Posts Tagged "vices"

A case of transference: being too intelligent for this world

Posted by yseult on Sep 5, 2010 in Communication, Issues

When flattery becomes an excuse and our responsibility in annoying people around us is transferred to the angered one… silence ensues.

Sometimes we run headlong into these infuriating situations where someones careless incompetence, or neglicence, or pure boredom ends causing more work for us. If you are of the conviction that there is a right attitude to all things and that doing your job right, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem to you, can be a source of pride and satisfaction, then such situations probably tend to annoy you according to their corresponsing level of incompetence, negligence or boredom.

On several occasions I have been witness to an interesting explanation: “Well, face it, love, you’re just way too good (intelligent, genius, efficient etc. etc.) for this job (function, work, us, them, etc. etc.). If only you would accept that, then you could spare yourself a lot of heartache (anger management lessons, chocolate-relieved-frustration induced pounds on your hips).”

The interesting element in this little (freely invented) scene isn’t so much what is being said, but what is not being said, as is often the case in any kind of human interaction. What is said is analysed easily enough: a transfer of fault is executed, away from the person causing the frustration, ot the person being frustrated. It’s a thing we often do (sometimes even without noticing it) in order to deal with emotions that are not our own.
The problem however is, since they are not our emotions, we don’t have to deal with them. Leaving people to their own emotions is something that takes maturity, letting them have their little moment of weakness without feeling compelled to alleviate it by offering a string of solutions that would work for us (that’s what good advice is after all), or trying to reason away their source of frustration or even anger.
Veiling that reasoning into a flattery or into positive words is only meant to pass the bitter pill easier. It’s another form of avoidance. And avoidance of emotions today is what people are so good at. It’s also the reason why there are so many problems of human interaction and social tensions in our western society today. So many resources are geared towards helping people to deal with their own emotions, but rarely are psychologist or therapist working on people’s skills to accept someone else’s emotions that they are faced with.
Here we come to the second element of flattery… not only does it coat and disguise the act of transference of responsibility, but also it’s a pretty good excuse to not take a good look at other people’s (or our own) actions. It’s just another version of the apprentice stating that he can’t possibly do that job, because he’s just not intelligent enough. Or the on from your daughter (after breaking three dishes in as many weeks) that informs you that she can’t set the table anymore, she’ll only break something again.

However, manning/womanning up to your deficiencies, mistakes, our weaknesses and our incapacity to deal with certain people is an integral part of life and accepting them is also part of what usually is called ‘growing up’.

So, just as the stupid person has a right to their stupidity, the intelligent one has a right to be outraged by stupidity being used as an excuse for bullshit.

Make the Change

Posted by yseult on Mar 15, 2010 in Soulfood, The Odd Philosophical Question

What is worse…? Daring too much or not daring enough?

There probably isn’t anybody in this world who doesn’t dream about changing something in their lives. It can be as small as finally finding a better way to deal with clutter and go as big as becoming a better human being.

Dream about it… talk about it… think about it and paint the future ‘changed’ state in a way that is appealing.

A lot of steps can make up what eventually can become a scary thing: change. If we could see into the future and only have a clear view of what this change can bring into our life… if we just could have some kind of positive reassurance that we are doing the right thing… yes, that would make it all so much easier. But the truly scary part about change isn’t so much the uncertainty, it’s the going out and making it happen part that is so hard. So hard in fact that in numerous situations, we prefer to play it safe. Putting ourselves out there in the world, is a hard gamble. Exposing who we are, what we wish for, running the constant danger of being rejected, of finding doubt where we need assurance and relief, it certainly isn’t something that will bring power or strength. Or so it would seem.

But if we try to look at it from another direction, then maybe change can be the one thing that saves us from becoming what we never wanted. (…) Look at a child that learns to walk. There isn’t anything particular running through their mind when they take the smallest, but surely one of the most important steps of their lives: the first one.
A first step always holds a promise. For the toddler it holds a whole life full of danger, full of injury, full of pain, but also full of discovery, fully of phantasy, full of exhilarating sensations, full of … new.

