Inspiring, or worrying

[redbird]

minnehaha K. asked "Who is the strongest person in your family?" and after a moment's thought, I think it may be me.

I don't know whether this is encouraging--hey, look how tough I am!--or worrying, given what I know about the places where I'm not strong.

I suspect that if she'd asked on a different day, I'd have given a different answer.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a scary question. That's a seriously disturbing question, even if I don't get ito thinking about various different ways of defining strength.

I think what bothers me most, if I try to answer that question is that I simply don't know. I don't know most of my family well enough to judge.

You seem strong to me, strong enough that this answer is unsurprising to me, but then this setting allows so very narrow a bandwidth of personality through that I know I couldn't really begin to have an opinion. But there's also the fact that the idea of being a strong person is attractive to you, and that you have ways of thinking about it. If I run through the idea of asking people I work with (my sample set of mainstream New England) I imagine mostly responses like, "My husband is stogne: he works out," "My little sister - she's so spoiled, she ALWAYS gets her own way," or just "What?" So the question tells you things before you even get to the answer.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I hardly expected to serious disturb anyone by asking.

K.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

It's hard to know which things will disturb whom. My family happens to be a disturbing one; most questions invoking it will produce unsettling trains of thought.

I don't object to being disturbed, you know. It's often very productive.

[redbird]

I should note that I'm thinking about this question in terms of the people I identify as family, which only loosely overlaps the category of blood relatives.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Ah. That does make a difference, yes.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

That was my immediate assumption :-)

I can think of several members of my family who would nominate me for this dubious position, although I don't feel it myself at the moment. G is the physically strongest, I think, but my brother J comes close (cycling legs).