I am growing stronger. As documented in I Like Being This Person, I have been slowly healing. Although I am currently looking back at a week of tracked project work with the fewest hours since I started, I know and am capable of remembering that having continued to track my time and make my minimum quotas of time, humble though they are, is still an ongoing success, and a strength.
For two days, yesterday and most of the day before, I was down in a slump and lazy, after a sobbing breakdown Tuesday morning. And here I am awake, thinking about priorities, flitting from one thing to another, getting little things done here and then there, rather than getting trapped like a fly on the deadly adhesive thought of how very much there is to do.
It is strange, growing healthier. It feels strange, from the inside. Occasionally dramatic, but pretty much only in reflection or in my emotional extremes, blazing fury or torrential brightness which I worry will all spend itself out and leave me exhausted... and sometimes it does.
It feels strange that largely my improvement seems to be that I have gotten better at sleeping. It almost feels like magic sometimes how noticing my heaviness and excusing myself from my social contexts and going and laying down, no matter how much it feels like I "shouldn't be tired already", leads to my actually being able to sleep within just a few minutes. I don't exactly wake up feeling highly energized very often. I often wish I had someone to help pull me out of bed because lifting my body on my own feels exhausting in a sort of grim, repetitive persistence sort of way. But much of the tired that had been on my shoulders has gone once I can get moving and doing something, if I do something at all rather than just re-watching old YouTube videos.
Most times, I take my laptop with me, because it would bother me and keep me awake being tempted to go and get it so that if I can't sleep, I have it there to do things with. And I close it up and put it next to my bed, and sleep, comfortable enough in the knowledge that if I were to wake restless it would be there for me.
When I am well-rested, and sleeping more or less consistently during the nights and for long enough periods of time, wakefulness becomes different. It is more than once or twice a month that I feel distinctly capable of getting things done. I cook for myself, and while I am cooking, my mind wanders, and it seizes on ideas and desires and strings them together and insists I must write them down, tell my friends, do something to capture the resulting inspiration before it evaporates.
Sometimes it feels like I can't catch my breath and actually follow through on the ongoing project I've committed to, just because I'm so busy catching and coping with other inspirations and ideas for things I want to get done which are oozing out of my ears and eyes and mouth, burbling over and getting all over my face and in my heart so I can't focus.
It is as though my brain has formed a long, long queue of all the many things I have dreamed about while slogging through my days, half-awake; and so on the rare occasions I wake up, my whole workspace becomes covered in petitions to make them real.
I have learned important strategies from Finish It! for coping. I have been putting those things in writing but then putting them aside. I have learned important strategies for keeping going even when I don't feel like it at all. I have put consequences behind my quotas, and it has been working.
My life may be a heavy and clunking machine, sometimes clumsy and very base, but I have been getting some of its motors to stop coughing and dying so much and run sort of smoothly for a few hours at a time. Well, who'd have thought? It's exhausting work, but it can be done. And there's a bunch of neat stuff among the flies and dust being coughed out of this machine now that it's running well enough to actually disgorge some of the ideas which have been stuck in the pipes almost-formed for months.
Showing posts with label Rationality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rationality. Show all posts
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Resume Confessionals
I know I'm not alone when I get so nervous about my resumes. What is too long, too short, too corporate, too personal, too weird? How can I expect or presume to know the culture of the places I'm looking to work? Some online articles remind me to focus on what my audience will be excited to hear... And my sense of the limits of my own understanding of other peoples' priorities and expectations closes in again. It's tempting to throw up my hands and declare myself helpless...
But I am not willing to give up now.
Quantity over quality... I will put forward the attempt and make these applications even if they must be flawed in ways I struggle to judge as well as ways that will seem obvious in retrospect. This is not the time to fear my own imperfection. I will make changes and refine my practice attempt by attempt.
I will push myself to remember why it is that my friends, and sometimes, when I hear them, even I, believe that I am awesome and will be a great credit to the company who hires me. My courage. My insight. My perseverance. My vision. I will find ways to put them into words that fit on a resume, and I will keep doing this until opportune offers come to light and enable me to build plans around them by which I will find my way.
