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Doubling back on terrain surprises: the new perspective is unnerving by being almost familiar.
It produces anxiety because of what we missed. Retreading the same ground (only to learn new lessons) confounds linear progress inf favor of a cyclic squiggle.
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Yet, a repeated negative (seemingly out of your control) continually assails you, and you try to grow from it, but the grit of the stoics has not yet manifested as resilience.
As an intermediate phase, you can riff away from the negativity of Murphy’s law "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" and into "If it can happen, it will."
This seeming pessimism is the reverse: focusing on all events allows a burst of glee when the good thing happens, a resigned affirmation when it doesn’t, but a more realistic and probabilistic view of how balanced your life is.
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Selfishness seems to bloom from self-preservation, says Anthony DeMello. And to be selfless seems to "opt for nonbeing."
What is interesting is to consider how you could ever not be yourself unless you were operating from fear: self-preservation would then be the only thing that could destroy the self.
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I once had a neighbor who wanted me to place a sign in my front yard. (I’m not even going to tell you what the sign was for.)
When I said no, he replied "If you are in the same car with criminals you are guilty, too."
A trick of perspective: I thought I was standing on the curb, but as he sped by he saw me as moving in the opposite direction.
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Even when you are right, you aren’t. We always need more information or consideration.
Tomorrow, science or philosophy will have a better answer, a novel approach to crack this thorny impasse. Or tomorrow, we will know how we should have responded in that confrontation. But today, we must move forward knowing every step we take is wrong.
We attempt to make good decisions, but when information fails we are left making choices with instincts shaped by circumstances, or we crowdsource our ethics, or we choose an incomplete data set and make a leap.
They are all wrong, but some processes of choice have a predictive capacity allowing them to foresee conflict and avoid confusion for better outcomes.
The goal is not to be correct but to establish a framework of checks and balances to be less wrong.
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The authority is in the theatrics of the architecture.
At the bank, hospital, DMV, receptionist, or supermarket, we are channeled and herded by flimsy partitions, confronted at the moment of interaction by a translucent plexi shield.
When attempting communication, notice we bow our mouths toward the small money passage. In this posture of obeisance, we petition, propelling our very breath as an envoy of intent.
Despite the pervasive systemic manipulations, we need our humanity to pass through and compel the empathy that reintegrates the divided into solidarity.
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Watch a sunset. Plan on it and do it. You will thank yourself.
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The compulsion to achieve goals is a self-satisfaction loop.
Achievement is tangible agency and verifiable proof that your will is manifesting change in the world. And yet, the infatuation with achievement can replace the reason to achieve.
Once we acquiesce to the “utilitarian treadmill” we create measurable tasks for more manageable, rapid fulfillment, displacing and neglecting the more long-term emotional or relational goals that would make a truly satisfying life.
(Concepts: Goodhart’s law + reverse hedonic treadmill + memento mori)
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Vacation’s premise of recouperative rest and respite has become work: we manically “add value” to our expensive “free time”.
We cram novel experiences (and novel foods) into the vacuity we gave to ourselves, attempting to fill it while neglecting to consider that floating in a vacuum, untethered and unencumbered, would be the ultimate novelty.
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When you give advice, don’t forget that the person you are talking to already knows the right thing to do.
They may change their outlook if you offer them a new perspective, but that misses the point: any meaningful struggle is beyond right/wrong and stems from a core contradiction of being human.
