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What’s Your Point?

September 10, 2015 //
2

I wrote a lot of rather angry words this morning. I’ve deleted them. I’m reluctant to give OPD (Other People’s Drama) that much of my time – or to allow it to take that much of yours, either. I’ve done my best not to waste time ranting…but…I suspect it comes across a bit more that, than not. 🙂

Saving the world over my morning coffee...or something similar.

Thoughts and coffee

I sip my coffee and think over the whole point I thought I was getting to on the first draft (and the second, and third)… I think I was using way too many words just to communicate something simple – a caution? More a request. Please don’t be vile, nasty, bad-tempered, callous, cruel or mean to people you say you care about. It is mistreatment. In a perfect world, people don’t stick around for that shit, but we’re imperfect beings, and trudging through bullshit is sometimes part of the journey; we end up too willing to tolerate abuse. Love is not nurtured by mistreatment – and how much of your nastiness your loved ones can withstand is not an ideal measure of their affection.

Oh, hey, while I’m at it – please don’t be vile, nasty, bad-tempered, callous, cruel or mean with strangers, either. Realistically, you don’t know them well enough for them to warrant any sort of mistreatment, and it amounts to unkindness that just makes the world a shitty place. Stop it. Seriously? How do you excuse that shit?

Thinking it over, if it is unacceptable to mistreat our loved ones (which, frankly, it totally is), and also unacceptable to mistreat total strangers (and, I mean, why would you?)…how is it justifiable to mistreat all those people in between? You know the stuff I mean: being rude to a waitress, or nasty to a check-out clerk, or barista, or dismissive toward the landscapers, the mail carrier, or a telemarketer is all just as unacceptable and inappropriate – certainly, it is rude, and unnecessary. They are human. You are human, too. End of conflict… or, it easily could be. Your choices matter.

Being a better human being than you were yesterday is as simple as making just one choice to treat someone a little better than you might have – make it easy, start with people who really matter to you. (If someone ‘really matters’ to you, how do you justify treating them badly with purpose, deliberately, aware of the outcome, in the first place?) Here’s the thing – we like to think that we are not doing these things willfully –  it’s ‘happening’, ‘things just went wrong’ in a bad moment, we ‘didn’t mean it’ or some how meant it differently but lost our cool, or… but… that only holds up the first time. After that, it’s a choice, perhaps a habit, or worse a character quality, and it is definitely mistreatment and also entirely and completely unacceptable bad behavior.

How are you adding to global happiness?

How are you adding to global happiness?

Sorry about the lecture-y demanding irritated tone; we’re all human here, and feeling cared for and being heard matters to each of us. You are probably frustrated by these things, too. (I am finding it hard to watch from the sideline as someone I love is mistreated in another relationship, and I am not the sort to pretend I don’t see it, or to make excuses for bad behavior.) There’s no ‘chicken or egg’ paradox to mistreatment, either – that’s verbal slight of hand used by people to excuse abusive bullshit, and it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Tit for tat nastiness between lovers is just another variety of mistreatment, still unacceptable. Mistreatment is mistreatment. Make all the excuses you want to, the excuses do not change the behavior. We all have moments when we fall short of being that person we most want to be, but it does matter to make the attempt, and to address our poor behavior toward others, honestly, and openly, being fully accountable for our bad behavior, and poor decision-making. We all have opportunities to choose to listen deeply, to be open to understanding someone else’s experience, to demonstrate compassion, and to show growth – sadly, we don’t all take those opportunities when they come.

I tried a number of times to ‘find the right words’ this morning. My annoyance gets in the way of taking a lighter tone. I am frustrated at how easily human beings justify their shitty treatment of others. Seriously? How is abusing people we [say we] love even a thing? Personally, I find it most effective to snarl ‘go fuck yourself, that bullshit isn’t love at all’ and walk on – because when someone mistreats me, I do not feel loved. I no longer allow abuse to be part of my definition of love, loving, or being loved. “Love” is a verb, and it does not include abuse, mistreatment, or emotional weapons of mass distraction. Those are their own experiences, their own verbs, and choosing them is no demonstration of love – and it very much is a choice.

