in the back of my head how I developed the survival system of behaving politely/ in a socially acceptable manner since I was a little child. This is mostly to how I was raised by my parents and other socioeconomical factors that have created definitive ‘marks’ on who I am as my behavior.
The image that comes to my mind is a picture that I saw once in my photo album from my first years alive and I am placing a napkin hanging from the collar of my t-shirt with a rather righteous/haughty/ fancy look and my mother is next to me looking at the camera. Another one is a picture of me with a paper-made crown sitting on a sofa, like a ‘throne’ for a queen when I was just 2 and a half years old; there’s another one of me sinking my hands in a bucket of water while my then nanny is crouching down and looking at me, probably warning me about getting all wet and that I should not sink all my arms into the bucket of water that was probably as tall as my waist line. My father’s car is in the background which means I wanted to clean it just the way he does, I was only 3 years old then. There’s also pictures of me having these huge headphones and sitting next to a tape recorder while having my mouth open, which means I was singing. Well, all those points developed into defined personalities such as being always holding a napkin on my hand while eating as a symbol of ‘proper manners’ and eating behavior, being a cleanliness freak, being a ‘music lover’ and being a self-righteous ego on two feet within a sense of having some domain or specialness in me. And I was only 2 to 3 years old in all of those photos.
So this point came up as something to write about when listening to some interviews today in relation to observing behavior, which is one dimension that I have not fully delved into looking myself as behavior linked to the personalities that I developed throughout the years. I tested out a word to write about today and ‘manners’ came up which is then how this whole point opened up.
Being polite is one of the main ‘characteristics’ and behavior that I play out when being with people and ‘in public,’ and the image of my father playing to be a polite soldier comes up, actually my mother would call me something like little tin soldier when I was a little girl, which probably explains a lot as well. Okay but not to deviate from the point. My father would always let us know to ‘be still!’ and basically both my parents educated us in such a way that we would act like little grown up people.
This politeness got imprinted ‘heavily’ later on from when I was 6-7 years when socializing with my parents friends whom I perceived as ‘more than’ because of essentially having quite a lot of money and having these huge houses and living in cool residential areas that I would enjoy going to play to. In that, I would perceive such world as everyone being ‘polite’ – which is how I’ve linked it to being ‘political’ in the character/way of being that politicians act like, which is basically focusing on presenting a particular façade to play safe all the time when being in public.
‘Keeping a good image’ was something also induced by my mother, hers was mostly in the ‘expressive’ aspect of watching my mouth and not being ‘impertinent’ when speaking to people –my father focused on the physical behavior, like telling us to sit properly and crouching down to always pull up my socks and ensuring my shoes are clean. I’m laughing because of how much I simply accepted that as ‘normal’ and that’s why I had such a hard time interacting with other kids because they didn’t give a fuck about manners and being polite or getting their clothes dirty – so I developed a judgmental experience toward anyone that ‘would not be polite’ = being a regular human being, really.
Till this day I’ve caught myself going into a reaction the moment that I perceive that someone is Not being polite as in ‘taking advantage of a position’ – like someone wanting to win a place in the queue for something – or getting one step ahead of me to have a better place while waiting for the train, seemingly ‘unnoticeable events’ wherein I have automated responses of criticizing and judging people because of them not being polite.
The points that I’ll be walking and opening up are aspects of myself that I had not opened up for having them as ingrained belief systems that I deemed as ‘positive’ and in that, thinking that I should not bother to look at them, without realizing that there is actually a great part of myself ‘hidden’ behind these seemingly cool attributes that I’ve lived so far. As long as there is an entire indoctrination system behind it, I must investigate it, which means that no matter how ‘cool’ I perceive a point that I’m living to be, I must investigate it to make sure that whatever I am building/ creating and establishing myself here as, is based on actual self-understanding of How I got to be ‘who I am’ at the moment – in such case, how ‘manners’ exist as a belief system charged with a positive experience wherein the ‘negative’ is created the moment that I, through my politeness-filter of reality, judge and criticize everyone that I believe are Not polite and within that Not ‘humanly’ enough to interact with.
This means that I’ve created of my ‘politeness’ an elitist system wherein I believe that a well-educated being will have certain attributes that make them consider others before them, a way of perpetual altruism that often evokes a ‘good feeling’ out of it, which means it is an energetic-based personality and not an unconditional expression of self, as a sense of neighborism that is acquired within the basic principle and understanding of What’s Best for All as Equals.
