Nov 6

 Down again. Then up a bit.

Boing, boing. No day is easy. Some days are wipe outs. So it goes.

I chatted to my brother the other day about the whole nephew thing. He was protective of our sister. She does a lot. Has a lot on her plate. Which I agree with. Probably not a conversation I should have had to be honest. Just. Better not to go there.

He listed the ways she has struggled to help and has always put herself out there.

Which is undeniable.

But the point was. And everything he listed. Was like a game of logistics. Problem ? Here's a fix. Need a car ? There's a car. Need a floor ? There's a floor. Babysit. Ok.

All. Mechanical. No doubt helpful and physically supportive. But it was like watching cans of beans being moved. And my brothers whole argument was of moving cans of beans around a warehouse.

I listened and understood.

Then pointed the mechanical aspect of it. At no point was there an emotional response. A hug. Empathy. Explicit care. Ask less about whether a can of beans needs moving. And more about asking the can of beans if it's ok. Do they want to talk. Do they need a hug. Reassurance. Love.

He saw it, in the end. He said it was missing. That we'd never been taught it.

Which was my point.

But eh.

Afterwards. It feels like a mistake. That I am digging in ground that's just best left alone. Don't question it. Don't figure it out. Just. Don't.

I often wonder about intellectual honesty versus a smooth life. The whole wisdom of shutting your mouth versus pointing something out. Or trying to help. It's something I've wrestled with my whole life. And increasingly - exhausted - I start leaning towards the shut your mouth. Let what is, just be.

But. It does make you ask the question. If that's cowardice. Avoiding the harm. To have an easier life. Or whether it's wisdom. To let sleeping dogs lie.

I think the two are intertwined. And there is sadly definitely an element of intellectual dishonesty about it. Cowardice. But. Ignoring that. Could. Lead you down a path of fiery martyrdom. No one is going to thank you for it.

Ho hum.

Thus is the paradox of the human condition I find. People appear to want to be better, solve the things, work it all out, lead a "better" life. But in practice. They don't. They're not even aware that they don't. They're just bamboozled by things they can't work out - things they will not move past. Helping them do that just annoys the fuck out of people and leads to emotional upset. People take a - sometimes perverse - sense of stability at living with whatever demons there are that plague them. A status quo.

I guess for all of us this is reality, and some point we settle with whatever state we finish in. Always a work in progress.

I do think however there is a level of... immaturity. Shittiness. In the whole bad reaction to knowing there are flaws. How Dare You. I am perfect ! It's understandable and arguably inevitable, to come to a halt at some point in your own personal development. But it's another thing to then behave in a hostile manner any challenge to your own bullshit status quo. Believe in the cake fairy. That's ok. Just. Don't believe that it is the One True Path, and that you are Infallible, and that you Cannot Possibly Move Beyond the Cake Fairy. One is understandable. The other is just insufferable bullshit.

Still. Whatever it is. This is human behaviour. Good. Bad. Ugly. Common. Uncommon.

I think overall my opinion of people is coloured by this. I find that we are immature. Primitive. Very bad at growing and acceptance and not reacting in a fit of anger. It's like our base monkey behaviour. Scream, shout, throw poo around. Scratch the surface, and it's right there. Not so very far away at all.

It is. Disappointing.

There is also a problem that even if you keep your mouth shut about such things. You start to drift. Your understanding of a situation begins to shift away from everyone elses. And over time the difference becomes extreme. And you end up being an alien. A stranger in a strange land. Back to that old chestnut of feeling like a different lifeform.

There is a considerable amount of fudging and adjustment that goes on in conversation and social bonding. One of the things it does is form a common ground. Ideas. Philosophies. Morality. Of a whole bunch of things and that everyone kind of agrees on. Or agrees to disagree on. Common touching points. It passes unnoticed and uncommented on but its a huge thing. The chewing out of ideas and talking helps thrash these all out and end up with a more unified more socially cohesive unit. Everyone agrees that.......... Slavery is Bad. It's then taken for granted. It's riffed on. But in another culture socially separated, they might have come to a very different conclusion. A different ideal. Culture clashes can then ensue.

In the same way. If you shut your mouth about stuff. You start spinning out into your own seperate world. You may keep it to yourself that, oh I don't know, fat shaming is terrible. Not something that should ever be done. But you never say anything about it. And then watch the people around you doing exactly that. Without realising its crossing something you think is bad. This occurs all the time with the older generations and their casual racism. But it's not just about opinions. It's also about facts. You can keep quiet on the fact that the world is a globe. That the Earth goes around the Sun. Whilst everyone else in your medieval age believe the world to be flat, and that the sun rotates around the Earth.

By not communicating you absolutely get into the stranger in a strange world scenario.

You isolate yourself very much. Not just because you're keeping quiet. But because mentally, you are sailing different seas. Perhaps you have learned trigonometry, whilst everyone around you struggles to work out the distance between two points. You know the answer. Easy. But you keep quiet. To everyone else, figuring out those distances is impossible. Magical. Ridiculous. Anyone that thinks they can should be insulted, stoned.

Tricky.

The more isolated you become, in all probability, the less happy you are. Like it or not. We are social animals. And isolation does not feed your base monkey with what it needs.

So there's the rub.

Perhaps this is one aspect of the whole notion of knowledge and truth not setting you free, but actually just making you increasingly miserable. There is less magic in the world. More fact. And. If everyone else is not brought along with you, you end up more isolated.

I think, somewhere in there, is where I sit. And I think these days. Right now. After this last bout. I am opting for silence. And isolation.

I think. I am done talking. I will listen. And empathise. And that's it.

Hmm.

But is this just me capitulating in the face of difficult battles ? Is this just me being a coward ? Letting it get me down. Perhaps.

Probably. I just need to chill a bit. And not worry so much. And let it all go. And come back to it again another day in the future.

Temporary burn out and low moral.

Maybe.

Every interaction you have however. Has a chance of being sticky. Ask Pavlov. The more times you get stung every time the bell is rung, them more chance you start to cower every time you hear a bell.