to be tough

Just another "manic Monday."
Should have stayed in bed.
Someone (Diana Vreeland, I think) said, "Elegance is refusal."
I was thinking about toughness: being tough. Where a person is "tough," as in they don't let others hurt them. Or -- are they still capable of being hurt, but you believe they aren't because they are so strong through it.

Someone I know had a hard-cover biography of Laura Bush, on a decorative table next to sofa, last week -- I was like, "Ooh, that looks interesting!" "I haven't read it yet."
And we were talking about being "tough"; I said I wish that I could learn better skills in that area. I need to be more strong and surrounded with powerful, thick emotional "armor" like men I see at work who have tattoos. No one can mess with them.

In our conversation, we realized maybe God didn't make everyone to be able to be tough in the same way, just like He didn't make everyone so that they can be comfortable in different situations; He didn't make everyone so they can sing like Tina Turner, or play football like the stove.
Or -- Refrigerator ...

Thought of the quote, "Elegance is refusal," and thought about Laura Bush. And was imagining maybe I can't be as tough as some men, but maybe I can be as calm and centered as Laura Bush, or at least strive for that.
Calm, and centered, I do not engage.
No one can hurt me because -- I don't engage.
I refuse to engage, or to have my composure disturbed.
Elegance is refusal.

Someone I know told me she had a stroke at a young age -- nineteen, or something. I said, "Oh! That would have been scary!"
She looked imperturbable and, with a shrug, said lightly, "No."
That's elegant refusal.

On Monday, November 25th, 1963, Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Kennedy family members, world leaders, and others walked eight blocks from the White House to St. Matthews in Washington. From the crowds lining the streets, as Mrs. Kennedy passed by a teenage girl was heard to exclaim, "Boy, is she tough."

That did not mean she wasn't in pain. But she could still be "tough."

Tina Turner's "elegant refusal," the day she was tough enough to leave was July 1, 1976 --
[excerpt]: whap! Another one of those backhand licks. And then I started fighting back. He kept hitting me, but I didn't cry once. I was cursing him out: He was going, "Fuck you," and all of that, and I'd keep talking right back to him. He was amazed! He was punching me and saying, "You son of a bitch, you never talked to me like this!" I said, "That's right -- but I am now!" And then pow, he'd hit me again. And then he reached down and got his shoe off his foot and pow, pow, pow! But I kept fighting him. I didn't care what he did, because I was flying -- I knew I was gone.

...I put a cape over my bloody clothes -- didn't even change them. I had to leave my wig there because my head was too swollen to wear it, so I just tied one of these stretch wraps around my head. I figured he could get somebody else to wear that wig -- he could wear it himself, for all I cared. ...
--------------------------------- [end excerpt]
{I, Tina: My Life Story. Written by
Tina Turner, with Kurt Loder. Copyright
1986. AVON Books, New York, New York.}

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