I feel rather like I am approaching a mostly-closed door, and ought to open it with care, in case someone unseen is unaware, and vulnerable, on the other side. I would avoid sneaking up on you so early in the morning. 🙂
Morning…
Things are ‘new’ and ‘different’… house guests gone, dawn coming a very different time, a new laptop in front of me, and a number of other small changes each gently altering each other’s relevance to me. Life is rich, busy, complex – often more stressful than necessary, sometimes so much so that more bigger change seems imminent or needful. I breath, and relax, and observe, and hope not to overreact.
The world seems just filled with mean people… I think some people may have found me among them at other points in time, although more accurately a loving friend suggested that rather than ‘mean’ i was ‘callous’, and that maybe that’s worse. I think the difference between ‘callous’ and ‘mean’ is critical… it seems to be a matter of will, and intent. Meanness is, from my perspective, a willful attack that is deliberate, and not necessarily ‘righteous’ – mean people often know they are being mean, and the aim is to hurt, or inflict pain at the expense of that person, sometimes for the amusement of others. Callousness often seems associated with a certain ‘sense of righteousness’ in that a callous person generally doesn’t understand that their approach is hurting another – or may not understand that the hurt is relevant at all. 😦 I suspect that both meanness and callousness are incredibly difficult to dissuade someone from taking on, for different reasons. Both are quite ugly characteristics, and neither leave room for compassion.
Mean, though… well, how is it even justified? Mean people don’t actually care that they are hurting someone – they are making a point, having some fun, entertaining someone else, or ‘seeing what happens if’. Ugly. I don’t like it, and I don’t choose to foster it in myself or accept it in my lovers. I don’t like callous, but I understand it more, and I am willing to educate, discuss, coach, share, build rapport, learn, grow together…because it seems worthwhile. So…for me, they are different.
Meaning is what we make it – literally. Our thoughts are our own, and language functions by agreement – but that means learning to collaborate in conversation and sharing definitions of terms, and both listening and hearing – they are not the same. We are not only having our own experience… we are communicating with each other in language that is only partially shared. Complicated.
It’s a lovely morning… and somehow I am feeling quite calm and extraordinarily balanced.
A good morning for “Sheer Bliss”
Evening Light 
Excellent distinction.