CP 20 🤲🏽 Snobs Rock & Frustration is a Good Sign

Why a degree of snobbery is actually a good thing + a reframe of frustration and disappointment

Here’s a playlist.

I think I was 4 or 5, outside looking up at the clouds. I could see distinct shapes in them… like animals or whatever. It was fun. I thought ‘oh I know what I’ll do; because this is so much fun, I’ll draw the images that I see in the clouds.’ So I got a pencil and some paper and did just that. Then (and here is the point of the story, the reason why it remains a touchstone memory)… I did draw the things I was seeing in the clouds but remember thinking ‘ehh, doesn’t quite translate, not nearly as exciting as I thought it would be.’ I think this lingers in my mind as a sort of bookmark of subtle discernment that occurs naturally wherever curiosity is and that, I believe, is how various intelligences are born.

Welcome back!

First I’d like to redefine snobbery (at least the kind that I’m talking about) as just ‘being particular’. Then I’d like to recognize and appreciate that the reason for the particularity is 1) an interest in the specific subject, and 2) a sensitivity to recognize difference in quality. Both good things. And then I’d like to point out that this ability, the ability to tell one thing from another (aka discernment) is actually the seed of intelligence. Discernment is how we recognize and measure various intelligences in ourselves and other species. So sensitivity and preference really is where all of our smarts come from. I’m a fan.

I have had to repeatedly come to terms with my inclination toward the best of things and my habit of becoming a snob on multiple subjects “I am a croissant connoisseur, I only eat the best croissants” 

Throughout my life I’ve had a love/hate relationship with nice things because I was interpreting it as a burden. (Odd, right?) It felt like a burden to have experienced a certain caliber because then I wasn’t able to simply enjoy what wasn’t at that level. 

I couldn’t reconcile what I felt I had access to with the high quality experiences I had the pleasure of indulging in occasionally and all the meaning that seemed to be contained within them. 

Like, for example, many years ago I spent some time on a farm upstate where I had the best fresh produce, the best food, the best wine, the best cooking experiences, the best of a lot of things up to that point. It should probably also be noted that this was right after I moved across the country and started a really high quality education where there as well I was introduced to so much high quality everything that I had never known before. It was an absolute (positive) quality whirlwind. It was the makings of a culture shock but I welcomed and absorbed it so readily that the shock came later, when I reentered my previous world and didn’t know how to make sense of it.

I visited my family a short time after the first year at school and the first summer at the farm. We had a casual gathering for which someone bought one of those party trays that has cucumbers, carrots, and radishes. A normal thing. But, and I’M NOT JOKING, i cried because the radishes didn’t have flavor. They weren’t spicy. They had no character. I cried! 

Bear with me- I will at some point convince you of the warriorship in being a sensitive being.

I felt like it exemplified the way we overcontrol and suffocate the life out of things. So there’s that, how I’m a meaning-making machine and that lovely orientation toward life must be managed. At that moment I didn’t know how to navigate my new-found snobbery or “quality-seeking” and just enjoy a regular veggie plate. 

But also, the real subject of this- i actually felt then and on multiple occasions with various subjects after, that it was a burden to have those incredible experiences with really high quality. Here is why I’m sharing this story with you: 

It only felt burdensome because of the underlying belief that all that goodness was not for me, that I wasn’t deserving or worthy or able to experience those things more regularly. At the time, I didn’t feel like I had access to the spunky radishes or that I could justify the expensive but amazing coffee or that I’d ever have a home with intriguing architecture. That’s why it felt burdensome and sad.

But If I didn’t assume that it was outside of the realm of possibility, which is what I was doing… If I knew that everything I liked and loved and wanted was possible… then experiencing new heights, new levels of quality and satisfaction, could be instead understood as a guidance system. A really valuable thing.

Parallel to this conversation, I’ve got a reframe for you specifically regarding frustration and disappointment:

If you’re in a situation in which you feel frustrated or disappointed by a person, place, thing, situation, etc. I have noticed that this happens because of a differential; there’s a difference between what currently is and what you would hope or expect to experience. 

I want to offer you a reframe of this because, really, the only reason you can experience that frustration and disappointment is because of that space between what is and what you think could be. It’s not that what is is so low, its that what could be, from your perspective, is so high. And that’s not a bad thing! Just like with recognizing that high quality experiences can be a guidance system, so to are your high-quality visions that can feel like disappointment and frustration before they’re actualized.

We experience the current situation as especially low because of the contrast of what we think is possible. To you it is so obvious… “why isn’t it like this? Obviously it would be better like this.” 

The low experience is actually only Experienced because you have a vision, hope, or imagination of what is possible. And because you have that… consider this- it may be your work to bring that possibility to the world, to embody and exemplify that vision.

Maybe everyone and everything sucks, sure. 

OR MAYBE it’s that YOU have a vision that they don’t. It may be YOUR WORK to bring it into the world. Feelings of frustration may actually be asking you to step into leadership. Not leadership in a hierarchical sense but rather an offering by example. You can only experience the pain of frustration and disappointment because you contain the vision of how it could be. 

I think, perhaps, particular perspectives have a unique potential to create seminal outputs.

Recentering your sensitivity and reframing your challenges,

Loretta