I could have just said “Wheaton’s Law, people, damn!” and saved a couple hundred words from being misused this morning… or maybe suggested a sing-a-long…  Be kind – there’s a surplus of jerks in the world these days. Be genuine – there’s also a surplus of shifty pretenders, and the real you is by far more worthy. Be considerate – we’re all human, each having our own experience, each suffering under the weight of the burdens we choose to bear, each worthy of being treated well.

Be love. That’s the thing most worth being.

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Categories Words, Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Perspective, Metaphors, Mindfulness, women, Free Will, Love, Summer, autumn, The Big 5, more than a little bit of bitching, The Art of Being

Me First

March 14, 2015 //
0

I’m still sick. I’m taking advantage of the weekend to take care of my health. I have no other plans today. I am still hopeful that I’ll be over this in time for my camping trip in a few days…if not, I’ll have to decide whether to cancel or just go and tough it out – maybe find out just exactly what I’m made of under even more trying conditions.

I giggle at myself thinking about my middle-aged, suburbanite, white-collar self considering a few days of camping in a state park very near to home to anything like ‘trying conditions’ or a test of endurance of any sort. Somewhere in the distance of time long past, a much younger, more rugged me looks on with some measure of friendly disdain – not meaning to be mean, but me then was just not that patient with people’s notions. lol

Not quite wilderness close to home.

Not quite wilderness close to home.

So sure, today I am putting me first, but that’s not the point of the title at all. “Me First” is a practice, and it’s one that I am currently turning over in my head to add to my SuperBetter  game; I haven’t decided if it serves best as a ‘Quest’ or a ‘Power Up’. Over my morning coffee, I answer some basic questions for myself, such as ‘is this something I do for a course correction, or an emotional boost, or is it something I need to practice, reach for as a goal, and strive to achieve?’ and ‘is this an experience?’ and ‘can I put a face to it?’ Most of my ‘Bad Guys’ are issues and challenges (personal demons) that I can easily ‘face’ more effectively if they wear actual faces. lol

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic 2011

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic 2011

My “Me First” practice is a cognitive tool to improve emotional resilience by building a sense of perspective, improving my ability to respond to others with compassion, and to foster quick recognition of shared human experience, when I may be inclined to react in a judgmental way, or feeling resentful. “Me First” is simply the practice of observing the judgment or resentment with a high level of honesty and acceptance, and mindful awareness of how I, myself, experience a similar circumstance ‘if the shoe were on the other foot’. I put myself in the other person’s experience very deliberately, and challenge myself to understand how it may be something we have in common, and how human it is. Before I start emotionally or intellectually ‘stoning’ someone, I practice looking to myself – is there really room to criticize? (There rarely is.) Is there room for compassion, encouragement, a moment of humor or Schadenfreude? (There usually is.) Instead of being critical – and understanding that criticism is generally a poorly worded request for change – is there something I can do meet my own needs more simply (like making a clear and gentle request for change)? Can I apply that understanding and perspective to this other human being and possibly do something to meet their needs? That’s the lovely thing about my “Me First” practice – it’s not ‘me first over and above whatever you need, and go fuck yourself for your trouble’, not at all; it’s ‘let me take care of me first, work out some of these issues I’ve obviously got, get my head right and see what we can do together, to meet shared needs, and understand each other’.  Before I criticize someone else, I launch this practice and I check myself – and use the object lesson to work on me, first – because realistically, I don’t actually get to work on anyone else. None of us do. Not really – and attempting to take that power of self management, and autonomy away from someone with criticism, judgmental remarks, or intimidation and controlling behaviors is in a category of ‘bad acts’ I consider emotionally abusive. I definitely don’t want to be doing something to other people that I consider abuse.

