Saturday, September 14, 2024

Saturday, September 14, 2024 

 

   Ah, yesterday was Friday the 13th. Maybe that's why I had such a difficult day. Hopefully, it was also a healing day.

  I shared my grief with two friends. I have to remember not to do that. They don't know how to not take on the burden themselves, and that's not helpful. We are limited in our ability to help others by two factors. The first is being overly sympathetic. We feel what they feel as if it is our problem, our loss. That incapacitates us. The other is shutting down all feelings and being downright dismissive of the feelings of others.  

   Buddhism teaches the middle road: compassion. How do you define it? Concern for the other person without taking on the burden. That's pretty vague.  i know it's a lovely feeling when I do have it.  It allows me to respond well within the moment, to give the person what they need or at least something that makes them feel heard and cared for without feeling I need to solve the problem.  I can do this with my students.  I don't feel I have to get them to be star students; I just need to get a bit better. I find the process of solving the learning problems fascinating. I have to diagnose the problem and find a minimally invasive solution. It's subtle work. It's like reading the water while canoeing down a slow-moving river, the head of the Susquehanna.    

I did those canoe trips with my bunkmates when I was a child. They're some of the happiest memories of my life. I still carry an image of me in the stern coming around a bend to the right, reading the ripples of the water to determine where it was deep enough to get the canoe through without scraping the bottom.

   I had no tutoring scheduled this morning and looked forward to the empty time.  Go figure!  Too much downtime makes me feel down. Sometimes, I look forward to endulging my sadness.  These feelings are bigger than my immediate circumstances because they trigger old traumas. They're never going to be fixed by alternating present circumstances. They always lurk under the surface, ready to pounce.  

    Lying in bed this morning, I contemplated the difference between bickering and discussing.  Bickering is when the goal of the discussion is convincing the other person to do it your way.  The result is one person winning or a 'compromise' where no one gets what they want. The alternative to bickering, I can't think of a word other than discussing, is when the goal is to find a solution that is comfortable for both parties.  The talking back and forth is to clarify what the two people want so they can co-create the best solution possible.

    In the first case, people enter into the 'discussion' to get something specific, and anything short of that is a disappointment.  In the second case, both parties are curious and excited to be surprised about the solution. It may be something neither considered. It will be an adventure. It's exciting.  Those in the second category don't assume that their first thought is always in their best interest, and any modification is a negative,  They consider it might even be better than their original idea. I love co-creating. 

   Those who prefer the first way, fighting for their way, usually like a scripted life. They believe there are rules that everyone knows and follows. There is something wrong with those who don't know the rules. Those who prefer cocreation see every interaction as an improv moment.  It's not that there are no rules, but those change with the circumstances.

    There isn't one way that is always better than the other. The Amish live highly scripted lives. For those who are comfortable with the script, it can be a wonderful life. You know exactly what you have to do to have a secure place in that world. The unscripted life is more stressful—or at least creates a different type of stress. Each interaction holds the potential for surprise and another opportunity to get it wrong. 

   One way is not better than the other. This battle between the two ways of relating is an ancient one. It is the battle between Confucianism and the Tao.  Those who follow Confucian principles find comfort in learning and following the rules. Confucius created rules for what to wear and how to put each item on.  Every moment is scripted. The problem with a rule-based life is rules change from one house to the next in a pluralistic society.  Each person comes to the table with a different set of rules. If everyone fights for their way, it gets bloody quickly. Contempt flows and drowns goodwill. 

   In the improvisational setting, you assume everyone is going to pack a surprise, requiring an appropriate response to keep the conversation going.  It's got its own set of rules.  I do great in a dramatic improv setting. My improv conversational skills need more polishing.  As I think of it, I should do a formula study of the rules of improvisation. 

   In dramatic improvisation, the only goal is to keep the conversation moving. In life real-life interactions, that's only one of the goals.  What are the others?  We need to be heard. If we feel misunderstood, we get scared.  We need to feel the other person respects our needs. We're uncomfortable if we think the other person's only goal is getting everything their way.  We want to know if the other person cares about our ideas of comfort and safety.  I really must study the rules of improvisation:  

    As I detailed here, there are two spectrums in this aspect of human interaction. scripted vs improved(?).  Oh, that verb form is not going to work.  The correct word form is improvised. But that doesn't mean the same thing as improv.  I mean the past tense of improv- whatever that is. You can say the word pronouncing it differently from 'improved.' Technically, the spelling should be improved, to establish that short /o/. But nowhere in the English language can you find a double vv. I'm introducing it now, as in I improved.

   The conflict between these two approaches, scripted versus improvved, is at least as old as Confucianism and the Tao.  They both have their good points and their bad.

   Confucius talks about practicing a routine until you can do it in your sleep.  If you have a social behavior that doesn't work, adopt a new one, practice it until you perfect it, and don't think about it again.  Problem: if the rules change, which they do regularly, you're the one off script. 

    With the Tao approach, where you're always working with raw, unfamiliar material, you must be in constant flux. There's no stability. It can be crazy-making. Mike referred to it as chaos.  He dreaded chaos.  He'd freak when I talked to complete strangers and got in the middle of their private lives after a fifteen-minute conversation. He learned to step back and let me do my thing. He didn't have to get involved. He slowly realized that things went well more often than badly, and his life wasn't radically altered. 

   I made a dietary change about two months ago. I read that starting the day with protein was a good idea. I started eating one soft-boiled egg a day and increased it to two eggs with a side order of butter toast with raspberry jam. I discovered that this egg consumption caused a dramatic increase in my cholesterol count. Wow! I have to modify that. Dean tells me that delicious yoke is 100% cholesterol. Hmm! I cut my consumption of eggs back down to one a day.  

   I boil my eggs in a gadget that looks like a large egg. The bottom half holds water and has a tray that holds four eggs. The eggs are done after 5 minutes or so. Sadly, I haven't perfected this process and don't consistently get a soft-boiled egg. Sometimes, it's still runny, and sometimes, it's hard. I suspect I don't use the same amount of water, and I don't always fill the shell to the water line. 

   Today, I overfilled the shell with water. I heard an explosion. Silly me, I thought the explosion would mean the shell had cracked. Bits of egg were all over the microwave. It was easy to clean. I just had to dust the fragments off the microwave walls.

    For my entertainment, I have been listening to Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. She won the Pulitzer Prize for this book.  I don't consider it her best. I think it's too long and forced. Her need to include all her concerns dominated her literary decisions. As I said, it felt forced.

   A week has passed, and I've had no word from Adolescent D.  I don't feel inclined to text him to ask what is going on. It feels like a good time to terminate. I feel the loss of work, but I won't force people into a relationship if it doesn't feel right. No one is responsible for providing me with what I need. That amounts to a scam. There's a wide world out there. It's for me to pursue what I want.

    Elsa and I visited Paulette. Damon called in the middle. Everyone knows his calls get priority. He's a busy boy; you have to grab him when the grabbing is good. I never call him, knowing he is too busy. He regularly calls me once every two weeks. We spent a lot of time discussing the care options for his mother and stepfather in their retirement community. Both of them are having problems.