My brother called me from Reno, NV last night. He had just checked in to a hotel there after his trip to Burning Man and a side trip to visit one of our cousins who's currently staying in Lake Tahoe. He decided to call before shaving off what he referred to as a month's worth of beard. After jokingly referring to his event as "Hipsters in the Desert" -- which he didn't find funny -- we then began discussing his long drive from Chicago to Nevada and the lack of interesting things along the way, followed up with a brief update on the last two weeks of family news. Somehow, this turned into his criticizing me for allowing too much drama in my life.*
"Dramatic pot, meet dramatic kettle," ran through my head, but I kept it to myself.
According to my brother, this so-called drama is because I purposefully put myself in uncomfortable situations that I could avoid. He's somewhat right about this.
I know that it's caused by a tension between doing what I want and doing the right thing -- and that generally, I choose to do the right thing, which is almost never what I want to do. Of course, my brother is the opposite. He always chooses to do whatever he wants, propriety and consequences be damned.
I don't know which is worse.
*Personally, I don't think there's a whole lot of drama going on. If it was, this blog would be way more interesting.
3 comments:
Dramatic pot, meet dramatic kettle--hahahahaha. I love it!!
I have a sister who likes to say things like, "you are being overly dramatic and blahblahblah" to me...
At which point I figure that it is within my perfectly over-dramatic rights to, well, be dramatic and ignore her. It usually works...=-)
(Besides, how can an attendee of the Burning Man...er, burning even dare to say they aren't dramatic--at least a little?? haha).
I think it's just that my brother objects to the type of drama that I create.
For example, when I went up to visit him in Chicago, he was really bothered by the fact that I was even considering whether to see my ex. Regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or whether it was nice or polite or grownup or whatever, my brother thought that it was a bad decision and it created unnecessary drama. Which is probably true.
But on the other hand, if I had screened my phone calls, or refused to see him, it would have created an equal amount of drama.
He & I have the same type of discussion every time I say that I'm not really wanting to head home to Florida for some family occasion but am begrudgingly going anyway.
Plus, my brother is even more dramatic than your run-of-the-mill mid 20's burning man attendee. He was a theater major. I just think he doesn't tell me a lot of stuff.
What's life without some drama anyways, whether you create it yourself or it just sort of happens. And you know, doing what's right and doing what you want are not mutually exclusive.
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