What a wonderful thing – you get to make all your own choices about these things, yourself, and my notions of what is or is not abusive doesn’t dictate your choices! Fantastic! Ideally, it’s all sort of self-adjusting, isn’t it? If we treat someone poorly, or abuse them (physically or emotionally), surely they don’t stick around for that, and we find ourselves bereft and alone, as we would surely deserve for our bad acts…right? Well, not always, and sometimes tragically so. Learning not to stick around for more abuse is one of the things I work on, myself. It’s not always easy. My sense of loyalty is far more well-developed than my sense of when I may be over-compromising my values, or allowing myself to be mistreated emotionally. As a younger woman, some portion of my identity was wrapped up in whether my relationships ‘succeeded’, but the definition of success wasn’t my own, and I stuck around for some heinous shit. We are each having our own experience, too. What injures me, or hits damaged bits related to my PTSD, or may be of more concern because of my TBI, may not at all be what hurts you as an individual. (Clearly there are some experiences that could universally be recognized as abuse, but this is not about that.)

Learning good self-care, for me, also means learning to recognize when I am treated well, when I am treated poorly – and what amount of poor treatment is unacceptable, rather than an incidental and unintended by product of someone’s humanity. So I practice treating myself well, and I also practice treating others well; because I am not a blameless victim in my experience of life – I am living it, and I too make poor choices, or fall short of ideals, or ‘drop the ball in the big game’. I’m very human. I honestly don’t find it acceptable to criticize someone for issues I have myself, things I am also prone to do, or stuff that’s just shared human experience needing to be managed or learned from; so I am practicing doing something differently, and walking my own path to be the woman I most want to be, myself, on my own terms.

We each walk our own path, paved with our own choices.

We each walk our own path, paved with our own choices.

I’m also not smug about this stuff, and I struggle. These are my challenges, more than my triumphs, and I have more questions than answers. You’re welcome to take whatever value you find in my words; your results may vary. There are verbs involved. 🙂

I tried learning to treat others well, without taking care of me, without addressing my own needs first, without really putting in the time to learn what treating others well really meant. It was not an effective effort.  I don’t find attempting to care for me to the exclusion of treating others well to be a good fit; it nearly always feels like I am treating people poorly as a default decision. Balance wins again, and perspective; treating myself well matters a lot, and treating others well isn’t even truly possible to do with skill if I don’t start with me…but putting myself first by taking good treatment away from others turns out not to be very good self-care at all. It’s quite an interesting puzzle.  I found the realization that ‘good treatment’ is defined by the person experiencing it, rather than the person taking the action being experienced, very valuable; it’s not about the intention of the person delivering the words or behaviors at all, and that’s important to understand.

Endure the journey, or embrace it, this choice, too, is yours.

Endure the journey, or embrace it, this choice, too, is yours.

I am sick today, and it’s raining; today is a good day for puzzles. Today is a good day for first-rate self-care. Today is a good day to treat the hearts of others just as well as I treat my own – knowing that I treat my own heart very well indeed, well… practicing the practices, at least. There’s still a journey ahead. 🙂

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Categories Words, Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Perspective, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Anxiety, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Spring, Free Will, Love, The Big 5, Oregon Trails, art and the artist, solo hiking

Kinder Than That

March 12, 2015 //
0

Be kind. It’s a simple enough suggestion. It’s not expensive to be kind to people (or animals, or celebrities, or nice things you may have acquired along life’s path). Further, what good reason is there to be unkind? Oh sure, there’s a lot of wiggle room between ‘kind’ and ‘unkind’ that isn’t so clearly defined. Can we accept that both kindness and unkindness are likely active choices or processes, rather than just fumbling along doing and being? If so, and we also recognize that most of us living in the U.S. probably heard the ‘be kind’ message, the ‘play nicely’ and ‘do unto others’ messages pretty repetitively growing up…what the hell is the matter with us as adults? Have you seen the way people treat each other? The nastiness? The negativity? The vicious unending criticism of self and others? The callousness and cruelty built on foundations of self-righteous entitlement and us/them thinking? So…um…if this is our idea of ‘kindness’ or ‘good treatment’ of our fellow man…maybe we would do well to be kinder than that? Seriously.

