I was pretty hard on Cinderella’s sperm donor. I think it is ok to judge him a little bit. The story, set in our times, might give more context to make him forgivable. Or it might judge him harsher than I did.

Mostly, I judge him for lack of awareness on the consequences of his decisions. For the purposes of this letter, I am assuming we have a Cinderella story playing out in our modern culture¹Since it is our culture I am commenting on here, that makes sense to me.. 

I get frustrated with people when, in my opinion²It isn’t really a humble opinion, they are not paying enough attention to the consequences of the actions they are going to take. It can be as simple as a great story I remember from when BigOne was tiny. They told us they had brushed their teeth. I doubted them. So, I went to inspect the toothbrush and it was dry. They had not thought about IF they had brushed their teeth, the toothbrush would be wet. And thus, they learned to think more about if the lie was plausible before lying to me³I would have loved the lesson to be NOT to lie to me, but I think I explained it a little too much..

Being hyper aware isn’t always good for me or the people in my world either. The image that comes to my mind is a college student who has been awake for 36 hours preparing for a final in a tough class. The student is so focused and aware of how they will need to perform in the class, they are losing the ability to perform at all⁴This happened once to a fellow graduate student when I was working on my MSEE. He passed out in the middle of the exam. As a side note, his passing out took my awareness away from my own exam paper.

If I function as too aware of my interactions with the world, I end up missing opportunities. And sometimes awareness of our world is too much because there are too many sad things to see and not have the power to change.

As I struggle back and forth across the awareness good/awareness bad spectrum, I become too aware of the spectrums of behaviors which of course leads to a fight or flight reaction. So, employing one of the trendy meditation techniques I have learned recently, I kind of force myself to pop out. Only from observation can I ask the question, ‘What am I trying to achieve with my awareness?’ And in the context of a modern fairytale, what do I wish Cinderella’s father had achieved?’

I want everyone else to act in a way so that I am not left confused and puzzled by their behavior⁵Such a small ask. And sometimes, when I get stuck in my own head, I fear that I am leaving others confused, puzzled, and even hurt by my lack of awareness. I really don’t want to affect people the way I am sometimes affected by other’s thoughtlessness.

That desire is ridiculous and is definitely motivated from a desire for control.

I think that this is probably why we have manners. Being rude is the first step towards acting in a way that effects the people around us negatively. Manners aren’t everything, but they are the first step to not leaving people wondering why you act the way you act and how you could be so blind.

As much as I resist the need for societal norms, there is a purpose to them. In our society, I would expect Cinderella’s father to have enough awareness that just because he loves his new wife, it does not mean his new wife will love his daughter. With that awareness, he could take steps to prevent the turmoil and torture Cinderella endured at her hands. But that is my expectation, and I am not entirely sure all of our modern culture would agree with me.

I also think trying to prevent all negative effects on the world is probably limiting to having any effect on the world. It is important to reach out to connect to others even if they results of the attempt are not positive. If I weren’t made sad, or confused, or hurt, by my interactions with others at times, then I missed the opportunity to be given knowledge, or hope, or joy by encountering new people.

So maybe this popping out is a good thing for me. Not just to observe what I am feeing, but also to engage in finding an opportunity for change. Accepting that not all change has to be positive provides the potential for going in a new direction I couldn’t have imagined alone.