Were you the ugly duckling growing up? How do you feel now?

[jacq63]

I certainly always had the attention of people from about the age of 9. I wish I could say it was for complimentary reasons, but it was because they couldn't tell if I was male or female. I know this, because they'd often ask me. Such manners and 'refoinment'.
I was so glad the day I became......more obviously female. (Well, it did seem to happen overnight)!

[Urban Sasquatch]

Originally Posted by tamajane

It's not lack of empathy or understanding. It's just that it doesn't work when you try to force something. I saw on some talk show a woman who was rejected in high school by some guy. She got the whole plastic surgery makeover and dressed like a hooker to make him so sorry and cry heavy tears over what he is missing. He saw her and was still unimpressed and had a fiance who was prettier and classier looking. It just doesn't work, and anyone who is harboring these thoughts chonically really needs to be in therapy where a trained professional will push them to LET it GO.

Sorry, but it is very immature to think you can change people's feelings by forcing things on them or getting some kind of pseudo revenge. This often backfires and makes one feel worse.

There are, of course, always going to be those extreme cases, the ones that make a realistic person stop and ask "Seriously, what ARE you doing?!?" Those tend to be pretty blatant.

However, it's also amazingly difficult to know the extent to which what seems passing or trivial to us at a young age will affect someone else, whether positively or negatively, and when it's negative those things can take years to get past if a person has a poor foundation for whatever reason.

There are triumphant stories sometimes and those are plenty inspirational. Sadly, most people fail to realize how difficult pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps can be, and many (not all, but certainly many) who believe they've successfully done so have actually failed to take into account the myriad ways they've been helped or supported along the way, large and small alike.

Many years ago I took to heart something I read by Heinlein:

"This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humouring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."

It may not apply directly to this, but there are correlations. No matter what we may think of them, some people actually have very little in their lives and what is passe or petty for us may change their lives as far as they're able to perceive.