°
The more you do, the more balls you drop. We often lose our keys when we move to a new city or forget to tend our relationships when starting a business venture. Our focus is on the new, and the common suffers.
Considered mathematically, the more you do, the more losses and chaos you will suffer as you stir the pot, but you will also encounter more luck and become adept in turmoil.
–
–
–
°
We must trace the outburst when we act out, lash out, or are triggered.
You can ask: "When was the last time I felt this?" or "When did this happen to me as a child?" Yet, the knowledge alone will not heal you. Intellectual answers only prepare you to come to terms with the emotional pain. Inside this pain, the emotion you have traced, you can finally allow yourself to forgive yourself for the hurt others caused.
°
Given our bleak and contracting economic and political landscape, we are increasingly told to “manifest our destiny” through hope and positivity. We should vote for “joy.”
To rely on positivity for survival is akin to prayer: a placebo for a tool. Instead of relying on the hard work of a meritocratic existence, agency escapes us, leaving us only psychological coping mechanisms: giddy, blind optimism ignoring reality in favor of insane positivity.
Indeed, our mutability to parrot glee in the face of hardship is directly proportional to our fear: we will say, do, or be anything to survive, no matter how outragious.
–
–
–
°
When the recipe of life goes awry, it is normal.
Sure, give yourself a year to mope because it hurts to lose and have to start from scratch, but to continue to soak yourself in sorriness is to overcook, to become bitter and rancid.
Rather, start something new that can rekindle sweetness.
°
In contemporary society, there’s a noticeable trend where people advocate passionately for various causes (and themselves), yet genuine empathy seems to have become entangled with the expectation of unquestioned approval: if you feel my pain or joy, you must approve.
This manifests as the belief that they’re uncaring or antagonistic if someone doesn’t share your concerns.
This is a classic manipulative splitting or binary polarization, which doesn’t allow the empathetic party to have their own point of view.
The alternative is to offer sympathy and understanding without necessitating complete alignment (i.e., being able to dip in and out of empathy). This perspective involves acknowledging and respecting differing viewpoints while steadfastly upholding personal principles (boundaries). It embraces the capacity to care for others without necessarily endorsing every belief or action.
°
Pain, often perceived as a deterrent, paradoxically fosters growth.
New insights are generated in our attempts to avoid discomfort. Pain, compels, preventative, actions, which, which spurs us to novel actions and behaviors.
Embracing pain as a feedback mechanism, although seemingly masochistic, can generate positive results: a resilience to low-grade discomfort could prevent long-term pain. This shifts the adversarial relationship into an alliance, if kept in check with specific goals.
In our more therapeutic culture, pain, avoidance, is seen as self-care, but it also promotes self indulgence as procrastination. The inability to make a short term ally of discomfort leads to long-term painful consequences in terms of self-worth and reliability.
°
I have migraines. When the telltale signs creep into awareness (a general “tightness” and manic craving for sugar and alcohol) I stubbornly fight against taking my medication.
My body should fix itself, without help. “Just do your job, body.”
Psychologically, this reveals my idiotic penchant for suffering through something alone, stoically neglecting to consider alternatives.
Perhaps this “desire for pain” is a comfort zone: to stoically suffer is a familiar cost. Obviously, this coping mechanism has become a dysfunction, inducing the migraines that perpetuate the cycle.
Allowing myself to “not suffer” feels like cheating, and yet, the only way out is to “cheat” by relying on others and medication.
°
A Taoist proverb says no one can tell a lie. This is because the lie reveals a different kind of truth, such as a desire not to be punished or face up the certain consequences.Buddhism suggests if we understood the consequences of lies, we would act morally all the time.
All true, but a justification for survival persists: once everyone in the world is lying and vindictive, does the truth set you free? or make of you an easy scapegoat?
Without an adequate network, survival is in question in an untrustworthy culture, and our personal life incurs tremendous suffering.
This is answered by another Buddhist teaching: you must vanquish desire because it leads to suffering. We find that the desire to be moral (honest) causes suffering until you can completely shed your desire for survival.
Back to lies: if a liar reveals a more profound truth through the lie, there can be no “lies” as they only tell a deeper truth. We have added a complex moral dubiety: we “lie/truth” for survival to alleviate our suffering, which causes more suffering, which can only be relieved by releasing the desire to live.
°
Some people are not interesting, and that used to be a prized character trait.
It is easy to confuse having “character” with “being a character:” to be “interesting,” we exaggerate our smallest foibles, which amplifies our failures, but we can’t apologize as it is our only unique aspect of self, so we must double down.
We become cartoons of ourselves, grotesque clowns: humorous and sad, entertaining but not trusted.
°
Short-term meanness can lead to long-term benefits: not every restriction is cruelty, it can be kindness for your future.
If we cannot accept some “harm” early, we will suffer much more later.
This arrives as broken idealism seen as harsh injustice, instead of as the complicated functioning of a complex reality.