It's exhausting getting over the ugh. It takes a lot of strength and will to fire up my confidence into the blaze it can be.
I steer by the Stars, who help me and remind me. I need to steer by myself when clouds and circumstance come between us.
But I am not willing to give up now.
Quantity over quality... I will put forward the attempt and make these applications even if they must be flawed in ways I struggle to judge as well as ways that will seem obvious in retrospect. This is not the time to fear my own imperfection. I will make changes and refine my practice attempt by attempt.
I will push myself to remember why it is that my friends, and sometimes, when I hear them, even I, believe that I am awesome and will be a great credit to the company who hires me. My courage. My insight. My perseverance. My vision. I will find ways to put them into words that fit on a resume, and I will keep doing this until opportune offers come to light and enable me to build plans around them by which I will find my way.
It's exhausting getting over the ugh. It takes a lot of strength and will to fire up my confidence into the blaze it can be.
I steer by the Stars, who help me and remind me. I need to steer by myself when clouds and circumstance come between us.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Dear Memory: As Seasons Change and The Time Draws Near
My upcoming trip back to Ireland becomes more real week by week. It is less than a month away now, and begins to solidify, develop the practical gentle urgency of something I need to prepare for. I went out today, and bought a luggage to fit close to the maximum dimensions for an allowed carry-on luggage as permitted for my flight. The one I found at Talize that I decided to buy was missing a handle, but seems roomy and adaptible. Part of its length is collapsible with an extension zipper. It also has little wheels on the bottom, and I know well the value of being able to pull, not carry, wherever the ground permits. I have begun to sew on a new handle, made of a synthetic strap that I have among my collection of various potentially useful objects and materials.
It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.
The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.
For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.
My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.
My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.
I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.
It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.
It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.
And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?
I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.
I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.
I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.
I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.
I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.
It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.
The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.
For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.
My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.
My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.
I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.
It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.
It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.
And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?
I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.
I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.
I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.
I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.
I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Honest Friends Don't Tell Comforting Lies
If your aim is to believe the truth, if you believe that anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be, then all illusion, even comforting illusion, is your enemy.
However, when we as human beings encounter things that are painful to us, when we are disappointed or heartbroken, those who care about our feelings (generally including ourselves) will have to fight not to reach for anything that makes the sting a little less painful.
You're crying and inconsolable because your boyfriend dumped you. The best friend you called in order to have someone to talk to about it wants to tell you it'll all be okay. That he'll be back next week, just you wait. Or he was a real jerk and he was never worth your time to begin with. Anything that will let you stop crying, or make it a little easier to get through the day. She wants you to feel better, because she cares about you. That's why she's the one you called.
But if your now-ex-boyfriend was really a nice person, and you wanted it to work out but for whatever reason of life circumstances or incompatible goals or different religions or whatever it was it just wasn't working and it's gone now... Believing anything else, even if it's just to ease the pain, is an illusion. Believing that he'll come back or you could still make it work if that isn't the case can also hurt you all over again next week.
If you know this, and your friend knows this, and she remembers and notices the flicker of wrongness on her conscience when she thinks about telling you your ex boyfriend was a jerk, then although she might want to say all these things to comfort you, she won't. Maybe she'll invite you to go out and have ice cream and watch a movie marathon, or let you sit on her couch and cry on her shoulder for a few hours to help comfort you instead.
That's the kind of friend I want to have. Someone I can trust to only give me genuine reasons to feel better when I'm feeling miserable. Someone whose words I don't have to comb and double-check for comforting lies, or at least not as vigilantly, because I know they do that themselves. It's also the kind of friend I want to be, for other people.
However, many people who have established a belief that it's right to comfort a miserable person, and it's right to be patient and tolerant, and don't see a problem with it if they have to tell a half-truth to do that.
The most insidious comforting lie I've encountered in my life is "no, really, it's fine" in its vast plethora of different variations. And particularly, I have encountered a whole lot of "you aren't bothering me" repeated as a comfortable lie. A lie that lulls me gradually back into comfort... But there's a phrase for that kind of comfort. It's called a False Sense of Security. Emphasis on false.