So many occasions come and go, but each and every one of them are a possibility to take a step. A new step, the next step, a faltering one, an assured one. And of course it is a dangerous thing. While toddlers run into a lot of physical dangers while starting their path in this world, as grown ups the pain becomes more hidden, more subtle and so much more devastating. Because we’re supposed to just ‘deal with it’, just ‘get on with it’. Because in a society that only considers a person in terms of performance and buying power, there is no space for ‘not dealing’ and ‘not getting on with it’. Through these eyes, only losers can’t deal with rejection, only underachievers dwell on the bad and the fear.

Reality obviously has a different face. It talks of the hard moments when you don’t know the direction for that first path. When you have the impression of being in a wrong path, but don’t know how to turn back. It talks of uncertainty and of failure. Of never feeling good enough, of never being enough.

Popular belief suggests that knowing what you want is the first step. But that also suggests that you know where to go.

Maybe knowing what you don’t want (such as persisting in a fearful state of mind or an undecided one for instance) is the better way to go. And sometimes it will take a lot of uncertain steps, steps that might seem wrong or out of place or useless to achieve that long sought after change that we wish for and dream about. Change in most cases doesn’t come with a label and it certainly doesn’t come in one giant heap. It takes a first step. And that first step, try to take it without thinking. Just as the child takes that first step into a new and larger world full of wonders and who know what could happen once the first one is done?

Care and be cared for

Posted by yseult on May 22, 2009 in Personal

I’ve already made a point for caring, to extend our own lowly existence wider into circles around us. But what about the other direction. It’s an old idea that everything in this world is realised in a split between object and subject.

We are all subjects, thinking, feeling, breathing, crying and laughing our way through our existence. But to everyone around us, we’re another object in a world that’s just getting fuller and fuller.
Care for another and make him a subject of your affection. But what happens when you’re being cared for and made a true subject of someone’s affection, love and friendship?

It’s possibly one of the hardest things to achieve: let yourself be cared for.

In times where we’re being tought to stand on our own two feet from a tender age, where being independent and self-sufficient, we’ve completely lost the notion of accepting anybody’s help. The idea that we need others in order to get better, be better, get more complete, be more complete has something revolting. Completely out of touch with the modern world and the idea that yes, man is an island and that every man can fight for themselves.

Accepting the care of others isn’t so much a dependency or a disguised profiteurism that only lets you consider others in their worth or what they can do for you. That’s just another way of being self sufficient and using anything and everything that you can for your own gain.
No, what I’m driving at here is the fundamental truth of ‘seeing me through your eyes makes me fuller’.

As someone who had to very early on understand the terrible distance between me and the world and my own incapacity to ‘connect’ or blend in, it’s been the biggest change in myself and my not-so-funny automatisms of auto-derogation to accept that there are people caring for me and that them doing something for me, caring for me helps me be better, fight less to be oh-so-awesome and by admitting to liking it, actually learn to care for others more.

Letting yourself be cared for by others, on their own terms instead of your own, can offer new perspectives. Accepting help, accepting their view of you, of your needs and their ways of meeting them, is not just about you, but about them as well and about what links you to the rest of the world.

Prometheus

Posted by yseult on May 12, 2009 in Personal

The sweet grass bends in anticipation beneath my barren feet,
Somewhere a dead leaf is floating toward the earth,
and here… a sunbeam is crying it’s last glowing tear in my hand.

My heart so full, my words so empty.

I’ve drawn out my soul, pulled out every vein of every feeling,
ripped every shard of every nerve,
every break of every drawn out silence.

In the end I cut out these eyes that were supposed to see so far.

Clap my wings and fly away,
to nothingness and everlasting morning light.

Let me see this end for l am destined to stay
because there is nothing else,
because there is only this… final understanding:
we become the one thing we want to avoid the most,
no matter how many prayers,
no matter how many hours,
how much love, how much heart or conquest.

In the end we’re just another wolf feeding on someone else’s cadavers.
So take your teeth to some other liver, your claws to another lightbearer,
I am all but dead, all but empty, all but used and torn.

This night is not my last, but it truly is my longest.

