Monday, February 10, 2014

Where do you exist, part 3

Wherein I discard my previous generalizations and try to make new ones.

I went on my yearly Dead Poet's Retreat this past weekend, and I was able to get answers to the question from about 20 more people.  And again some of the answers have thrown me for a loop.

My previous generalization about men being mostly in their heads and women being mostly in their hearts - I now throw it out the window.  Several of the men on my retreat indicated their gut as their center.  And two or three of the women indicated their heads.  Some new, random observations:
  • The gut thing is interesting, as in many ancient cultures, the gut was thought to be place where the soul resided.  And for at least one of the men who so indicated, I would consider him to be a bit more scholarly.  But that's probably a red herring.
  • I do think many women instinctively choose their chest as where they exist, perhaps even a majority, although a slim one. 
  • Two women now have indicated an area around their throats.  And these women have extremely different personalities.  For example, they are on the opposite sides of the introvert/extrovert spectrum.  I'm going to be giving a lot of thought to what they might have in common.  
  • One woman indicated the location by waving her hand over her head, to indicate 'way up there'.  Hers is an interesting story that includes an accident that erased all of her long-term memories, so that she essentially had to grow up all over again, and she has a completely different personality than she did originally.
  • One woman was very clear that her soul resided in her dreams.  She has very lucid dreams and remembers them all.  And she feels strongly that she 'belongs' there.
  • The first man to answer indicated his gut.  But he also predicted that his wife would be in her head.  And sure enough, she was.
  • I think my baseline for trying to unravel this mystery goes back to where it started.  All of the men in my men's group indicated in or near their heads.  And my first impulse was to generalize: men=head, women=chest.  Which turns out to not be true across the board.  But that doesn't change the fact that my first sampling did have the head thing in common.  So the next question is what else might they have in common that the head location could be an indicator of?  My next guess is that it's an inclination towards the theoretical.  In our group, we often get sidetracked by theological or philosophical tangents.  And we all enjoy it.  Now, I've had those types of discussions with non-head people, so it's not that non-head people can't enjoy a deep conversation.  But there is a certain giddy joy for the guys in my group in that regard.
As for me, I'm still joyfully mystified and trying to figure out what this all might mean, if anything.



No comments:

Post a Comment