Remember the confession about my height I posted a couple days ago? Well, LMFAO, because I don’t have to lie about my height anymore. I have grown, and am now slightly taller than 5"7, which means I am roughly the same height as Cara Delevingne, and taller even than I lied about being.
This reminded me of that one Mindy Kaling joke:
In the Season 2 episode “The Desert,” Mindy is caught trespassing and hands her ID to an officer, saying, “OK, I know that my ID says that I’m 5'10” with blond hair, 110 pounds with crystal blue eyes. My philosophy is that an ID should be aspirational.”
I found it really funny, and it’s problematic for some people, but I get why she said that. It’s a joke, and people are getting very butthurt over it. (But I digress; that’s a different story for a different day.)
But that’s totally what I did: I pretended to be what I aspired to be, and I finally am.
Have you read The Secret? That really hyped book that came out about half a decade ago — this is kind of what that book’s about. Believe that you’ve already got it, and it will come to you, eventually. Fake it till you make it, to explain it via cliché.
Now, do I really believe in that philosophy? There’s certain aspects of it which are too hippy-dippy-trippy for me to really reconcile my own philosophies with, and I actually don’t think positive vibes attract actual positive events into your life, but there are certain benefits to positive thinking.
I think we can believe in what we want to believe in, and by believing it, we bring them into existence for ourselves. For ex: God, ghosts, Santa. Believing in these things doesn't make us any better or worse than the rest: it’s about what believing in these concepts drives us to do. Does believing in your God bring you to devote yourself to community service? Then it is a good belief. Does doing so make you want to kill gay people? Then I recommend you stop, or at least find yourself a new version of this God to make yourself believe in. It’s up to us what version of God we believe in.
My mom believes in Ghosts and the devil to explain certain unfortunate events which she is convinced could be caused only by them: they exist, for her, as a way to avoid losing faith in God, even when things get really rough. Because then she can blame those things on the devil instead of God.
And everyone makes up convoluted ideas; this is not just related to religion, it’s about how everyone makes up their own ideas, because we have the power to decide how we wish to define and interpret our world in ways that best fit our needs: all it takes is a little bit of creativity. That girl is a total b*tch, that teacher does not like me at all, this subject is too difficult for me to comprehend. And these beliefs that we choose to adopt shape not only how we see the world, but also how we respond to it — in other words, our actions. We, as human beings, are irrational thinkers whose opinions will forever be plagued by bias and prejudice — that can’t stop for anyone. But, if we’re really careful, we can be intentional in how we see the world, so that we can respond to it in ways that are most consistent with our aspirational selves.
So what I’m saying is, no, saying that I am 5"7 probably did not lead to me magically growing a couple inches overnight, but that seeing myself as a tall person definitely did make me act in ways that a tall person would: I lied to myself and everyone about myself being tall, and it made me feel more powerful, and more myself, in a way. And now that I am finally 5"7, I won’t have to lie about it anymore; but even if I did, I’d say it’s not a bad habit: it’s a coping mechanism, maybe, that increases my sense of self. Maybe it’s stupid to be lying about it, no, it definitely is, and maybe I’d have eventually have just come to peace with my actual height anyway, eventually, but I’d say a lie is alright as long as it’s productive and induces positive thinking. Because, obviously, we lie to ourselves every day anyway. I mean, nobody would be able to escape depression if we really believed in climate change; we choose to ignore it and lie to ourselves that it won’t affect us too badly; or maybe talking about karma helps us find peace after we have been wronged: and there’s a bunch of other little lies like these that we are actually expected to tell ourselves. You get my vibe? So it’s not much of a stretch, then, to maybe fake it a little bit till you make it, or even fake it forever if you never make it, because speaking aspirationally can do us all good sometimes.
