Tag: thinking

Friction

Today I want to talk about how I reframe interpersonal conflict. At some point I realized that for the most part, people are just people doing their own thing and occasionally that process gets in the way of other people just trying to do their own thing. The places where their paths get in the way of each other I started to call friction.

So now when I find my self upset or emotional at all about someone else’s behavior I look for the friction points. What are they doing exactly? How does that affect what I’m doing or trying to do? How do I feel about that? What do I want now that I have this information? How do I communicate that?

It ends up a tall order BUT it centers my needs for me, before it even considers what the other person is trying to do for themselves. Why would I want that? Well this does a few things:
1. It makes me accountable for discovering my own wants and needs
2. It puts the burden of communicating them on me (diffuses the need for the other person to mind read)
3. It prevents me from projecting the motivations of another person, before I communicate with them.
4. It gives me a chance to both find my needs and support myself.
5. It let’s me find concrete things to ask for or discuss about impact without getting stuck on emotions.
6. It prevents me from accepting the other persons needs as more important than mine as a default.

And these are just the reasons I can think of in this moment.

Now all this is the ideal, not the reality. It’s what I’m trying to do not necessarily what I am able in the moment to do. I am human and I’ve been through a lot. I know my emotions are trying to tell me something, that’s why I’m upset. With my recent growth though, I am understanding that my emotional world is my own. No one else is going to be affected by the world or another person’s actions the same way I will. I have my own unique body, history and experiences. So does everyone else. Our personal experiences are just that PERSONAL. Meaning my emotions, the signals my body gives me to help me understand my experiences, are also personal. They do not translate from one person to another directly. To communicate my needs and wants and have them really be understood, I must do the translation myself.

When I first started this process I found it really unfair. It’s not fair that I have to do all this work when I’m already feeling so hurt, angry or betrayed. Since I have started trying to see conflict as friction, and centering my feelings for myself, it has gotten easier. So much easier. I don’t need others to validate my feelings anymore. (It still feels good when they do, but I accept my feelings whether or not anyone else recognizes them as valid.) I remind myself that if I have my feelings, if I can perceive them, they exist. That is valid.

Ok, so I accepted that my feelings are valid, now what? I have to treat them like they are a top priority. Now it is important to acknowledge here that valid does not mean valid or important to anyone else, these are my feelings and they are important to me. Everyone else has feelings that are as valid and important to them. This shift allows me to care for my feelings and opens up space for the other person to care about theirs.

This internal work lets both people focus on the actual points of friction, without judging each other’s paths, without invalidating each other’s feelings, gives space for both to express their individual needs, because the focus is now on defining and resolving the friction, not on who’s feelings are more important.

Leave the Please

I might just be taking things to literally, but I am not fond of the word “please”. I don’t know if it’s just the formality of it or the implied hierarchy, but I don’t think power dynamics need to be enforced by politeness in that way.

I’m firm believer in respect, but the kind of respect that honors the sovereignty of each of us as equal humans on this planet. There will always be people with more or less power than others, more wealth, more privilege etc., but that doesn’t mean anyone is less worthy of respect and general kindness. In fact I tend to think and act like those with less privilege deserve MORE respect and kindness, with an emphasis on the respect enough to let that person choose what is kind and what is not.

Please as a word, feels like it flies in the face of that respect, and makes you beg for kindness. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth when I say it. When I’m observant I find that often people who insist on the kind of politeness that is emphasized by “please” are the same kind of people who do value and respect power and hierarchy much more than I do. So I am not wary of people who use please, but I am wary of people who insist on it’s use.

I’m not sure when I made the shift, and I suspect it’s when my life shifted to healthier relationships, but I don’t think I ever say please anymore. There are plenty of kind and respectful ways to make requests without it. I don’t miss it at all.

Thank you, on the other hand I say all the time!

Thought Experiments

What are thought experiments?

Thought experiments are scenarios of the imagination set up with specific parameters so that different aspects can be explored in a safe and controlled environment. These can be as complicated and scientific as Schrodinger’s Cat, or The Trolley Problem, or just testing of the boundaries of a metaphor such as, “Is a pizza an open faced sandwich?”

Thought experiments give us a chance to play with ideas and a framework to do it in. Thought experiments have a huge overlap with role play, in the therapeutic and the social game sense, both explore the possible outcomes of specific scenarios. In my opinion thought experiments that Scientist and Philosophers seem to do is MORE like role play than the thought experiments writers do, because writers are not then bound to bring their conclusions back to a shared reality.

Scientists and Philosophers are by definition searching for a “Truth”. Writers and artists create knowing it is the observer or reader who brings their truth, or finds their truth in the connection with the piece. They do not need to confine themselves to what is physically, morally, or practically possible. Their limits are the limits of language, the limits of perception, and the limits of imagination. These are very different but overlapping things.

Being able to play with thinking is a very important tool, one I think everyone uses with or without awareness. I am focusing myself to do more thought experimentation and will write up some of what I find to share.

Digital v. Physical

Your digital life is a real life, just like people now and in the past have relationships over the phone and before that, via letter. The emotions are real. The connection is real. The impact is REAL. Digital happenings are REAL LIFE. It is detrimental to community to deny that fact. Denial of the reality of what happens digitally allows people the fallacy of thinking they can do whatever they want digitally and it doesn’t matter. Stalking, hate comments, affairs…. this is not an exclusive list. I mean I’m not brainstorming about how to hurt people on the internet that is going to just happen.

I prefer a reframing of the whole idea. I talk about what happens in the digital realm and the physical realm, (I’ve heard some people call the physical realm the Meat Space, ha whatever floats your boat.) Neither is more real nor more important than the other, just different. Every person individually is going to have different relationships with those realms. Some people will be mostly interfacing with their life digitally and some on the other end will never use more than a telephone, no less social media or meme language.

This reframing also makes our methods of communication more neutral. It’s easy to be dismissive of other people if our interactions with them are digital alone, but that is still a real person on the other end. Thinking of the digital realm as just as real as the physical one makes our actions there real, too, because they ARE. This does not make the digital realm superior either, just different.

When you stop holding the digital realm up to the standard of real needing to be physical, you leave space for connection that wasn’t there before. This also means you have to hold yourself to a moral standard that accepts that your actions have impact, both good and bad in both realms. They are both real life. If we take that responsibility seriously, and treat each other with respect, both realms can be safer places to explore and make connections, both enhancing each other.