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The Wall of Shit Theory
I read this today and I couldn't resist passing it along.
Here's how it goes:
The Wall of Shit Theory
Here's how it goes:
The Wall of Shit Theory
Throughout life, everyone has a certain amount of crap hurled at them. Some people get more crap, some people get less crap. Some people, the lucky ones, also get issued shovels, and spend their formative years being shown how to garden and constructing gardens in their hearts. So they're well equipped for dealing with the crap life throws at them. Sometimes it builds up, but they have their shovels, and use them and the crap to fertilize their gardens, and it's more or less okay.
Other people get only crap. They get crap from a very young age, and there's nobody to show them how to deal with it, because the people in their lives are dealing with their own crap, and throwing crap all over the place. So it builds up, in layers around their heart. After years and years of crap, their hearts, which may be beautiful, are pretty much surrounded in crap. Anything they try to send out is either trapped behind the wall of crap, or if it manages to squeeze out, it emerges covered in crap, sometimes to such an extent that it's impossible to recognize as anything that might ever have been beautiful. The same thing happens to anything that other people try to send in: if it gets in at all, it's covered in crap, and the person wonders why the world is throwing more crap at them. Because the crap is so thick, nobody can tunnel through from the outside, to find the beautiful heart. People get lost, and the crap sticks to them, and if they emerge at all, they too are covered in crap.
You can't really blame people for not wanting to be covered in other people's shit.
Sometimes, if the crapped-upon person can learn to recognize the crap, he or she can begin to reach through it, or learn to look for the openings. If a person's spent their entire life surrounded by crap, however, they don't always know to look for anything else—how should they? So you have people on both sides throwing love and kindness and whatever at a wall of crap, and people on either sides of the wall wondering why the people who profess to love them are giving them only crap to deal with.
Throwing more love at the wall of crap often doesn't do anything, because the person inside all the crap simply can't receive love that isn't covered in crap.
There may be one or two little tunnels through the crap, and something may get through these, but, of course, they're hard to find, and not entirely stable, and surrounded by still more crap. So even if you find a way through the crap, for some love to get through, it's not going to be easy or pleasant to get it to the person inside the wall of crap.
Other people get only crap. They get crap from a very young age, and there's nobody to show them how to deal with it, because the people in their lives are dealing with their own crap, and throwing crap all over the place. So it builds up, in layers around their heart. After years and years of crap, their hearts, which may be beautiful, are pretty much surrounded in crap. Anything they try to send out is either trapped behind the wall of crap, or if it manages to squeeze out, it emerges covered in crap, sometimes to such an extent that it's impossible to recognize as anything that might ever have been beautiful. The same thing happens to anything that other people try to send in: if it gets in at all, it's covered in crap, and the person wonders why the world is throwing more crap at them. Because the crap is so thick, nobody can tunnel through from the outside, to find the beautiful heart. People get lost, and the crap sticks to them, and if they emerge at all, they too are covered in crap.
You can't really blame people for not wanting to be covered in other people's shit.
Sometimes, if the crapped-upon person can learn to recognize the crap, he or she can begin to reach through it, or learn to look for the openings. If a person's spent their entire life surrounded by crap, however, they don't always know to look for anything else—how should they? So you have people on both sides throwing love and kindness and whatever at a wall of crap, and people on either sides of the wall wondering why the people who profess to love them are giving them only crap to deal with.
Throwing more love at the wall of crap often doesn't do anything, because the person inside all the crap simply can't receive love that isn't covered in crap.
There may be one or two little tunnels through the crap, and something may get through these, but, of course, they're hard to find, and not entirely stable, and surrounded by still more crap. So even if you find a way through the crap, for some love to get through, it's not going to be easy or pleasant to get it to the person inside the wall of crap.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on -
It makes me sad. It also explains a lot. Where is it from?
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Permalink Reply by Bigkrygowski on -
muffled sounds and whimpers....
- BigK comments from inside his head high pile of crap.
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Permalink Reply by hermit crab on -
This feels particularly applicable to a situation I'm in right now. How do you try to work through difficult things with someone who's entire life is one big defense mechanism?
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Permalink Reply by Kiwi on -
The Rotund, a FA blogger, linked to it in one of her blog posts
The Oracle said:It makes me sad. It also explains a lot. Where is it from?
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Permalink Reply by G.G. on -
It is a good analogy.
And I'm not sure how I feel about it though...as I stand here holding my shovel.
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Permalink Reply by Mamawho on
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It is good. It leaves out, however, the people who get only a moderate amount of crap and a shovel but who choose to sit around and wait for someone else to do the shoveling. If they ever realize that everyone else is busy either shoveling their own crap or being buried in it, they are too far surrounded in years of crap to do anything about it. Most likely, though, they spend their whole lives pissed off that they got crap at all and that no one else shoveled it for them, because they're fucking special, goddamnit. Not that I know one of these people.
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Permalink Reply by G.G. on
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Virtual HIGH FIVE.
Mamawho said:It is good. It leaves out, however, the people who get only a moderate amount of crap and a shovel but who choose to sit around and wait for someone else to do the shoveling. If they ever realize that everyone else is busy either shoveling their own crap or being buried in it, they are too far surrounded in years of crap to do anything about it. Most likely, though, they spend their whole lives pissed off that they got crap at all and that no one else shoveled it for them, because they're fucking special, goddamnit. Not that I know one of these people.
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Permalink Reply by Kiwi on
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Amen sister.
Mamawho said:It is good. It leaves out, however, the people who get only a moderate amount of crap and a shovel but who choose to sit around and wait for someone else to do the shoveling. If they ever realize that everyone else is busy either shoveling their own crap or being buried in it, they are too far surrounded in years of crap to do anything about it. Most likely, though, they spend their whole lives pissed off that they got crap at all and that no one else shoveled it for them, because they're fucking special, goddamnit. Not that I know one of these people.
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Permalink Reply by hermit crab on
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My Israeli friend said that she and her friends used to giggle about this song all the time, since "mines" was slang for dog poop.
John T. Capp said:I think Sting wrote a song about this:
And if I built this fortress of crap around your heart,
Encircled you in trenches of crap and barbed wire,
Then let me build a bridge,
For I cannot fill the crap chasm,
And let me set the crap battlements on fire.
Gives new meaning to the line "I had to stop in my tracks for fear of walking on the mines I'd laid."
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