Tag: thinking

The Yoke

The yoke stands wide and menacingly inviting.

All my cares will handled if I just agree to pull the master’s cart.

Don’t I deserve the stability that provides?

I only have to do it during the day, and on market day.

I get days off.

But if I accept I only get fed if I obey

My potential value is so much more than my constrained task sheet

Am I allowed to sing while I work?

What happens to the ideas that I find while my body is busy?
What if I see a better path,

Want to move faster than the master does?

Heaven forbid I need to move slower. Will I be run over? Abandoned?

Will I know where I am when that happens? How will I get home?

That is the deal.

The master chooses the pace.

The master chooses the direction.

The master owns the ideas

The master voices the songs, we echo the songs.

The master does not own you!

What a silly idea.

The master owns the yoke.

You can take it off at any time.

The master can deny you the right to wear it at any time.

Why do you think you are not free?

Sauce Saturday: Domestic Blisters/Struggle Care

So I spend way too much of my time on TikTok, and one of the gems I have found is a creator called Domesic Blisters. She (KC Davis) also has a book and website, but I haven’t read the book.

Davis really gets nitty gritty about how to let yourself be not ok and still take care of yourself, your space and your family. Starting with the thing that got me hooked: “Care tasks are morally neutral, they are functional not moral”. While I was already on a path that was leading me to this very conclusion, those specific words have been a game changer.

The idea that your struggle does not make you a bad person, and that evidence of your struggle doesn’t either, is a wonderful weapon I use to fight shame messages in my thinking. If my house is messy but I can still find the things I need, then it is functional, there is no need for blame or shame around the mess.

By removing the layer of judgement inherit in seeing daily care tasks as moral rather than just functional, Davis, creates mental space to really look at enhancing functionality, and embracing individual strategies for arranging your life and space. She shows her audience the ways she does things that work for her and her particular struggles. She encourages us all to find the strategies that work with our personal tendencies and the life you have right now.

This ends up looking like storing things where they tend to end up anyway, or having collection baskets in those places. Even bagging up garbage to throw in the garbage if you can’t get to it right away or throwing away the dishes if necessary!! Your house, routines and stuff should serve you and support you and your life not the other way around.

If you like me sometimes have emotional reactions to daily care tasks, I absolutely encourage you to check out Domestic Blisters. If only to see how easily and thoughtfully she handles trolls. 🙂

We Are Trailblazers

I was doing research for another article I want to write to post here, and I fell down a rabbit hole and it won’t be ready for a while. In the mean time I was reminded that what we call a “Normal Life” right now is something that has never existed before.

Human beings instantly being able to talk to each other, anywhere on the planet? Sharing ideas, supporting each other, flinging insults… the whole thing! This has never been done before. There is no way to know if we are doing it right or wrong. I don’t think you CAN do it right or wrong, and then I remember the insults thing. Yeah there is a lot we can do better.

I just wanted to take the time to just remind myself and anyone who reads this, that we are in uncharted territory. The results of what we do now will have lots of unintended consequences. This isn’t to scare myself or anyone else into stagnation, no it is to validate the gravity of that fact. To cut myself a little slack when I feel daunted getting up in the morning and not knowing if I as a person am up to navigating the ENTIRE UNIVERSE AT MY INSTANT FINGERTIPS. It is daunting and the reality is that what I do in that shared digital space has consequences that unlike the physical reality, they do not decay with time.

Our brains and instincts are set up to help us navigate a mammalian animal life. That life exists in a physical realm where change is unavoidable and absolutely necessary, stagnation is death and decay, (which is also change). We cannot escape it, but there is a comfort in that also. We can accept our note in the song our place in the cycle of things.

As we trailblaze into this new universe we created for ourselves, everything we do is visible and stays. It is a strange new relationship with responsibility, a call to be more genuine. A gentle reminder that what we create ends up having a life of its own outside any expectations of what it would be. This will be good and bad, but mostly it will just be.

So it’s ok to be daunted by the enormity of the face of everything at once, and we are all doing it the best we can. None of us have ever done it before, we can’t look to history to see what its impacts will be. We have to watch them unfold even though we won’t have perspective to see the real patterns. We are in the thick of it right now, way too close to what’s happening to see anything at all.