So I keep behaving the same way, and I try to ignore the niggling doubt that arises in the back of my mind. It wouldn't be right to doubt the honesty of my friend, right? We're friends. I trust them. That's a big part of what friendship is. And down the line, that trust blows up in my face. Suddenly someone is screaming at me. There's a list of flaws and mistakes going back months that had never before been admitted to be offenses. And all too often, it ends the friendship entirely. Someone I cared about was polite about it, and polite about it, and polite about it until they couldn't be polite anymore, and all the stored-up ugliness is thrown back in my face all at once. It hurts, but there's a certain element of solace, a little tiny ring of satisfaction, buried in the pain, as some of the tension I've noticed over the weeks, little moments in which I was confused, unanswered questions that go, "If that wasn't offense, what was it?" resolve into a coherent model of the past.
If I had known... I could have done something about it. Would have assigned a higher priority to doing something about it.
This has happened to me personally so many times that sampling error and human trauma have kicked in. I intuitively expect that people who want to be my friends are lying to me so that I will feel better, are hiding the ways that my habits annoy them. In particular, the annoying habit of asking whether I am annoying them. Because that itch at the back of my mind has become nearly constant. The cycle self-perpetuates as people who mistake it for a one time fit of anxiety at first and give me their sincere reassurances are gradually worn down by the repetition, and they don't tell me they're running out of patience (because that would obviously trigger another mess of anxiety that they might be asked to help clean up)... until it's too late.
It is the phenomena of comforting lies that has wounded me. It is the lack of acceptance in society in general of the idea that comforting someone isn't always the most important thing, and if you let it become an excuse for dishonesty, you may be doing someone harm in the long run, especially if it works and they believe you.
My internal model of the world at this point is that, if someone has a problem with something I'm doing, especially if it's a small problem, the chance that they will respond by telling me that they have a problem with something I'm doing is waaaaay under 50/50. Likelier responses are saying nothing at all, changing the subject, or turning more of their attention to something else and waiting for me to go away on my own.
But when a friend of mine gets distracted from a text message conversation by talking to somebody else, they also say nothing at all. If someone honestly forgets what we were talking about, or just has something else they really want to share, they also change the subject. If they are distracted by a video game or even if they just don't realize I expect an answer, they also turn more of their attention to something else, and it doesn't mean they're waiting for me to go away on my own.
But I notice the correlation. I become anxious. Am I bothering this person? Do they want me to go away? Should I ask? But if I'm already making them uncomfortable, surely the question would be even more annoying... Especially if they have to deal with it every day.
I'm pretty good at reading body language, but I also know that my fear of being rejected (again) skews my judgement.
I want to have friends I don't need to second-guess. They're rare, in my experience, but there are people out there who are committed enough to truth that they feel a tickle in their conscience when they think about saying something to console someone else that isn't quite true, and won't lie in a situation in which they expect to be taken seriously unless they feel they really have to. They realize that untruth can be damaging even when the danger isn't obvious or immediate. They realize that a comforting illusion is still an illusion.
It is written that two rationalists cannot agree to disagree. Illusions are anathema to them, even if those illusions are composed of a best friend's cognitive biases. They know that even though it would be painful for someone they care about to have to confront their flaws, it is the only way to overcome them, and become stronger.
For this reason, it is important for someone who desires to become stronger to have honest friends. I have been making a concentrated effort to notice the signs when someone is deliberately not lying to me, even though the tension hurts them too. I have been making a point of reacting to this realization by bringing those people closer to me, and thanking them, and doing everything I can to convince them that regardless of what the rules of polite society dictate, I want the truth, and will cherish their willingness to protect it, even from the need to reassure me that everything is okay.
However, when we as human beings encounter things that are painful to us, when we are disappointed or heartbroken, those who care about our feelings (generally including ourselves) will have to fight not to reach for anything that makes the sting a little less painful.
You're crying and inconsolable because your boyfriend dumped you. The best friend you called in order to have someone to talk to about it wants to tell you it'll all be okay. That he'll be back next week, just you wait. Or he was a real jerk and he was never worth your time to begin with. Anything that will let you stop crying, or make it a little easier to get through the day. She wants you to feel better, because she cares about you. That's why she's the one you called.
