Manolo’s Week in Review
Manolo says, here is the best of the Manolo blogs from the previous week.
“Via ovicipitum dura est, or, for the benefit of the engineers among you: The way of the egghead is hard.”
Ask me how many grandmotherly frocks I had to try on before I dissolved into a mass of tears.
I don’t know about you ladies, but it’s pretty hard for me to have fun when I’m tromping around feeling like the unfortunate and frumpy love child of a yeti and an Amish drag queen.
0I would like to introduce you to the concept of “self-ocentricism.” This is the belief that each person in the world is way more wrapped up in their own concerns than in yours.
Comments
Poochie 17 years ago
I agee with Francesca. Self-ocentricism is a great liberator. I also have found that a version of this works for public speaking/presentations. I used to get very nervous before having to get up in front of the class or give a presentation. I came to the realization that most of the time you are going to know way more about the subject you are talking about than the audience so if you make a mistake they probably won’t notice.
Luv
Poochie
http://shoedaydreams.blogspot.com/
Noga 17 years ago
Winston Churchill was repeatedly accosted by a young political hopeful for guidance in overcoming his shyness of speaking in public. Finally Churchill gave him his two-bit of advice: Whenever I stand up to speak at the House I look around and say to myself ‘what a bunch of damned fools’ .
However, it is my belief that it is better never to underestimate the intelligence of your audience. I’ve read posts and articles in which the author makes that mistake, and the results are not pretty (for the author). It’s he or she that suffers the fate of Churchill’s audience.
But more to the point, I think Francesca has certainly put her finger on a rarely acknowledgef truth:
“Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon, from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather than a great aunt, might have warned her, for man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown. It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet.”
From Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/08/jane-more-jane.html)
Cat 17 years ago
Francesca’s post reminded me of this quote: “We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.” – Olin Miller
La BellaDonna 17 years ago
Ha! Hola to the Cat! La BellaDonna, she thinks much like the Olin Miller, if perhaps a bit more astringently, for she has said, these many years:
“Don’t worry about what other people think, because generally speaking …
they don’t.”
Cat 17 years ago
Hahaha! La BellaDonna, I think I prefer your version. :)