So I choose, every day to try to be clearer and kind. If I’m going to send ripples out into this new universe, I don’t want them to be ones that I’m ashamed of. I want to create places I want to come back and visit. When I remember this time of my life (Its the internet none of this is going anywhere). I may look back and think I was pretentious and naive, but hopefully also kind. That’s the trail I want to blaze.

We Get the Golden Rule Wrong

“Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.”

That was the golden rule as it was taught to me. I thought it was the real definitive way to know how to treat other people. I would literally treat other people the way I wanted them to treat me, basically teach them how to treat me by treating them the same way.

There is just one problem with that. Other people aren’t me. They are their own whole other person, with thoughts, needs, feelings, history, culture and the list goes on and on. How I want to be treated has no bearing on how other people want to be treated. By living the golden rule literally, I mostly became annoying.

Really the take away from how we treat other people is how we think it is acceptable to act. What I mean when I say that is if you are a disher of harsh criticism, it sets the scene for others to think that harsh criticism is how you interact with the world so criticizing you harshly is acceptable. This may or may not be the criticizer’s preference, but now it is out there anyway.

So instead of the simplistic golden rule, I think of it this way: Treat others the way THEY want to be treated, AND behave the way I want others to behave around me. I like being treated with respect. I know that every person feels respected in different ways. I try to follow their lead and listen when they tell me I’m off.

No

I trap myself in impossible situations. Stupidly complex.

From my point of view. 

I know it’s myopic.

From the outside it’s easy, it’s simple.

Just get up.

Just say hello.

Just send it. 

Just make it. 

Just do it. 

Just smile. 

I don’t expect anyone to understand. I may have barriers. 

Invisible like a mime. Self imposed pretentious. Superfluous.

Just get up. 

Just try.

Just walk away.

Just ask for help.

And when I listen, I really try

when even I can’t explain.

Tell me how to help.

Do what I say.

***Crickets***

I retreat. The cure is worse than the disease.

Explaining myself, justifying my space.

Why are you hurting?

Why can’t you just stop.

Why?

Just stop it.

Stop.

Retreat. Back to my cave with the echos and voices.

Angry ghosts repeat their shadow lessons.

Worthless

Hopeless

Helpless

Forgotten

Invisible

Insubstantial

Nothing

Nothing

No

If I make it until morning. I feel the scraping pain of armor construction.

Of building the prison I keep myself in.

I limit my pain to me. 

I don’t want your pity.

I will drown in your worry.

I refuse to do your emotional labor.

If I decide to say no to the sun. 

That’s my choice.

If this is my path I will not force you or even ask you to be my witness.

I’ll wait.

My prison, my armor, my pain, they are not your responsibility. 

Fuck you and your interest. 

Fuck all interest without investment. 

When I stop building, fixing, maintaining

If/when it all falls apart. 

I will have do one to blame but myself.

Don’t worry. 

You’re in the clear.

Thought Experiments: Schrodinger’s Cat

If you are unfamiliar with this famous thought experiment the short version is, there is a box with a cat inside, also in the box there is a radioactive substance that has a 50/50 chance of decaying in the next hour killing the cat. In an hour’s time before the box is opened and the result can be determined the cat exists in both an alive state and also a dead state simultaneously. Before I did my research for this article, I thought that this was being used to explain quantum mechanics of possibility states, the way it is used colloquially, as in something will exist in multiple states of being until observed.

The details of it were much more interesting so I leave this here. In essence Schrodinger was using a deliberately absurd example to show how quantum physics didn’t directly translate to how we observe and interact with our everyday environment. He was basically poking fun at another scientist with Einstein.

What I find fascinating and useful (why I wanted to write about it in the first place) was how it can be a metaphor for worry or dealing with the unknown in general. I will mash up that idea of the unknown existing in all it’s possibilities until informed of the results. Our thoughts exist in a state closer to quantum particles than physical objects. This does not mean I think thoughts ARE quantum particles, though.