I’ve had bits and pieces of this for a long while waiting in my notebook. Scattered, really. The first few lines that seem so out of tune with the rest for instance are a couple of months old written on my way to work. In the end, every piece is a journey, a projection. The true sense is only revealed when you reread the title after the poem. It’s a confusing piece and yet, I know exactly what every contrasting picture means.

Why do we even care ?

Posted by yseult on Feb 23, 2009 in Issues, The Odd Philosophical Question

Why do we even have friends? Why do we link ourselves with others when there’s only heartache, abandonment, betrayal and pain to be had from it…?

The question is as old as society itself and probably even as old as language itself. Consequently philosophers, thinkers and good people have produced a varied catalogue of ideas on the subject that range as far as just stating that man is not made to live alone to a completely utilitarian approach: because it serves us.

But even if the simplistic theory that we can have ethical considerations and moral decisions towards our peers and fellow human beings only because we recognise ourselves in them falls short on several accounts, the intellectual approach that we care because we can or must, doesn’t help much more to understand what it is that makes us connect to this person, but not that one.

Quite generally speaking we are brought up with the idea that caring for others is an ideal to aspire to. That stepping out and away from the weight of your own needs and make someone else’s fears imperative for yourself, brings you something more, offers you some kind of insight into your own soul and one step closer to a ‘good life’.
There is no religion and no social system or idea that does not operate on this basic idea either by reinforcing it or by negating it.

But is the abstract idea of some heavenly reward in an afterlife or aspiring to the ideal of a good life or being a good person, really enough to account for the fact that we do against all odds, against adversity, despite rejection, hurt, desolation and frustration reach out, touch others, take up their burdens, listen to their fears, soothe their minds again and again?

Because secretly we hope that the people we care for will do the same for us, for even if I am someone who’s not used to facing the problem of not caring enough, but rather too much even for strangers that cross my path… even I am sort of speechless when in one of my weaker moments I am ignored by my friends.
That fundamental element of ‘shared love and shared burden’ doesn’t make us manipulative or even interested in the way we deal out our affections and our readiness to help, but rather it points to the next even more fundamental characteristics of our human condition: we need care.

We need people taking care of us and our emotions, people noticing us, recognising us for what we are and who we strive to be, listen to what we have to say or teach or even cry about and what makes us passionate. We don’t need it just to feel better or inflate our egos, what I am referring to is much more basic, much more unreflected. It’s not so much different than the impulsive touch towards a pet or a baby and the basic level of need either the animal or the baby feel for that touch and proximity.

Thomas Merton wasn’t the first to use the phrase ‘no man is an island’, but he certainly took the concept to a completely different level. His reaching out seemed to know no boundaries and looking closely at his biography might even suggest that it bore dangerous self-annihilating traits. And yet, his generosity of heart has become an ideal… because, no man is an island.

But what does that mean? Truly? That ultimately we’re flawed and can’t ever be enough on our own, for our own? I shouldn’t think so. I find it much more inspiring to think that our actions, however small they may be cause a light to shine (or ripples across existence, if you prefer that image) that – not unlike a seed – will grow over time, be reinforced by connecting to others and caring for them and it will eventually affect people outside of our immediate range of action… if we cannot believe that our actions influence others around us and our surrounding society, what else keeps us from not shutting down and surfing the ego trip to self destruction?

In times where dehumanisation is something that is so quickly achieved, where the mass of people in our immediate focus has grown exponentially through internet and modern media, where friends can be nothing much more than a few points on a computer screen and a name (maybe just an avatar), the danger of limiting people, shutting them out, casting them off or simply not taking care of them is even bigger than before. Not only does the internet make it much easier to connect with each other, it also makes it much easier for us to lose focus on the most important thing in life: nothing remains. We can’t take anything with us. When we die, all that remains will be the people we’ve loved and the ones that have loved us and the icon of a memory of that love.

So, we better start minding our friends, caring for their hearts, accepting their limits and loving them for what they are. Not because they deserve it or because we might need them one day, but because there is no greater and more effortless gift than love.

Be generous with yourself and someone you haven’t dared to reach out to today. It’ll make their day a brighter one and your heart shine harder.