Grey Gardens

Well, Patrick over at SBP asked me to do a guest post for him since he'll be off on a long cruise with no internet access. I would say check out his blog next Saturday to read it, but honestly it's late enough and I'm tired enough that I don't really feel like writing a second post in one day. Therefore, I will give you a sneak peek at Patrick's post for sometime next week and let you read it now. Hopefully once he gets back, I'll have him guest post here and you'll get to e-meet him. Yay!

This past year, I wrote an essay on an interesting topic. I wasn't particularly happy with the piece, since it was a last minute one, but I think I touched on an interesting topic. I entitled the essay "Shades of Grey." The world isn't black and white. People think in extremes too much. Good and bad. Right and wrong. For and against. But in order to truly experience the world around us, I believe we have to look at the world not from these extremes, but from a midpoint. The problem is, society as a whole teaches us the opposite. If someone isn't right, they're wrong, and there isn't any way around that. The thing is, I think that's false. I think that the world is more complicated than that.

I think that murderers aren't always bad people. I think that you can't argue with someone properly without being able to look at it from their point of view. Hell, that's part of what allows P.I. and I to get along so well. Just because I'm an atheist doesn't meant that I can't get along with people who have strong convictions in their faith. It's easier to believe that things are simple. It's easier to shut your eyes and mouth and think of people as evil if you have to kill them. We aren't fighting people in wars, they're collateral damage. The truth, however, is much more complicated and much less pretty. Every "bad guy" has a mother. Has some sort of family. We see villains in movies and read about them in books and they are evil. They want power or money. Sometimes we can feel sympathy for them. A well-written villain should be someone we can feel sympathy for. Someone we can even mourn.

Good and evil are just the tip of the extremity iceberg. Even more important is wrong and right. You can be wrong and right. You can be both. You should be both. If we go through our lives thinking only in terms of this versus that, we can't begin to ponder the important questions: who am I, what am I doing, do I have a purpose, if so what. Anyhow. I think that's enough pondering. I hope you've been interested.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.

Express yourself

While I've said this before, I think it's worth rephrasing. We spend too much time thinking about what other people think of us and not enough of what we think of ourselves.

Being our own person means being the person we want to be, not the one someone else wants us to be. When we're little kids we go by what our parents want us to be. When we get a bit older people tend to either go by the opposite of what our parents want or by what our friends want. Everyone does this. But I think if we really want to make a change in the world, we have to concentrate on what and who we want to be.

I wish I were in a place where I could say how that's possible, but I'm really not. In some ways I try to follow my own desires and expectations for ourselves, but over and over I find myself following the expectations of others. Friends, family, bosses, peers, teachers. It's hard to let go of the desire to please. We are always trying to please those around us. I'm not saying that pleasing people is wrong. I mean, if we just did what we wanted to do and weren't cautious with the needs of people around us, we would just be assholes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a really fine line between being our own person and being an asshole and being a pushover. A fine line between all three of those things. In the middle is being our own person and we have to try not to fall on one of the other two sides.

So express yourself. Try being yourself, really yourself, for a change, rather than being who we think others should perceive us as.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.

Listen to your heart

Today I'm going to talk about thinking with your head and with your heart.

There is a wide spectrum between head thinking and heart thinking, and I would say that most people find a place in a median section. I like to think that I'm someone who is pretty balanced between thinking with my head and thinking with my heart. I'm probably slightly more towards the heart side of the spectrum, but I'm definitely in the middle 1/4 of the spectrum. It's something we learn as kids I think. At first, everyone thinks with feelings, and so we get hurt and learn from those hurtful experiences. Sometimes people decide that listening to their heart more is more helpful and sometimes people decide that listening to their head is more helpful. I've finally found the right balance (for me) of head and heart, but it was a long time of trial by error. Everyone comes to a place on the spectrum.

The real trouble, in my opinion, is when the place people find is at the very ends of either side of this spectrum. Let's make up an example.

[DISCLAIMER: while these examples are based on people I know, I am drawing the extreme examples from a variety of people I know, so neither "Friend 1" nor "Friend 2" actually exists. I don't personally know anyone at the very very tips of the spectrums, so this example is exaggerated]

Friend 1, let's call her Jill, is a head thinker. She prefers science and logic. Emotions don't make much sense to her, and she puts them aside because they cloud her judgement. There's nothing wrong with this way of thinking, but what I see as the problem is that her inability to understand her own emotions translates and spreads into an inability to understand many people's emotions, including but not limited to Friend 2. Jill has problems communicating her own feelings with herself, let alone the people she is close to, and this can be frustrating to the people in her life. Jill also finds herself very distant from situations, and she almost observes herself as merely a bystander, watching from the sidelines.

Jill has one friend in particular who she has a very hard time relating to.

Friend 2, let's call him Joe, is a heart thinker. He prefers to make judgements based on his feelings and what he feels is right rather than what people are "supposed" to do. He relies on his emotions for most decisions he makes. Again, there's nothing really wrong with this way of thinking, but Joe has some problems of his own. He finds himself very vulnerable since his emotions are so "out there." He is easily hurt because of his tendency to take most things personally. Joe has great difficulty distancing himself from situations. He puts himself in the middle of conflicts and so gets hurt. He, like all people, makes mistakes sometimes, and when he does, or when people around him do, he finds it hard to let go of the emotions surrounding past mistakes.

Jill and Joe have a hard time getting along. Joe feels hurt, as though Jill is distancing herself from him on purpose, and so he is constantly wondering what he's done wrong. Meanwhile, Jill is pretty much oblivious to the difficulties Joe is having, so when he mentions them, she claims that his feelings are absurd and inaccurate, which, while they are, is something that hurts Joe's feelings even more. He feels like she doesn't make an effort to understand him and thinks that Jill would be better off if she listened to her feelings more. Jill thinks that Joe can be silly about some things and she thinks that he would be better off if he used logic more.

Which one is right? Well, I think they both are. Jill needs to make more of an effort to understand her own feelings so that she can relate more to her friends. And Joe needs to think things through more and distance himself.

I have been Jill-like and Joe-like in different times in my life, and I'm much happier in my Joel state: a mixture.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.

P.S. I feel pretty accomplished now. Today is officially my blog's one month birthday. To my readers: even though you are small in number, I love you so much and thank you for your support. This is so much fun to do, and I love knowing that there are some people out there who read my blog daily.