On Likability & Truth
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that in my search for healing and self-love, I discovered something about myself that made me feel uncomfortable–the more I progressed as a woman and spoke my mind, the less some of the other women around me liked me. They never said, “Agena, I don’t like you,” but instead attempts at intellectually stimulating conversations and displays of emotion were met with cold and ice, eye-rolling, and rude interruptions. These were people that I grew up with, so I couldn’t exactly dismiss it. The pain of rejection stung like a charlie horse that comes out of nowhere.
Back then, I wasn’t used to people not liking me–in what feels like another life I was the peace-keeping people-pleasing Pollyanna. But as I traveled, further along, mental and spiritual freedom collided with feeling captive to others’ expectations of me, the constant unbidden critiques and unsolicited advice that are part and parcel of womanhood.
Then, finally, after choosing me, the upside of the eventually defunct relationships became clear. I was not willing to go back to that other version of myself, always bent over in service to others, carrying my fear of rejection with me like an old dysfunctional companion, heart always on sleeve at the most inopportune times, times I should have been asserting myself and erecting firm boundaries.
I don’t miss that person, but others did.
Now, I’ve incorporated the useful parts of that person–deep sensitivity, authenticity, and kindness into an updated version of myself. So here we are; I love the new version of me, and you hate it but… Why would you want me to go back to that person, that shell of a person? Why should I have to go back to old Agena to appease anyone?
Because she was more malleable, easier to manipulate, to control…she was more likable:
“In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be. Characters who don’t follow this code become unlikable. Critics who criticize a character’s unlikability cannot necessarily be faulted. They are merely expressing a wider cultural malaise with all things unpleasant, all things that dare to breach the norm of social acceptability.”-Roxanne Gay
Much of what is ‘socially acceptable’ nowadays reeks like funky fish of intolerance, hypersexuality, surface things, and emotional stagnance coupled with a heavy dose of aversion to critical thinking.
There is no room for greatness in social acceptability. There is no magic in seeking acceptance. It is a never-ending rabbit hole, and you’ll choke on the dirt flying in your face.
There is no fulfillment in that for those of us who see things differently. The world needs people who can envision things, who can feel things deeply. Everybody can’t be ‘unbothered.’
Also, there’s another upside to (un) likeability: the universe prunes those things and people from your life that don’t serve you, leaving you plenty of time–another precious resource–to connect with nature, nurture, creativity, and destiny.
-Agena Jessica Diamond is a feminist, woman in progress & self-published author, check out my first book here: https://www.amazon.com/Agena-Jessica-Diamond/e/B09MDT8WKP