But if your now-ex-boyfriend was really a nice person, and you wanted it to work out but for whatever reason of life circumstances or incompatible goals or different religions or whatever it was it just wasn't working and it's gone now... Believing anything else, even if it's just to ease the pain, is an illusion. Believing that he'll come back or you could still make it work if that isn't the case can also hurt you all over again next week.
If you know this, and your friend knows this, and she remembers and notices the flicker of wrongness on her conscience when she thinks about telling you your ex boyfriend was a jerk, then although she might want to say all these things to comfort you, she won't. Maybe she'll invite you to go out and have ice cream and watch a movie marathon, or let you sit on her couch and cry on her shoulder for a few hours to help comfort you instead.
That's the kind of friend I want to have. Someone I can trust to only give me genuine reasons to feel better when I'm feeling miserable. Someone whose words I don't have to comb and double-check for comforting lies, or at least not as vigilantly, because I know they do that themselves. It's also the kind of friend I want to be, for other people.
However, many people who have established a belief that it's right to comfort a miserable person, and it's right to be patient and tolerant, and don't see a problem with it if they have to tell a half-truth to do that.
The most insidious comforting lie I've encountered in my life is "no, really, it's fine" in its vast plethora of different variations. And particularly, I have encountered a whole lot of "you aren't bothering me" repeated as a comfortable lie. A lie that lulls me gradually back into comfort... But there's a phrase for that kind of comfort. It's called a False Sense of Security. Emphasis on false.
So I keep behaving the same way, and I try to ignore the niggling doubt that arises in the back of my mind. It wouldn't be right to doubt the honesty of my friend, right? We're friends. I trust them. That's a big part of what friendship is. And down the line, that trust blows up in my face. Suddenly someone is screaming at me. There's a list of flaws and mistakes going back months that had never before been admitted to be offenses. And all too often, it ends the friendship entirely. Someone I cared about was polite about it, and polite about it, and polite about it until they couldn't be polite anymore, and all the stored-up ugliness is thrown back in my face all at once. It hurts, but there's a certain element of solace, a little tiny ring of satisfaction, buried in the pain, as some of the tension I've noticed over the weeks, little moments in which I was confused, unanswered questions that go, "If that wasn't offense, what was it?" resolve into a coherent model of the past.
If I had known... I could have done something about it. Would have assigned a higher priority to doing something about it.
This has happened to me personally so many times that sampling error and human trauma have kicked in. I intuitively expect that people who want to be my friends are lying to me so that I will feel better, are hiding the ways that my habits annoy them. In particular, the annoying habit of asking whether I am annoying them. Because that itch at the back of my mind has become nearly constant. The cycle self-perpetuates as people who mistake it for a one time fit of anxiety at first and give me their sincere reassurances are gradually worn down by the repetition, and they don't tell me they're running out of patience (because that would obviously trigger another mess of anxiety that they might be asked to help clean up)... until it's too late.
It is the phenomena of comforting lies that has wounded me. It is the lack of acceptance in society in general of the idea that comforting someone isn't always the most important thing, and if you let it become an excuse for dishonesty, you may be doing someone harm in the long run, especially if it works and they believe you.
My internal model of the world at this point is that, if someone has a problem with something I'm doing, especially if it's a small problem, the chance that they will respond by telling me that they have a problem with something I'm doing is waaaaay under 50/50. Likelier responses are saying nothing at all, changing the subject, or turning more of their attention to something else and waiting for me to go away on my own.
But when a friend of mine gets distracted from a text message conversation by talking to somebody else, they also say nothing at all. If someone honestly forgets what we were talking about, or just has something else they really want to share, they also change the subject. If they are distracted by a video game or even if they just don't realize I expect an answer, they also turn more of their attention to something else, and it doesn't mean they're waiting for me to go away on my own.
But I notice the correlation. I become anxious. Am I bothering this person? Do they want me to go away? Should I ask? But if I'm already making them uncomfortable, surely the question would be even more annoying... Especially if they have to deal with it every day.
I'm pretty good at reading body language, but I also know that my fear of being rejected (again) skews my judgement.