My first example of this kind of extrapolation is Schrodinger’s Stars. If you know very much about astronomy then you probably know two things, one the universe is very big, and two the speed of light is constant, it never changes. Knowing both of those things, when you look up at the stars from Earth, they are very, very far away, hundreds or thousands of light years away. That means you are not seeing the stars as they are at this moment, you are seeing how they were when the light was produced, hundreds or thousands of years ago. You are looking at a history of the universe that is just reaching us now. That star you are seeing may have gone out since then, it may not even exist anymore. So I say they are Schrodinger’s Stars visible now so effectively still there and shining while also existing in their current state that is yet unobservable to us. Both are real but only one is known to us so we default to that.

The same can apply to anything unknown, test results of any kind, phone calls while your battery is dead, other people’s feelings if you don’t get a chance to talk to them. I also think about secrets and lies this way sometimes. There is the reality of the situation then there is the information you have access to. You are affected by what you can observe and if you are denied relevant information your reality about a situation will not match the evidence of the situation. I think of situations where I suspect I have been lied to or that there is more to a story than I know, in Schrodinger terms. I mean, I accept the evidence I have but also hold in possibility the reality that something else might actually be happening. Schrodinger’s Affair for example. You can’t always prove if someone is lying to you but you can leave room for a truth you can’t prove. Your reality becomes the supposition of the possibilities.

Zero Sum or Where Tit for Tat Doesn’t Add Up

Today I’m thinking about “Life isn’t a zero sum game.” What does that mean? Well a zero sum game, in game theory, is a game where someone winning also means someone loses. Nothing inherently wrong with that idea and the reality that there are winners and losers whenever there is competition. That’s just the thing life isn’t inherently a competition.

One of the first zero sum games I remember is marbles. In marbles often tradition insists that you “play for keeps”. Meaning the winner gets to take home all the marbles they capture. Their winnings are exactly the opponent’s losses. I hated it. Which probably means I was bad at marbles, and I’m sure I was. How could it be any different? If a bigger kid convinces you to play, they take you for all they can then leave you with fewer resources. Also the high stakes insistence makes practice risky, too.

Approaching life like a game of marbles, leaves us with only seeking to win or avoid loss. This approach leaves people keeping score in their lives. These points and winning often end up damaging our relationships because winning becomes more important than the other person.

When people approach life like a zero sum game everyone is an adversary, trying to get what’s yours while you try to get what’s theirs. There is no room for “ours”. Life becomes a power struggle on every level. That power struggle can be isolating and exhausting.

Shared Reality

If you read my writing or talk to me in person, eventually I will use the words shared reality. I don’t know when I adopted the concept into my understanding of the world but I did. Recently I had someone ask me to clarify what I mean when I say that.

I want to start by talking about individual reality. Because each of us has a unique path through life, we go through secret and mundane unmentionables all the time. Having experiences we don’t share with others gives us an individual perspective on the world. In America, where I live, we are taught as a society that you as an individual matter a whole lot, and while this is true it is just the surface layer of how people navigate the world together. There is also an underlying cultural thread that we are all equal. Together these, and I’m sure many more factors, focus our individual reality with a subtext that our reality is THE Reality.

Once I realized I was doing this, I started thinking of the Shared Reality. First as the places where my experiences overlay other’s experiences. They still aren’t going to match though. As I explored this concept I realized I projected my reality onto other people a lot.

I expanded my thinking and also thought of Shared Reality as the reality that exists outside of individuals. You can talk about this as what could be witnessed by an outsider. The things that exist outside of myself are in the Shared Reality also. If I were wiped from existence, everything that would still be here exists outside myself and is therefore part of another reality that I was sharing. When I disappeared it was still there. This is true for ideas and thoughts not just physical objects or happenings. If an idea or thought is true or represents a truth it will exist whether or not the thinker does, too. (it will also exist if the thinker disagrees.)

I contracted my thinking again, to try to think of practical applications of this concept. First I started observing more. I gave myself space to just let situations and relationships unfold with the life they have on their own. I realized I was limiting the world and my place in it by thinking my reality was the only one. This led to so many possibilities that I never would have thought about on my own. I started being less afraid, I was able to really start adjusting to the idea that Shared Reality might be much better than my individual reality is.