Sorry. I’m sick with a head cold, and feeling out of sorts. Life’s day-to-day bullshit and drama are more easily tolerated, avoided, or managed more skillfully when I’m not ill. My emotional resilience is limited – and when I’m sick, my default reaction is often anger; I honestly just want to be treated gently, supported, and cared for – because I’m sick.  Of course I’m not alone in that; it’s spring, and the second significant wave of illness has hit the area (there’s ‘flu’ season, then just as spring gears up, we often see a major short-term increase in people out of office with colds).  I’m pretty sure I picked this cold up either in the office or on the commute. (Cover your coughs/sneezes, people, please!) Hell, I’m not even the only person in the household who is ill this week.

Here’s the thing about kindness that I notice most often; people aren’t doing it. A lot of people, totally not investing even the slightest effort to be kind, and instead actively investing will, intent, emotion, time, choice, and action into treating people poorly – not just any people, the people they say matter most! I regularly see or hear people being total dicks, seriously hurtful and unkind, to friends, lovers, even family. What the hell? These are people we care about? What’s the thinking there?

What does kindness really look like?

What does kindness really look like?

I’ll take a real-life example – a stranger from a recent bus ride – to illustrate. A woman gets on the bus, she is on a phone call. She is talking very loudly, and it is not possible to avoid overhearing every word of her phone call (at least her end of it). So, okay – that’s our first moment of unkindness; she seemed utterly unaware that this behavior could be disruptive or unpleasant for other passengers at all. As the call progressed I learned way to much about her, but it fuels the writing this morning. 🙂 She was angry, and venting to a friend about her resentment that her current lover expected her to shower before sex (note, this is happening late in the afternoon on a Wednesday) and observes “I just had a shower on Sunday morning, and it’s not like I’ve had sex since then!”. I’m struck by her resentment… we live in a pretty hygiene conscious society, and my own perspective in this context was to feel just a little shocked that she’d admit to ‘being so nasty’. lol (I am aware that different standards exist in other cultures, and that the frequency of bathing in other circumstances could reasonably be quite different.) She goes on from there to rant about his many other lovers that she is sure exist, and all manner of vengeance she is inclined to enact due to the existence of these other lovers. The conversation continues. In the space of a few minutes she rather self-righteously exclaims a variety of fairly criminal acts to be within reason for her, in her circumstances: stealing her lovers phone to go through his address book without his consent, contacting people she doesn’t know to say derogatory things about him (specifically untrue, and she’s quite clear about that, too), physical violence against her lover or his potential lovers, arson, homicide, assault, gas-lighting, stalking… and all delivered in a tone of utter self-righteous entitlement, and clear anticipation that her position is rationally supportable and justified. It was actually pretty  horrifying to listen to. I could not help but wonder why anyone would have sex with someone who would say such things about them, or potentially behave in any of those ways! She directed an equal measure of implied invective toward herself stating assumptions about other women with similar characteristics reflecting her self-defined short-comings, and the imagined advantages held by women of others sorts. (She was very concerned about the weight of her lovers potential paramours, and made it clear that ‘skinny girls don’t have these problems’ – which goes well beyond any acceptable lack of social awareness for an adult, I think.)