I want to have friends I don't need to second-guess. They're rare, in my experience, but there are people out there who are committed enough to truth that they feel a tickle in their conscience when they think about saying something to console someone else that isn't quite true, and won't lie in a situation in which they expect to be taken seriously unless they feel they really have to. They realize that untruth can be damaging even when the danger isn't obvious or immediate. They realize that a comforting illusion is still an illusion.
It is written that two rationalists cannot agree to disagree. Illusions are anathema to them, even if those illusions are composed of a best friend's cognitive biases. They know that even though it would be painful for someone they care about to have to confront their flaws, it is the only way to overcome them, and become stronger.
For this reason, it is important for someone who desires to become stronger to have honest friends. I have been making a concentrated effort to notice the signs when someone is deliberately not lying to me, even though the tension hurts them too. I have been making a point of reacting to this realization by bringing those people closer to me, and thanking them, and doing everything I can to convince them that regardless of what the rules of polite society dictate, I want the truth, and will cherish their willingness to protect it, even from the need to reassure me that everything is okay.
Rationality: Mitigate the Loss; Fight for the Living
This post is an addendum to Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma. It is another scenario with which to demonstrate the point.
Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn't really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children... and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon... the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die... You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn't let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That's the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire... but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done... then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don't want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can't feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That's the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.
Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn't really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children... and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon... the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die... You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn't let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That's the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire... but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done... then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don't want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can't feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That's the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.
Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma
There is a certain kind of person who notices that the world is full of suffering, and after they have noticed this, they feel obligated to remind themselves regularly, even to great personal detriment and into depression. These people cannot bring themselves to turn away from suffering even to maintain their own health... not until they are so overwhelmed by compassion for other peoples' pain that they are at risk of breaking down with stress and illness. Why? ... Likely guilt, because they would perceive it as selfish to deliberately ignore someone else's suffering in order to feel better themselves, even if there is nothing they can do about it right now. Likely also fear... that if they did turn away, they would be making themselves into monsters, joining the complicit majority of people who do not act to prevent suffering, who do not seem to care.
I am one such a person, and the kinds of people I make friends with are often prone to this phenomenon. Jennifer Freed calls it "The Empath's Dilemma," but I am not under the impression that it's a term in common use.
A friend of mine came to me tonight stuck in a mental spiral of concern and guilt I recognized as the state of someone being overwhelmed by the Empath's Dilemma, and I swooped in with my own concern, to reassure and comfort them, to shake off the undeserved guilt and help them toward a mental condition from which they would, hopefully, be able to get a decent night's rest.
And then they asked me, "How did you get through this sort of a dark night of the soul [...] whenever that night was for you?"
This is my answer:
I constructed a question. A scenario that might be put to people by which to judge their preferences in a pinch, like the old standard one about pulling a switch to route a train onto a track where it would hit only one person rather than five.
The scenario was this:
Imagine that you are a prisoner in a terrible prison. In your current position, you are almost completely helpless. Your contact with the other prisoners is minimal, and tightly governed. You cannot, now, save them... But you do know that they suffer. If you don't cover your ears at night, you can hear them screaming. If you don't turn your eyes away, you can see how the guards habitually beat and torture and belittle them.
Taken metaphorically, this is not far from the truth.
Your own condition is good compared to most of the other prisoners, but very bad compared to the free citizens who live outside of it. You do not, now, have the power to do anything that would stop the atrocities that happen here. You think you could grow to have more power, though, after your sentence is up, assuming you actually are released. And assuming you survive that long.
But you also know, because the prison is still here, that the free citizens, who have so much more power than you do, have found other things to do with their time than campaign and publicize and get this prison torn down or reformed. A lot of them don't even acknowledge that it's a real problem. You might worry that you will become like them, after you're free. Stuff all your memories of this place into a bag in a closet in the back of your mind and never dare to touch it, because it would hurt.
Well then? Every night, you effectively have two options.
A: You lay down with your ears uncovered. You listen to the screams, and harden your resolve that you will never, ever, allow yourself to forget or to deny what has happened here... but at the cost of your sanity, and a greater risk of not being able to hold a job or garner any respect after you leave.