I also started shifting the things I felt responsible for from “everything I could observe or think of” to the things I had personally committed to, or am assigned by a role in life that I have. This one might need an example. If I would witness a stranger approaching a puddle. I would feel obligated to warn them about the puddle, no matter what I was doing, no matter what they were doing. (Imagine someone shouting out their car window at you, etc. “lookout puddle”) I would feel responsible to keep this stranger safe from stepping a little water. Like if I COULD prevent a moment of discomfort for anyone, it was the moral thing to do. Now I try to imagine the shared reality. One where I don’t exist at all. Most of the time in these imaginings, the other person is a capable human and avoids the water on their own. When they don’t, the worst that happens is they get their feet wet. Neither are any of my business.

Don’t get me wrong if I think someone will be hurt, I will say something if I can without making it worse. Meanwhile I have all this extra thought time for myself, living my individual reality, navigating the shared reality with all of you. 🙂

We Tried to Warn You About the Drop



We hid our depths.

You’d never guess it, probably.

We never stop talking, we never stop finding the beauty in the mundane

We are frivolous and shallow

this is the dervish layer

this is where we protect ourselves.

If you get caught up in the minutia

Won’t get to the bones

won’t go deep, that’s where we stay.

If you argue with us about the way we see the world rather than take a step to meet us closer to where we live, then that’s all you will ever see.

All you will ever know.

Even isolated, losing touch with the shared reality, we are deep.

We know without a doubt. Most people are too.

But there is no time, the depths take time, diving takes time and recovery/surfacing takes time and recalibration too.

You get the existential bends if you do it too fast.

You hurt yourself, traumatize yourself

this motion is more fundamental and sacred

it takes time. It cannot be rushed.

You must stop.

Stop completely and let yourself sink, let yourself fall.

Go deep.

And the murk comes and goes and you descend, deeper

deeper

and the light fades then disappears

and the pressure of loss of control and orientation builds until it collapses in on itself

yet this must be endured.

This is the process of depth.

It is SLOW it is uncomfortable

it expects a lot of you.

And when you go as far as your equilibrium wants.

You settle there, weightless

in the imaginary light that exists in darkness

and your soul can still feel proximity.

Still knows where it lives, still remembers now.

More as a concept down, in here, a belief, a feeling

rather than an experience or center of experience.

And when you are deep, the bones still exist.

They are the sturdy foundation of your personal reality

the places you are strong

solid and wear the ravages of time and communication

the pain of existing

the bones know it all.

Communing with the bones

reminds you who you are.

Why you came to be at all.

You are not who you were designed to be

you are a creature of your own creation in spite of the noise above to the contrary.

Your resistance, your scars at striving to become yourself

exist here in the bones of the deep

they tell YOUR story.

They do not give a flying fuck what any other reality would say.

They are the cold, clear objective existence of you.

Separate from anything else.

It is lonely with the bones.

They let you observe them with sightless dark eyes

synesthesia of the soul

They do not tell you their story,

they do not speak

it is their job to record and exist

not interpret, not speak

They do not observe, they are.

And with them you can remember who you are also.

And the pull will begin, to live the life of sight and shared reality

the pull of the now,

you cannot live forever in the deep.

It is not a home.

The buoyancy will change and the ascension will begin of it’s own accord

again there is no path but through.

It will be a different uncomfortable

it will be a different pressure

this time too loud and too bright

too fast too busy.

But the deep you carry with you will protect you

let you exist in the eye of your very own lifestorm.

That you can choose how and when to leave

How much of yourself you take with you.

And that power is something no one can even determine no less take away.

When all is lost, go deep.

Little Things

I prefer everyday comforts to sweeping or dramatic shows of affection. I feel so loved by someone bringing me a cup of coffee.

I never felt as seen or accepted by receiving a gift, or from a public declaration. Just a humble gesture, and I am warmed to the core. All the more so if brought to me so I didn’t have to get up.

I don’t know if my core self sees these things as permissions, but it might. An offering of coffee is an investment in my ease, encouraging my rest. Odd significance to put on a caffeinated beverage, but I know I’m not alone in that oddity. It’s not about the coffee though.

It’s about love showing in the smallest, most significant ways.