Am I gossiping? I hope not… I am also doing my best to avoid being (or sounding) judgmental… I’m trying to get around to making this point; be kind. Treat yourself and others well. Sure – but if you don’t understand that being loud on a cell phone on the bus is unkind to other passengers, will you know not to do it? If I don’t understand that making threats of violence when I am angry is unkind to people for whom that level of acting out causes anxiety, will I know to work on handling my volatility differently? If we live in a culture where we regularly see people treated as property, will we understand that people are not property – and that assault and arson are not appropriate responses to another human beings sexual decision-making? That it isn’t okay to kill people because we’re angry with them? The woman on the bus very clearly believed in her cause, and that she had been wronged, and that any action she might take to redress that wrong would be acceptable – who taught her that? Who taught her that her lover becomes her property because they have a sexual relationship? Who taught her that someone else’s needs are of less importance than her own? It really got me thinking about me – about what I do or don’t expect from people, and what I find appropriate day-to-day – and why. I can do better, day-to-day, to be kind. I can’t find any reason not to.

Many years ago I was admittedly not particularly concerned about kindness. I didn’t ‘get it’. (Righteous rage doesn’t make much room for compassion or kindness, honestly.) I think about kindness a lot now. I am not able to make a good argument against being kind – but I see a lot of ‘traps’ along my journey; it is tempting to rationalize very good sounding reasons to exclude one person or another from being treated with kindness. It isn’t easy to maintain kindness toward others when I’m having a difficult moment, or feel angry at that person I am tempted to be unkind towards. It is sometimes difficult to be skillful at not permitting myself to be taken advantage of or treated badly in the face of kindness; I know I have much to learn, and I also know that kindness is possible without sacrificing good self-treatment, consideration, and self-respect, too.  Life’s curriculum is rich, complex – and rewarding. I am still a student. I am still a beginner. “I am only an egg.”

What does it take to build a beautiful life?

What does it take to build a beautiful life?

Today is a good day to be kind. It’s also a good day to be kinder than that. It’s a good day to take being the woman I most want to be to another level. We are each having our own experience; a kind moment might be all that other person needs to thrive. It’s a good day to be the change I wish to see in the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

A Cruel & Pointless Joke

March 9, 2015 //
1

Daylight Savings Time again, already; twice a year in the U.S. we play a cruel prank on people whose lives or comfort depend on habit, and timing. Some medications require people take them ‘at the same time every day’ – well, if they do that today, they’re probably going to experience some weirdness, and maybe for a few days to come, until their body gets used to taking their medication at a different time.

My body and brain protest being awakened early. My stomach is upset from taking my medication an hour early (our bodies do not care what the clock face suggests the time to be). The darkness in my room reminds me I have overlooked resetting the aquarium timer; the fish likely won’t care much for the disruption in their rhythms either…so do I change their timing? Or change my thinking about when their lights come on? Considering how shitty I feel every year doing the clock change for Daylight Savings Time, I am likely to just get used to when the lights come on now relative to everything else and leave the fish in peace.

I have never met one person who actually benefits from Daylight Savings Time in any noteworthy way. I know a lot of people who find it difficult to adjust, twice a year, year after year, to this arbitrary change in time. I just don’t get it.

I let my thoughts move on… in a few days I’ll be adjusted to the new timing. My heart goes out to people who find it even more challenging.

Spring sunshine downtown.

Spring sunshine downtown.

It was a lovely weekend. I couldn’t have asked for much more in the way of chill time, well-spent leisure, and good self-care. I start the work week well-rested, content, and aside from the Daylight Savings Time bullshit, I feel pretty good, overall. I’m excited about my upcoming camping trip (next week), particularly because the weather was just wonderful all weekend long; it bodes well for the conditions the weekend I am camping. I wasn’t honestly eager to embrace night-time temperatures potentially below freezing, just willing. 🙂

Today is a good day to treat people well; so many of them may be struggling with the change in time, whether they have awareness of what drives their struggle, or not. Today is a good day to be patient and kind, and today is a good day to smile and slow things down a bit. Today is a good day to show myself the same patience and kindness; I too am getting used to the change in time. Today is a good day to recognize change in the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Relationships, Perspective, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Spring, The Big 5

Weapons of Mass Distraction

January 16, 2015 //
0

Global superpowers have weapons of such indescribable destructive power they are referred to as weapons of mass destruction, or ‘WMD’. Very few people approve of the use of such weapons. WMDs are indiscriminate killers, laying waste to large populations at the point of impact, and involving sometimes a tremendously large area – and a lot of people. These are weapons so deadly that there are numerous treaties and rules by which people have agreed to play nicely, in order not to use WMDs. Very scary.