Or B: You cover your ears, you close your eyes, you do whatever it takes to swallow your meals and nourish yourself despite the sickening surroundings, and you push away the pain and the fear enough to survive another day in as healthy a state as you can. Maintaining your self and your capacity, but increasing the risks of falling into a habit of denial and inaction.
Which one will you choose?
~~~~~
That's the Empath's Dilemma, the way I see it. People we call empaths will choose A far more often. Some will choose A any time they think they can do so without the pain killing them.
I contemplated this long enough to realize that neither extreme was "right". Given a choice between someone who always chooses A, and someone who always chooses B, neither one is necessarily better. This may be difficult to accept, because it's a very emotional question, and it can be hard to imagine, if you are particularly driven to choose A, for example, that someone could choose B and it wouldn't make them a worse person than you are. Knowing whether someone is more driven to choose A or to choose B could, however, offer some useful insight into that person's strengths and weaknesses.
The optimal solution does something vaguely analogous to maximizing the area of a rectangle which is SANITY units wide and COMMITMENT units long. If you let your sanity fall to zero, your capacity to help anyone will also be zero. If you let your commitment fall to zero, your willingness to help anyone will also be zero. In either case, the prison stands just as tall, and the suffering goes on.
So, sacrifice enough of your comfort to maintain your commitment, until your commitment is sufficient to fuel the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
Sacrifice enough of your emotional urgency to maintain your sanity and health, until they are sufficient to support the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
And recognize that knowing the perfect balance is functionally impossible. There are just too many variables in the environment. Calibrating your model to be more accurate is a fantastic excuse to be neither properly maintaining your self NOR acting effectively in the moment.
Err on the side of overestimating the cost of tweaking the model if you possibly can (because you will probably fail in the attempt anyway), and if you find yourself outside the prison, if you see an opportunity to act which is likely to help and unlikely to hinder, heavily weight your preferences toward taking it, rather than trying to make sure you should. Quantity over quality; it is a provably better cognitive habit to make many mistakes than to wait until you have a perfect plan.
The time that passes as you do things other than actively and visibly and tangibly fighting death and suffering in all its forms is a sunk cost. It is a fallacy that will drive you into irrationality and error to weight it so highly that it outweighs all the factors you actually do have any control over in your decision making.
The only choices you can really make are between the opportunities you actually see, to influence outcomes you actually have the power to affect.
And, actions taken to sustain yourself, your life, your sanity and in fact also your morale, are instrumentally necessary to preserving your own capacity to fight death and continue to fight death into the future.
You cannot stand to fight if you have laid down to die with the first of your fellow-soldiers to fall, out of compassion or love for them.
So get up. I will not tell you not to remember the dead and the dying.
But we fight for the living.
I decided to borrow that line from a video game trailer. It's been used in other contexts as well, but this is the one where I personally first saw it. a damn good line, in my opinion. Hell, it's a damn good motivational video.
I would not have communicated it in quite these words when I first built the question over five years ago. I had not even read HPMoR up to the Stanford Prison Experiment arc (where a call-to-action is realized in pretty similar terms) yet at that time.
If I had, I probably would not have constructed the question this way, as it would have felt like a form of plaigiarism.
I am one such a person, and the kinds of people I make friends with are often prone to this phenomenon. Jennifer Freed calls it "The Empath's Dilemma," but I am not under the impression that it's a term in common use.
A friend of mine came to me tonight stuck in a mental spiral of concern and guilt I recognized as the state of someone being overwhelmed by the Empath's Dilemma, and I swooped in with my own concern, to reassure and comfort them, to shake off the undeserved guilt and help them toward a mental condition from which they would, hopefully, be able to get a decent night's rest.
And then they asked me, "How did you get through this sort of a dark night of the soul [...] whenever that night was for you?"
This is my answer:
I constructed a question. A scenario that might be put to people by which to judge their preferences in a pinch, like the old standard one about pulling a switch to route a train onto a track where it would hit only one person rather than five.
The scenario was this:
Imagine that you are a prisoner in a terrible prison. In your current position, you are almost completely helpless. Your contact with the other prisoners is minimal, and tightly governed. You cannot, now, save them... But you do know that they suffer. If you don't cover your ears at night, you can hear them screaming. If you don't turn your eyes away, you can see how the guards habitually beat and torture and belittle them.