I’ll be continuing opening up different aspects and dimensions of this ‘manner’ point as the behaviors ingrained with personalities throughout different stages of my life, which I had not opened up in fear of them being almost ‘self-glorifying’ yet suppressed and still existent within me, which means that every time I suppress it, I am recreating it and accepting it as ‘part of myself/ who I am’ without even noticing it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist as ‘politeness’ as a behavioral pattern that I had deemed to be ‘positive’ and ‘good’ for myself within the belief that being polite is an attribute that all people should live by, as that would make our coexistence ‘easier’ in this world, without considering that it is actually only an experience that I have created based on survival as the improved acceptance that a polite person gets within society and certain socieconomical stratus wherein money dictates the education that a person has, and in that, the behavioral patterns that denote a person’s ‘quality of living’ and parental values at home.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give continuation to a behavioral pattern such as ‘having good manners’ from the starting point of revealing/ showing that ‘I am well educated’ and in that, creating an ideal of who I am as ‘my education’ as ‘my family’ and ‘values’ that I have given to a certain behavior wherein I then judge/ criticize anyone that cannot fit into a category of being well-educated/ polite, without realizing how this is a belief system that I have adopted and continued in the name of representing ‘who I am’ as a configuration based on how my parents wanted us to ‘be’ within the social context wherein high-education, manners and ‘values’ are highly regarded, which would ensure our survival and positioning in the world system within a high-stratus in society.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that a person with ‘good manners’ is well educate as a synonym of being ‘a good neighbor’/ good person which implies that I have created my own elitist value schemes toward people according to how I see them through my politeness-filter personality, which implies that I will only ‘mingle’ with those that I perceive as educated, well mannered and polite according to how I was taught I should be/ behave as a little child at home.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a superiority experience within me whenever I see myself being ‘polite’ toward people and getting an ‘instant-gratification’ reward such as being thanked for doing something for another which is then implying that my ‘politeness’ is not an unconditional common sensical expression of and as self, but still an energetic personality that I try to keep up to, without realizing that in this, anything that steps out of my ‘politeness schemes’ I judge and criticize as lower/ inept/ rascal/ savage, without realizing that this is how I have had such an immediate judgmental behavior toward people while interacting in reality, due to how I have been conditioned to believe that polite people are ‘worthy’ and the opposite are ‘unworthy,’ in this
I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realize how politeness/ well mannered people is linked within my belief system to having enough money and in a certain social position that I have been taught is ‘more valuable’ than someone that is uneducated/impolite/ rascal/ savage according to the judgments that I learned as the way to denote someone that would probably not have enough money to be ‘well educated’ and in that, accepting the point of discriminating people according to the amount of money they would have, while absolutely neglecting and not even considering why on Earth such polarities even exist.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having regarded my parent’s imprinting onto myself as ‘good manners’ as something that I had to be grateful for, without realizing the actual belief system as elitism that I accepted and allowed to exist within me when linking good manners to ‘affluent people’ and bad manners/ impolite people to ‘lower class/ moneyless people’ and in that, creating a positive experience toward ‘fellow polite people’ and a negative experience toward ‘impolite people,’ as well as a neutral experience to people that I would perceive as expression-less within not being decidedly polite or impolite, which would be then linked to undefined within my schemes of human categorization according to education and money.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a sense of comfort and openness as an experience created upon interacting with someone that I perceive and profile as being ‘well educated/ polite’ within the identification of that which I was taught I should be like and aspire to become, which I accepted as a valuable aspect within human beings which lead me to create a positive experience within myself whenever I behave in a ‘polite manner,’ while creating the exact opposite as a negative experience as the immediate profiling of people that I perceive to be savage/ uneducated/ impolite, which I have accepted to discriminate/ judge in my mind while believing that I didn’t want anything to do with such people, creating the ultimate elitist experience based on manners.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that ‘How I behave’ is who I really am.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to still perpetuate the ‘ingrained values’ that I acquired at home, that I have kept due to them being seemingly ‘positive attributes’ within my personality, without realizing that it is in these ‘values’ that I have perpetuated the existence of good/ bad, positive and negative as well as neutral experiences toward people according to How I deem them to be within my polite/ impolite schemes, as the manners they present on face value when interacting with people in any given moment.
When and as I see myself categorizing someone as polite and creating a positive experience within me toward them, I stop and I breathe – I realize that I am accessing my politeness-filter wherein I am valuing and regarding the people as ‘good’ and ‘benevolent’ based on the attitudes and manners that they present. Therefore I realize that I must treat every person equally regardless of how they ‘present’ themselves, as I realize that such manners are a survival-masquerade to remain as ‘worthy’/ ‘valuable’ within a system where money decides who is ‘worthy’ and who is not and seeing good manners as the direct consequences of having money to be well educated, in this creating a positive experience toward people with money.
When and as I see myself judging a person as being ‘impolite’/ presenting bad behavior such as ‘bad manners’ I stop and I breathe – I realize that I am accessing the politeness-personality wherein I am then adjusting my experience to be negative and derogatory toward such being for being seemingly ‘uneducated’ and a ‘rascal’ without considering at all that I am creating such separation based on the link that I’ve created in my mind as ‘bad manners = poor education’ as a symbol to represent lack of money/ being poor, which I have created and associated a negative experience toward.
I realize that with me stopping the polite/ impolite judgments toward myself and others, I stop perpetuating the current money system wherein rich/ wealthy creates a positive experience while poverty/ lack of money represents and creates a negative experience, as well as the non-expressive people that I have judged as ‘mediocre’ which are all values I have separated myself from in relation to the same values we have separated ourselves from life through/ as money.
More to come…
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