Striving for balance among others is not merely a question of trade—peace for chaos, equanimity for pain—but of recognition. When your balancing acts go unseen, they breed asymmetry: absorbing others’ burdens now often returns future suffering. You quiet today’s turmoil only to inherit tomorrow’s unrest. The difficulty lies not in discerning balance, but in bearing the invisible weight of maintaining it for others. Over time, unacknowledged efforts compound, not in peace, but in deferred anguish. True balance, then, must be mutual and visible—otherwise, it exacts more than it restores.
Tag: relationships
- Theme: Self
“she’s not to be trusted”
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1–2 minutesOverheard: "Her emotions get the best of her; she’s not to be trusted." This applies to all of us at times.
Yet, unraveling the implications means considering emotions fickle, not the best version of a person but instead the very thing that leads them astray: the "best of her" is a stable and dependable friend whom we can predict. (This is a worthwhile prediction, not the ole "she is predictable in her consistent unpredictability.")
We need not neuter our emotional selves; however, regulating our actions is key to forming trust. It is counterintuitive, perhaps cruel, to say, "feel how you want, but don’t act how you feel." This temperance of feeling feels repressive, yet the reward is comfort in a community, another emotional feeling of stability, solidarity, and safety.
- Theme: Self
The romantic vs. the pragmatist
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1–2 minutesTo be a romantic is to be unable to live with a distinction, a separation. The romantic urge is a unification of all things: emotions, hopes, and dreams are also reality, just as the transcendent abstractions are also ontologically immanent.
According to the grown-ups, this is juvenile. Those hard-minded, soulless pragmatists cut themselves off from sublime wonders, creating a bedrock of stability upon which they are but one more rock.
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– - Theme: Self
The Intersubjective vs. The Ideal
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1–2 minutesPolitics operates between intersubjective reality (shared perceptions that shape movements) and abstract idealism, where principles transcend practical concerns.
Grassroots politics emerges from collective experience, while ideological politics refines these into utopian visions. However, when ideals detach from reality, they risk becoming dogma, imposing rigid, often contradictory standards akin to religious orthodoxy, leading to harmful edicts.
The challenge lies in translating theory into practice without coercion. Social change is most sustainable when ideals are integrated gradually, through cultural acceptance rather than force or exclusion.
A balance must be struck: too much realism stagnates progress, while unchecked idealism alienates those it seeks to uplift.
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– - Theme: Self
Human fission/fusion
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1–2 minutesHumans can merge into groups (fission) and split apart (fusion) into fragments.
Both require significant energy. While gravity is an attractant, others can be repulsive. Bonding can be destructive to the self, and yet once we are in a group long enough, we self-destruct to be free, even destroying ourselves to be a self. - Theme: Self
Evolving, not burning bridges
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1–2 minutesOld friends… perhaps the thing that bonded you worked because while you were damaged, you liked the damage.
Once you don’t, you don’t owe them. And yet, you don’t have to slam the door either: that is just more damage.
- Theme: Self
Relationships distract from the trauma of relationships
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1–2 minutesParticipation in relationships is often avoidance of traumatic conflict.
Consider that the majority of our trauma and joy (anxiety and happiness) is produced by social participation. Almost all of our “problems” are interpersonal and emotively subjective, similar to any glee or contentment we feel.
Social participation is a drug: it keeps our lives meaningfully filled with emotions and exciting destabilization, which we re-label as duty, loyalty, or purpose. To be a good person, we must engage in destabilizing manipulations.
In our moments alone, we become devoid of “meaning,” which, for psychological and practical purposes, is a lack of external stimulation. This lack of external stimulation opens up a moment to confront or examine internal conflicts or personal distress. Rather than dwelling, healing, or accepting these past problems, we rush to create more fresh drama, overlaying the old hurt with the new “responsibility,” distracting and provoking ourselves away from healing.
We seek out relations to avoid how messed up relations have made us, inevitably manipulating and manufacturing excess mess. Thus, we replicate the behaviors that created our coping style: histrionic, bipolar, manic, flighty, etc., instead of remaining grounded, abiding, and stable.
- Theme: Self
relationship precrime: booby traps
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1–2 minutesMany couples enact precrime condemnation.
First, they create (make up) a sin that is an affront to their character, but keep it secret. Next, they goad the unwitting partner into crossing the invisible barrier: breach of character, breach of loyalty, breach of trust, a crime against one is a crime against us both, and you were guilty before you erred.
Now, drama may unfold, which is revelatory: Will the partner submit or fight against artificial guilt? Consider that any argument is a form of communication, a bid for attention with heightened intensity and sharper edges. To engage is (win or lose) to affirm and secure the relationship; to disengage is to deny validity.
To repeatedly trip emotional, relational IEDs is a sacrificial ritual to produce resentment through manufactured fault. We force a complicit role in undermining the self for the sake of the relationship, a codependent spiral.
- Theme: Self
Loyalty as payment
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1–2 minutesLoyalty pays, but you pay for it.
Becoming loyal guarantees special treatment, but it often requires a long process of paying in and self-abnegation/abasement in return.
The fealty of the knight (structured with obligations) or the love of a parent (unearned, irrational gift) is different: loyalty can be gained or lost, becoming fickle and transactional, but it is based on a subjective interpretation of the value you have put in versus the return you are given.
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– - Theme: Self
lies vs bullshit
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1–2 minutesLying is knowing the truth while intentionally deceiving. Bullshitting is deceptive as well, yet is not so deliberately against truth. Bullshit casually bypasses truth altogether to achieve an effect.
Lying, perversely, subverts the truth: you must know the truth to lie. Bullshitters don’t care. Bullshit only concerns itself with achievement, making it more dangerous as it erodes the social foundation of truth-seeking and trust bias.
from Harry Frankfurt, “On Bullshit”