A cascading avalanche of trials can crush us. Despite the gory disaster, all you need is a friend who cares and loves you to hear you out.
Be that friend, and your problems will suddenly seem a meager embarrassment.
Tag: love
- Theme: Self
Being a friend
°
1–2 minutes - Theme: Growth
A Shinier Stick
°
1–2 minutesI watched a kid pick up a stick and hit some things. Then throw it, pick it up, and hit stuff until it broke.
Anything can relieve boredom, but a shinier toy offers more attachment and subsequent loss when it breaks… and it tends to break quicker.
- Theme: Self
Negative Identification
°
1–2 minutesHow much of our identity do we form around what we are not? This would be negative identification, keeping us concentrated on what we loathe or despise rather than focused on what we love.
This is not a new idea, just one that I need to be reminded of on occasion: your focus determines who you are and the decisions you make. - Theme: Self
The Trap of Grave Compassion
°
1–2 minutesSerious, grave people full of concern, caring, and -most importantly-compassion often attempt to decide how the world should be for everyone else.
The trap is obvious: considerate goodness is, of course, something we must support. But whose goodness leads to whose sacrifice, for whose "greater good?"
As promising, judgmental people rush to out-empathy each other, there are ways to help the greater good that do not decide, but provide options.
- Theme: Self
Definitions make distinctions
°
1–2 minutesTo confuse skills with career is common. To confuse nationalism and patriotism is common. To confuse passion with love is common. To confuse value and worth is common.
As Timothy Snyder says: be kind to our language. Be precise. Avoid clichés.
When our medium of communication becomes casually abused and twisted we can feel the trap, but do not have the concept (accessibly contained in language) to push back.
- Theme: Self
The paradox of self-compassion
°
1–2 minutesThe paradox of self-compassion is that it is not selfish: once you fully face your flaws and accept you are merely human, you more easily forgive others for their foibles.
- Theme: Self
Empathy wins, and loses
°
1–2 minutesOne enlightenment tactic is broader and broader empathy: if you are empathetic for a person, I am empathetic for people; if you are empathetic for animals, I am empathetic for rocks as well.
To win, move from the individual particular, to the abstract universal.
Going meta is not love: true empathy is staying here in the messy particulars.