Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: relationships

  • Theme:

    Emotional Rappelling

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    1–2 minutes

    As you bounce and slide into a new life, letting loose just a bit, your partner remains the stable anchor point.
    Are they left behind or left to pull you back? Either way sucks to be them. Next time, try tandem skydiving.

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    Kept in the dark

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    1–2 minutes

    When you arrive to a surprise party it is a thrill. When you find out your job has been outsourced you are appalled, shocked, bewildered, and hurt.
    What if we greeted each surprise without insecurity? Instead of your responsibility stolen as a personal indictment, what if we could see it as a burden lifted? A cause for celebration.

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    Delevate yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    People become things through elevation: as we separate ourselves from a laborer, he becomes a function, a means-to-an-end, and a tool. Objectification occurs through difference.
    You can work to flatten and disperse your relating.

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    The victim bully

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    1–2 minutes

    The victim claims they are hurt by your actions, bullying you into an apology and extracting promises for future consideration.

    The insidious aspect is that they prey on your empathy/sympathy: they use your best traits to hurt and control you.

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    Strong pawns

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    1–2 minutes

    There are pawns who appear to be strong opinionated and competitive advocates for their side.

    Some people are malleable to authority and power, aligning with their best interests, which is the party line.

    For unique insights we should look to those who have broken with their team in favor of truth seeking over sustaining loyalty. If they risk betrayal their findings must be worth considering.

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    Coasting

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    1–2 minutes

    You can have a freebie or two: coast for a day or two.
    When it turns into a month or two, your momentum is lost, and you become stuck.
    Laying fallow is not bad; it just takes an exponential effort to regain the speed and traction you had before: more discipline to regain broken trust.

    Thought: there should be a sweet-spot grid on return vs. discipline/procrastination.

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    Trust default is a winning strategy

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    1–2 minutes

    Through evolutionary nature humans have a trust default: we tend to trust rather than be skeptical. This has proven beneficial (even logical) for many reasons.

    Consider game theory where “cooperation first” is the best tactic, but also we can double down into trusting others up front rather than forcing people to earn trust.

    This means for a very small percentage of betrayals you will attract many more of the right kind of people to you: people who will care and support you because you gave strong trust first.

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    Jumping straight into wisdom

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    1–2 minutes

    There are stages in becoming wise and selfless. The first one is to be very self-involved.

    How do you know if you have anything wise or useful to say unless you practice your voice? You must work on refining how you relate. Naturally, you can jump straight into being helpful, like the over-eager assistant with a ladder spinning about smashing everything and apologizing repeatedly.

    The paradox of becoming selfless is to focus on yourself until you do no harm. Of course, practice makes perfect but tread lightly. 

  • Theme:

    rowing in circles

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    1–2 minutes

    As you strike out for the far shore, partner by your side, rowing through the waves you will encounter difficulty.
    When your partner jumps out, taking their oar with them because they are tired of the journey, you can keep rowing, but it will just spin you around in a lopsided parody of progress.

    At this point, you need to consider: do you go on alone (becoming your own partner), wait for your partner to rejoin you (conserve your energy), or jump in the water and swim around (say fuck it.)

  • Theme:

    losing the reason to reason

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    1–2 minutes

    We need reason in order to have conversations. The shared ability to equate symbolic sounds with objects and concepts allows societies to build and thrive. Good faith in normative standards of discourse is known as "communicative rationality."

    Yet, emotion is vital to focus: to be competitive (to feel threat or joy and pride) drives us to learn faster, and generate results.
    To sever reason from emotion is to no longer have a reason to reason.