Dinner at Linda's and Great Conversation

Linda invited the Chicks and friends over for dinner tonight and it was so much fun. We never have an opportunity to engage in casual conversation like we did tonight and it was really interesting.

This is a small group of very intelligent women and the topics were wide ranging. We had some thought provoking conversation and some big laughs.

Of course, one of the main topics of conversation was Rebecca Ryan's speech at the chamber dinner last week. I think everyone around the table was there that night and it was great to hear people's observations. I am always curious to hear what these women think. They are great thinkers and give me a different viewpoint.



In many different circumstances I am often the odd person out, with completely different views, but in this group people don't necessarily take that to be a negative thing, which is nice.

We had a lovely time. Linda had gone the extra mile with everything and it was a great night.



I was struck again tonight that I wish I knew how to fit in better. This isn't about tonight specifically, but just in general. I don't seem to know how to think the "right" way. Things that are obvious to other people make no sense to me and vice versa.

This isn't anything new. I've never been able to fit into group situations very well because once I say what I think about almost any situation, people  get uncomfortable, because I am rarely in sync with the majority. I try to ask questions to understand others viewpoints, but that seems to just make people defensive. I don't know how to explain my viewpoints because they're often "intuitive" to me. My brain just doesn't seem to come to the same conclusions other people's do.

We were talking tonight about how much we identify with where we live, as in what town or county or state you're from. I think of myself as "living in the midwest" because I view the boundaries of states and counties and towns as largely arbitrary. I was the only one in the group for whom this was true.

Boundaries for such things were once determined by how long it took to ride a horse from one place to another. To me that has no bearing on our world today and therefore should be reexamined. Why do we still want to live with these archaic divisions when we could be living as a group that is all working together for the good of everyone instead of competing with each other for limited resources in this arbitrary system?

I understand the "normal" way to think of this is that it's a system that has worked for a long time and is a huge economic factor because government is a big employer in many places. But in Patsy-world we could just rethink the whole situation and the money that's being put into communities through government could be coming in a different way, bringing with it different services or products. I don't understand why we don't want to expand our worlds.

Of course, I have absolutely NO idea how to affect that change. And maybe that's the problem - others are just more accepting of the fact that change is very complex. I always believe in my la-la-happy-world that everyone will see the wisdom of rethinking something and jump on board. Of course, this is not true. But, I just can't let go of it because to do so means to accept that possibility is lacking. And I want to live in a world full of possibility. 

I have a whole long list of things that make no sense to me - from athletics being tied to schools to health insurance being tied to employment. But, as usual, I seem to be the only one who sees these things as illogical and therefore worthy of rethinking.

Sometimes I wish I could just think through something and come to the conclusion everyone else comes to. I might not necessarily want to accept that as the gospel truth, but maybe I would at least understand the world around me then. Because, frankly, the world makes little to no sense to me most of the time. I am out here, floundering around, trying to not make a fool of myself, with no understanding whatsoever of what "the norm" is. But at least there is always something interesting to think about.
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