Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: emotions

  • Theme:

    Social Policing

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    People see you happy, being yourself, or feeling yourself, and the balancing mechanism is to apply their internalized burdens (“responsibility”) upon you.

    The common way is to offer disingenuous “help” while tripping you.

    The plea for conformity (or moderation) is subconscious leveling, but not-so-well-wishing busybodies often destroy the happiest (unique) person.

    Remember that this concern for social uniformity is crossing a boundary; it is not their responsibility to arbitrate control, unless you cross their boundary.

  • Theme:

    People pleasers

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    When people set up barriers or boundaries with you, they are not attacking your person, they are rejecting your behavior.

    This is hard to hear, because we assume our behavior is why people like us, and we can modify our behavior to be loved.

    Setting up a boundary and showing where each person’s responsibility lies is the kindest form of love: it sets responsibility and can love even if you behave atrociously or perfectly.

  • Theme:

    Sports: Learning to Quit Gracefully

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    There is a tendency to grasp tighter as something slips away: fight harder to retain what was.

    Another approach to loss is through sports: you give it all you have and leave it all on the field. Shake hands and walk away. You just need to know when the final buzzer is sounding.

  • Theme:

    the rationalizer procrastinates

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    The skill of rationalization allows for procrastination, but even odder is that it often works to accomplish its goal. While it appears as self-sabotage, it shifts labor onto others: if you can get enough people invested in your success, they will carry you forward due to their anxiety watching you fail.

  • Theme:

    anxious action

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    When you are anxious you aren’t profound. You feel the need to act: to speak, to do.

    This acidic aggravation generates a compulsive need for action, for exhaustion. It is a bodily response springing from a psychological state.

    Our goal is to soothe the mind to soothe the soul, trusting the body will follow.

  • Theme:

    to kill romances is to understand

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Love… if we are desiring machines, if that is what makes us as individual subjects, our desire, then if you fulfill your desire, you must desire anew to continue being you.

    Without desire “you” would disintegrate, so never fulfill your desire, maintain it in it’s mystery and unfulfilled state: to kill romances is to understand.

  • Theme:

    Don’t hurt yourself: vent your anger

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Anger has a bad reputation: "civilized" people control it, and enlightened people are beyond it.
    Obviously, we do not want to give free rein to our anger or inflame it, but it is a natural human response that has been relegated to the realm of "unhealthy."

    The question is how are you going to vent? I would suggest a community of loving friends, who can allow the outburst and dissipate the toxic energies with love.

  • Theme:

    clockwork man: time uses us

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Since the invention of the clock, time can be wasted, which converts time into a resource to be controlled and mapped into productivity. Time can be used and optimized, pushed and manipulated, for our desires.

    Instead, consider that time can use us.

    Each process takes the time that it takes. Time guides our reactions and dictates outcomes. More is not possible; only acceptance (acquiescence) to the pace.

    There is fear in the simplicity implied: we are only a mechanical appendage of time, a clockwork man performing at a heteronomic tempo. Yet, this reality has always existed and is quite preferable to modern anxiety and pressures of escalating production.

  • Theme:

    Incurring dumbness

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    I love the dumb feeling of fuzzy openness that slinks up the back of your skull after three drinks.

    The sunset is beyond profound, your troubles are pebbles, and the glee is a fist letting go of your heart.

    You have a glimpse that this single moment is what all life could be.

  • Theme:

    scapegoating requires denying reality

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    When something doesn’t go right, we find somebody/something to pin it on.

    While unfair, condemning an external other provides two vital functions: blaming releases us of responsibility and our deep seated fear of being out of control now has an actionable target.

    Scapegoating is a "regulatory outlet" bleeding off rage by condemning others, which requires staying blind to reality to govern our emotions. All it requires is sacrificing others because of our weaknesses.