The Tyranny of Sense

One of the worse tendencies my upbringing gifted me with is the mistaken belief that I have to make sense to people—that it’s my job, for fear of bad things happening to me, to make sure everyone thinks I’m reasonable. Surely, being reasonable protects you from bad things. Surely, being (specifically) a reasonable woman is important.

In my upbringing, being female is the sort of thing you compensate for by trying to be extra logical, reasonable, and accommodating of men.

I would hate to be in a position to try and quantify how much time and effort I’ve wasted trying to explain myself to people.

I’d love to be in a position to get that time back, though. It’d knock a decade off my age.

The thing about people is that they will always, if given the option, expect you to conform to their idea of sense. And how generous of you, to offer to structure your life around making them comfortable with how you think. You’ll never quite make it, no matter how hard you suppress yourself, and you’ll never quite be sensible unless they’re in the mood to grant it, but any close examination or disagreement and you’ll discover you don’t make sense to one another.

And, being very blunt, there is no sense in people’s sense, in their social and arbitrary judgements of what should be. Sense is the wrong question—it’s a judgement. Judgement, like all self- and people-inflicted punishments is not meaningful.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m ready to put that aside. I’m ready to not feel compelled to make sense to people, to be reasonable to them, to beg them to approve of the way I think and talk for fear of some sort of dire consequences if I don’t.

Whether you like or approve of me, I will continue to exist. I refuse to beg for the approval or permission of others to do so, and I’m not interested in giving people that kind of rent-free space in my head.