Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

not a staged photo! ‘NY Systems Weiners’ on Smith St Providence RI was the late night choice de cuisine and, like a 1970s version of those Japanese restaurants where they, like, cook at your table, Pascale or Tony would balance a row of cranks on his 2.am.forearm and spread the love on them weiners,… mmm 2am dorm food!

Workweek update!

In an effort to maintain a reasonable level of Doctrine-centric Posts, here at the Wakefield Doctrine, I’m constantly arguing with myself over the question of whether or not we have a certain limited amount of words to write each day. The opposing view is that it is a matter of discipline, organization and endurance, rather simply running out of words.

I’m mostly thinking…both are accurate.

There! Conflict resolved!  Speaking of conflict, you know, of course, that, of the three personality types, clarks hate conflicts, adversarial interactions and people who might point us out as being Outsiders, way more than do scotts and rogers. Hell, scotts consider conflict to be the romance portion of their love affair with life and the here and now and rogers.… well, with them it’s important to remember that we live in different realities. What a clark (or a scott) might see as an un-enjoyable interaction, can be a very different experience for a roger. That’s one of the things about the Wakefield Doctrine thats so damn wonderfully helpful. The Doctrine is there to remind us that my experience of the world may very well be different from yours. Same planet, same Menu that we staring at, in the small Italian restaurant in the middle of the semi-abandoned mall in the old suburbs, the original high-end anchor store, now a wholesale discount place (“Why Buy From Real Stores? We’ll Sell You Stuff That They Didn’t Want!!”) and there are more tattoo parlors than jewelry stores. Anyway, you and I (and, what the hell, someone else*) and we meet for lunch. The waitress comes over and there will be, for the purposes of fun and speculation, standing (attractively/patiently/annoyingly), in front of us, what in realit(ies) is/are 3 different waitresses. You and me and that friend of  yours that you insisted on bringing along may very well have 3 different experiences, ordering our lunch.

That’s all I wanted to ‘say’. That the thing about perspectives and the Wakefield Doctrine is that I choose to believe that your personal reality is just as real as my personal reality. (The Cliff Notes Version: it’s not that the other person refuses to see the world as it really is, it’s not like they’re just being pig-headed and stubborn and they’re not, (necessarily), doing what they’re doing just to get you mad. It might just be as simple as, what they are responding to is an element of the world that does not exist in your personal reality. ya know?)

Hey! Thanks and shout out to Kerry for mentioning ‘Almira’ in her TToT this week! Totally appreciate it.

…speaking of Almira

Chapter 5!  ‘Almira‘ is out and waiting to be read. You can find it at www.almirastory.wordpress.com or at Almira (at jukepop.com). We get to know our main characters a little better, because, like the little discussion of the Doctrine above, everyone wakes up ‘in the morning’, literally or figuratively, of course. So by seeing how to take the measure of the day before them, we see the world through their eyes.

* there are three personal types so, since I’m clearly the clark in this scenario, it’d be real good if you go ahead and make that third person someone you know who is not a clark or (whatever) your predominant worldview is… the example will work way better.