let me digress first :p. saturday and sunday was fun :). spent most of the time gaming (tower defense rocks!!!) with beng, insight and william (beng and william cheats in nfs. yes, i'm a sore loser, but i don't care. CHEATERS. hehe. but they're really good. one day i'll cheat by practising a lot and beat u guys. u just see.). friday nite and saturday nite was spent playing games! and we watched swat, which is really, *really* good show and worth the money spent. i skipped s@lsa on both days, didn't feel like it anyway. this week didn't prove to be a good week to dance. hopefully next week it will be better.
ok, back to topic.
sunday i was having dinner with my s@lsa mates, after our practice and watching dance video session. and we suddenly got into this topic, where one of the dancers (all 3 of them including our instructor who were having dinner with me were really good dancers in malaysia.. several of the tops i would say. if not tops, potentially tops) had this problem. her problem was, very few guys would actually ask her to dance. she is quite frustrated by this problem, and our instructor said that it's a very normal thing.
according to him, most guys felt shy and intimidated by her, because she dances very well. in addition to that, because she can be quite vocal and expressive of her opinions ("this song sucks.." etc etc..) it only adds to the intimidation factor. the guys felt pressured when dancing with her, felt pressured to perform, and although she doesn't mind that (she just wanna have fun), the guys couldn't get rid of that kind of feeling, thus they'd rather not ask her to dance. and since there is very few guys who dances very well, she don't get to dance with a lot of people. majority of the guys are so-so, and those are the ones too shy and intimidated to ask her to dance.
after hearing all that, she gets rather quiet, i suppose because of what our instructor said. she probably have never thought of this before, that being good at dancing could be a disadvantage. to me, it's a good analysis, and it's something that all of us will have to learn to manage. being not good at something has its disadvantages, and being good at something has its disadvantages too. while we all think that "oh, this guy/gal is so good... i envy him/her so much..", it probably never crossed our minds that they have their own problems because of their abilities. as for my friend, she probably was quite taken aback, since she became rather reserved after that topic... didn't talk much. it must be a big problem for her, since she enjoyed dancing so much...
what i think is, the problem may lie in the fact that she was quite vocal socially. this can be quite a dilemma. the problem is, if you're just being yourself and be vocal, people might think you're arrogant and intimidating. so if you want to not be seen as arrogant, you shouldn't be vocal. but if you're not vocal in expressing your opinions, you don't feel like yourself anymore. but if you just act like yourself and say things whenever you want, it probably would intimidate other people. *sigh*, what dilemma.
i think that the solution would be balance. if you want the freedom to be yourself (and thus be vocal of your opinions and feelings) you should choose the right crowd to do that. telling people you earn this much this much, would be normal in the eyes of people earning that kind of bracket, but in front of people earning like, rm1.2k per month, would be seen as arrogance. it is a difficult thing, no less, but it's something that we have to learn to manage.
other than dancing, this applies to a lot of things in our life. things like... career. sometimes we do things we never realize would intimidate others, like telling people about how well your career is going. the thing is, sometimes we really just didn't realize. sometimes we just want to share our lives, but we just didn't realize what the effect could be on the intended audience. for example, when i was asked about how my work is going, i said that it was ok, i enjoy the job very much, and the only concern i had was that i didn't feel too happy with the fact that i'm just working on a 300k project (together with 3 other person summore) compared to a 1 mil project i handled alone in the previous company. now, to my colleagues, this would be seen as normal, as they have been doing projects at this scale before. but it could be seen as bragging by others, as how i was asked to stop bragging by this friend of mine. now the thing is, bragging is the last thing in my mind, and all i wanted to do was just to share my feelings about my current work! if i don't tell about this, there is nothing else i can tell! other things are just normal... and this was exactly what i was thinking, and it was normal when i discussed this with my ex-senior and colleagues. but then, i realized that to a different audience, it might be perceived differently. (sorry, fiffy, really didn't mean to brag, hehe. i told u that rite ;))
and yesterday i chatted with a fren, who said he was in depression, went to a psychiatrist and all that. said that he compares himself with other frens who's successful in their career, and enjoying their lives. he said how envious he is at a friend who gets to go to different countries for work and training, and he even mentioned that he envied me at how i was enjoying myself. i asked, how did u know i was enjoying myself? we didn't even chat! and he says "i read your custom messages". (yahoo messenger custom messages)
wtf? only my custom messages!!?!?? and that would be enough to intimidate and depress other people? what am i supposed to do? limit myself to what i could write on my own custom messages? or delete myself off his list (using yahoo's evil tool ;)) ? but he might realize i did that, and he might think i did it to stay away from him, and end up being depressed even more!
but this.. this is something we all have to learn to manage. we all crave to be accepted (esteem needs, maslow's hierarchy), even people who's good at something. apparently these people find it difficult to be accepted, because if they're not careful, they might end up being despised. and for those who strives to become good to be accepted, it might just defeat the whole purpose altogether.
i have learned that, to different crowds, you have to approach a certain subject at a different angle. be a bit careless, and risk being labelled a snob.
