Rising Above It All

I DVR'd Larry King's interview with Lady Gaga and watched it at 6:30 this morning while doing my hand weight exercises. She talked a lot about the rejection of social standards that can become barriers to a person and how it influences her costumes, music, and life. She said that she didn't have very many friends and was called a "freak" every day. She identified more with men than with women, wanted to dress differently, and was scrutinized for being her. Now look at her: she has millions of fan, great show business success, has won Grammy awards, is a gay rights activist, and seems like a very peaceful yet hard working young woman.

Rising above the name calling, isolation, misunderstanding, and prejudice accusations got me thinking about how we deal with people's reactions. There are some of us who never hear "good job" from a father and struggle a whole life with needing a man's approval. There are the few we hear about in the news who are called, "freaks," go to school with ammo, and gun down their classmates and then kill themselves. And then there are people who hear all the hatred words can hold and it somehow rolls off their back.... It's curious how we all respond differently to a spectrum of problems and how each one affects another differently. One can seem huge to you but small to me.