Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: learning

  • Theme:

    naming halts curiosity

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    1–2 minutes

    Name-calling is labeling, which is a shortcut to feeling superior. Higher morality would require complex understanding, which leads to compassion rather than condescension.
    Worse yet, once labeled (defined), we dismiss the hard work of further consideration or re-investigation.

  • Theme:

    Sabotaging others is self-sabotage

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    1–2 minutes

    Self-sabotage gets attention. Passive-aggressive sabotage is the same thing. You do not let someone’s life go smoothly: you make yourself into a bump or barricade in the road of life.

    We then rationalize not helping as "help": they need to learn (i.e., submit to me).
    If we decide to help joyfully (rather than manipulate and protect), we can get the attention we crave, but in a positive sense over the long-term instead of the painful short-term tactics that further isolates us.

  • Theme:

    there is always clean up after a party

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    1–2 minutes

    The price of excessive fun includes setup and execution, which is part of the fun.
    However, the actual cost is the sober responsibility of reordering not only the physical but also the emotional and relational detritus strewn across the metaphorical yard.

  • Theme:

    Picking up your toys and leaving

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    1–2 minutes

    In my family, we were taught that when people will not listen or change with you, you should take your better, wiser self away and play your own game your way. That’ll show em.
    While this preserves your integrity, leaving becomes limiting. How do you learn to charm, disarm or dominate if your go-to move is running away?

    Leaving isn’t a wrong move, but it is a crowbar, and it’s impossible to build a house with only demolition tools.

  • Theme:

    Without purpose, you lose yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    Loss of purpose reduces the ability to think well of yourself. Once a vital goal is lost, every decision is reactive rather than proactive: we either defer indefinitely or attack ideas as enemies.
    Another way to say it: When you lose where you are going, you lose who you are. You may retain power, but your decision-making is compromised and reactive, so the decisions of others move you.

  • Theme:

    The problem of wanting nothing

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    1–2 minutes

    Personal realization: I don’t want anything. I only wish to feel no discomfort.

    The unfortunate aspect of this epiphany is the corresponding lack of drive and a tendency towards avoidance.

    It is not life-affirming, and without active purpose, I am subconsciously afloat and vulnerable to manipulation.

  • Theme:

    Making polar opposite claims

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    1–2 minutes

    We are creatures evolved from dirt, mere flawed organisms until our status is threatened, and then our ego angrily declares our self-importance.

    We claim to do the work for money, except when we slip up or care too much, then it is all for others or for soul sustenance. We claim to be the romantic rogue and become the cutthroat mercenary with the next breath.

    It is as if we don’t know and are frantically bouncing ideas off reality to see which one it will accept. We do anything to keep from looking within and either knowing or declaring we don’t know.

    We consistently avoid honesty at all points.

  • Theme:

    Do not avoid stress, run towards it.

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    1–2 minutes

    We spend much of our lives avoiding pain or distress, assuming happiness will arrive when anxiety has dissipated.

    Yet, joy and bliss are intense feelings grown from overcoming challenges and fulfilling psychological goals.

    Running away from stress is self-defeating: neither solving the problem nor producing an ecstatic state of owning a problem and overcoming it.

  • Theme:

    Certainty is boring

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    1–2 minutes

    We all primarily want certainty until we have it. Then, bored out of your mind, you start disrupting your stability.
    Uncertainty, mystery, and danger are the spice of life.
    Much like a child learning to explore, we constantly gravitate back home for safety, build up our courage, and go adventuring again.

  • Theme:

    reason over results

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    1–2 minutes

    As a somewhat intelligent individual, I am better at excuse-making and ad-hoc explanations than I am overcoming.