Taken metaphorically, this is not far from the truth.
Your own condition is good compared to most of the other prisoners, but very bad compared to the free citizens who live outside of it. You do not, now, have the power to do anything that would stop the atrocities that happen here. You think you could grow to have more power, though, after your sentence is up, assuming you actually are released. And assuming you survive that long.
But you also know, because the prison is still here, that the free citizens, who have so much more power than you do, have found other things to do with their time than campaign and publicize and get this prison torn down or reformed. A lot of them don't even acknowledge that it's a real problem. You might worry that you will become like them, after you're free. Stuff all your memories of this place into a bag in a closet in the back of your mind and never dare to touch it, because it would hurt.
Well then? Every night, you effectively have two options.
A: You lay down with your ears uncovered. You listen to the screams, and harden your resolve that you will never, ever, allow yourself to forget or to deny what has happened here... but at the cost of your sanity, and a greater risk of not being able to hold a job or garner any respect after you leave.
Or B: You cover your ears, you close your eyes, you do whatever it takes to swallow your meals and nourish yourself despite the sickening surroundings, and you push away the pain and the fear enough to survive another day in as healthy a state as you can. Maintaining your self and your capacity, but increasing the risks of falling into a habit of denial and inaction.
Which one will you choose?
~~~~~
That's the Empath's Dilemma, the way I see it. People we call empaths will choose A far more often. Some will choose A any time they think they can do so without the pain killing them.
I contemplated this long enough to realize that neither extreme was "right". Given a choice between someone who always chooses A, and someone who always chooses B, neither one is necessarily better. This may be difficult to accept, because it's a very emotional question, and it can be hard to imagine, if you are particularly driven to choose A, for example, that someone could choose B and it wouldn't make them a worse person than you are. Knowing whether someone is more driven to choose A or to choose B could, however, offer some useful insight into that person's strengths and weaknesses.
The optimal solution does something vaguely analogous to maximizing the area of a rectangle which is SANITY units wide and COMMITMENT units long. If you let your sanity fall to zero, your capacity to help anyone will also be zero. If you let your commitment fall to zero, your willingness to help anyone will also be zero. In either case, the prison stands just as tall, and the suffering goes on.
So, sacrifice enough of your comfort to maintain your commitment, until your commitment is sufficient to fuel the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
Sacrifice enough of your emotional urgency to maintain your sanity and health, until they are sufficient to support the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
And recognize that knowing the perfect balance is functionally impossible. There are just too many variables in the environment. Calibrating your model to be more accurate is a fantastic excuse to be neither properly maintaining your self NOR acting effectively in the moment.
Err on the side of overestimating the cost of tweaking the model if you possibly can (because you will probably fail in the attempt anyway), and if you find yourself outside the prison, if you see an opportunity to act which is likely to help and unlikely to hinder, heavily weight your preferences toward taking it, rather than trying to make sure you should. Quantity over quality; it is a provably better cognitive habit to make many mistakes than to wait until you have a perfect plan.
The time that passes as you do things other than actively and visibly and tangibly fighting death and suffering in all its forms is a sunk cost. It is a fallacy that will drive you into irrationality and error to weight it so highly that it outweighs all the factors you actually do have any control over in your decision making.
The only choices you can really make are between the opportunities you actually see, to influence outcomes you actually have the power to affect.
And, actions taken to sustain yourself, your life, your sanity and in fact also your morale, are instrumentally necessary to preserving your own capacity to fight death and continue to fight death into the future.
You cannot stand to fight if you have laid down to die with the first of your fellow-soldiers to fall, out of compassion or love for them.
So get up. I will not tell you not to remember the dead and the dying.
But we fight for the living.
I decided to borrow that line from a video game trailer. It's been used in other contexts as well, but this is the one where I personally first saw it. a damn good line, in my opinion. Hell, it's a damn good motivational video.
I would not have communicated it in quite these words when I first built the question over five years ago. I had not even read HPMoR up to the Stanford Prison Experiment arc (where a call-to-action is realized in pretty similar terms) yet at that time.
If I had, I probably would not have constructed the question this way, as it would have felt like a form of plaigiarism.
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