Eccentric Flower talk:201010/Two Things

Thomas:

You are entirely right, and yet you are also wrong.

But the way your mind works on on the train of thought makes sense, only it means when I agree with one part of what you say, then I have to disagree with the other part of your argumant.

-- 19:53, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Patrick:

If you refuse to have lunch with people, just tell me where your office is and I'll drop by with cookies, and leave before you get annoyed.

-- 20:00, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Ysabel:

I know you won't like this much, but I don't believe it's all going to Come Out All Right in the sense you mean.

But it also won't be as bad as you fear. Your fears are legitimate, but you also let them gain too much prominence. Your fears are mostly correct, but exaggerated. And even where they are correct, letting the fear eat you is both not going to change the world in any way, and is going to make you miserable.

I do believe that things are generally likely to be tolerable, even if they're not going to be what either of us would like to see. And they're going to be that way regardless of whether or not you're scared of the worst or hoping for the best or something in between.

All I can say is that you should find some way to get better at worrying about the things where you actually have some ability to change it (and then using that to provide you energy to change it!) and letting go when you don't. I know you do this already, because you talk about it from time to time, but when you sound like this it seems like you're losing that skill, or just getting too overwhelmed to keep swimming.

Convince me that your fears are useful and I'll totally get all outraged with you, and maybe we'll make a difference. If they're not useful, even when they're right, the right answer for your own sanity is to find some way to let them go, to just be okay with the nonoptimal or downright sucky parts of the expected outcomes, and focus on the acceptable or good parts.

I think you know all this, I doubt any of it is news, but it's the closest I have to the hold you and reassure you that it'll be okay. I hope it will help more than it hurts.

-- 21:46, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Bwinton:

I wonder if you really need the space away from other humans, or just from the other humans who you might usually go to lunch with?

Also, I find working out/cycling to be a reasonable way to get anger and bile out in a not-harmful way. (Well, not too harmful, anyways.)

-- 21:52, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

I don't generally worry much about the things I can change. In fact I am noted for a certain amount of calm in crisis situations. That's because I have power over those situations; I know that I can attempt something concrete to try to fix them, and even if I didn't fix them, I did everything I could. I don't worry about things which are fait accompli, or will be so for the price of a little sweat.

I don't claim for a moment that my worrying about the things I can't change is a useful thing to do. I find it an exceedingly NON useful thing to do.

The problem is, not worrying about all those things that I can't change looks and feels a lot like willful obliviousness to me. It feels like hiding my head in the sand.

If I confine myself to thinking about only the sphere that I actually can influence, it's a reasonably happy existence. The problem is, it's also one of disregard for the world around me - the stance of the person who isn't outraged because they're simply not paying attention. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

-- 21:52, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Blake: "Space away from other humans" at lunchtime generally means "space away from everyone in my office building." My boss is notorious for having meetings-with-lunch, because he thinks turning them into a gregarious social event makes the meetings more palatable, and I am in turn notorious for going off separately to eat either before or after the meeting, or skipping lunch, because I don't socialize with co-workers, and I like meetings as short as possible. This has resulted in some jokes (one of my co-workers insists that I never eat), but on the whole I stand by it.

Working out is probably going to become a major anger dispersal tool for me whether I like it or not (I won't like it), but that's a story for another day.

-- 21:56, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Danima:

I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember that certain kinds of pictures count as evidence for Come Out All Right, It Will. Two of those are on their way to you now.

Re: dreams, I woke up this morning from a dream of chasing down the Lucasfilm merchandising people who made the decision not to launch the non-dairy creamer that featured in the Jedi Council meeting in the second of the abhorrent prequels, despite the obvious marketability of Jedi-flavored coffee. It turns out that they had some very thoughtful reasons for not pursuing it at that time, but they're saving it up for the next feature film release.

About the rest: I read this interesting thing in Scientific American recently (bear with me, this'll take a couple of sentences to become relevant) that some of the brain areas that take part in registering physical pain are also implicated in social discomfort. The experiment on this was simple: half the subjects get a placebo, half get a Tylenol, and they both get told some anxiety-producing stories. What's beautiful about this, though, is that the effects extended to tough ethical dilemmas: with a little painkiller, people are less likely to get drawn into cycles of distress about impossible choices.

So. It turns out that to some extent, pain is pain is pain, whether it's your stubbed toe or your friends fighting. Pain is information, too, and not to be ignored, but it's a signal, not the thing itself. If the signal is overwhelming other signals, it might be that it is the single most important signal out there -- but it might be that you're pushing into the pain, that it's time to look away and treat yourself well.

In any case. I'm back on the internet after my long leave, and I just read the last ten entries. More than once I felt like posting something along the lines of, "this is very well put, and I am enjoying thinking about where I agree and disagree with you." Including here.

-- 23:20, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

You have far more interesting dreams than I do!

Also, I got the prescription, and it was well-received. Thanks.

-- 23:22, 18 October 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

Why is the glass half empty? Would you really not have a tool that has connected you with these people you'll never meet in person? My life is really much richer for having met my e-quaintences, most of whom through your various journals. I'd much rather have the written communication than none at all, and the fact that it may not be everything I'd like doesn't convert it into something I don't like at all.

And I've written at length previously that things are better now than in the past, and I think that will continue, so no need to repeat it here.

-- 03:20, 19 October 2010 (BST)

Mel:

I had one of those dreams where I was wandering around naked (or maybe it was half-naked), and kept trying to get dressed, and for some reason it just never worked out. I was having trouble putting on my socks, I remember.

I posted some game screenshots on Flickr last night, so I feel like I did my part toward the internets for today. (Although there might actually be an LJ entry forthcoming, if I get it written before I go off on some other tangent.)

-- 03:49, 19 October 2010 (BST)

Joy:

I so wish I could call you right now and propose dinner out.

Of course, it won't all be okay. I mean, someday the sun is going to die and that's that. I don't actually think we'll have colonized some other planet by then, and I don't even know if we as a species will make it until the sun is dying. Poof, goodbye. I wake in the middle of the night and have panic attacks about dying, sometimes. Or I ride my bike in the warmth of a summer evening, feeling the pedals under my feet, and smelling freshly cut grass, and feeling a cooling breeze, and think that it will be very sad when there are no warm summer evenings and people to enjoy them anymore. And I worry that civilization will go to hell while my kids are still alive. And I can't possibly even think of garbage and where it goes or I get livid.

Honestly, I think sticking my head in the sand a little and not letting myself engage with the thoughts that would drive me crazy with despair and anger is the healthier way to go. I can only do what I can do.

-- 17:14, 19 October 2010 (BST)

Blackjack:

It's not going to come out right in the ways we can imagine, but maybe it's going to come out right in new and different ways that we can't imagine. I hope.

I guess I'm still sticking my head in the sand. I just got back from a wonderful vacation and then spent a couple of days obsessively reading everybody's thoughts on the latest thing, before I realized it was just going in circles and depressing me. So I pulled back, and then felt bad for putting my head in the sand. But there you go.

-- 03:23, 30 October 2010 (BST)