"Oil Fires" oil on stretched silk, 24" x 65" 1992

“Oil Fires” oil on stretched silk, 24″ x 65″ 1992

I find that in relationships there are also WMDs…but they’re different. They’re ‘weapons of mass distraction’ – behaviors, and language that undermine relationships with no positive outcome, not used for any constructive purpose, that hurt the person they are launched at without any other likely outcome being possible – and highly likely to hurt anyone in the immediate vicinity, too, through the sudden escalation of ‘OPD’ (Other People’s Drama), resulting symptoms ranging from discomfort, to emotional trauma. Make no mistake; weapons of mass distraction serve no obvious positive purpose, and in my own experience appear to be chosen for maximum damage (whether people who practice such damaging behaviors are doing so willfully, or with any real understanding of the damage they do, is a very different question, and I have no answers there). Human beings are capable of causing each other real harm – we’re very fancy primates, and we’re by far the most violent of the primate species.

I’ve been in relationships that would be easy to call ‘abusive’, one of which was quite dangerously physically violent, and I’m lucky to have gotten out alive. One was peculiarly emotionally painful, and did me lasting and nuanced damage over years of manipulation, gas-lighting, and financial abuse. I can’t honestly say at this point that one was truly worse than the other, in some respects; they both left scars, and they both affected the way I understand my fellow-man. Being treated badly by someone who says they ‘love’ you is one of the most horrifically sucking unpleasant experiences, ever. Along the way I discovered that I could choose to be changed, becoming what hurt me so badly, lashing out at the world with similar behavior, and hostility – or I could allow myself the greater challenge of learning, growing, and continuing to become the woman I most want to be, taking care to heal my heart over time, and making better choices, myself. It hasn’t always been easy.

I find that it can be tough to be certain that an emotionally abusive relationship is actually what it is – I never want to recognize that I have chosen so poorly for myself. I have learned to accept that some behavior just isn’t part of the set of Behaviors Common to Love, and I now accept them as clear warning signs of potential abuse. You likely have a few of your own, learned over time. I find that there are 3 behaviors that come up frequently in abusive relationships I’ve been in, that rarely show themselves in good relationships at all: contempt, a practice of continuous criticism, and controlling behavior.

Contempt hasn’t got anything whatever to do with love. There’s not a moment of contempt that ever whispered ‘I love you’ to someone being treated that way, and the damage of being treated with contempt lingers. It’s hard to find more to say about this one; relationships with a lot of it definitely aren’t loving. It’s a nasty way to treat someone under the guise of love, and the damage done lingers.

Controlling behaviors are commonplace in dysfunctional relationships of all kinds. Feeling controlled is definitely a hallmark of abuse in my own experience, and the resulting frustration and feeling of helplessness, and diminishment in personal worth can easily result in reactive acting-out, in a spirally see-saw of love-killing behaviors in which ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ becomes very unclear. Vulnerability, genuineness, and intimacy are critical to love – and not possible in a controlling relationship. Controlling relationships often outlast love, long before they are finally over. I wonder what point there really is for very controlling people to be in romantic relationships at all; from my perspective it often appears they’d be happiest without the complications of the free will of others, or the requirement to treat them well, and respect and consider their humanity.

Criticism is another thing I find common to abusive relationships. I don’t mean constructive feedback about best practices, or supportive dialogue about personal growth. I am talking about the constant negativity, constant complaining, and chronic assumptions of errors in action or judgment that only a person well-practiced in the hostile art of criticism truly understands. I am specifically pointing to ‘blame statements’ based on unvalidated assumptions, and commonly any attempt to refute the underlying assumption is met with further criticism – generally that I am being ‘defensive’. Personally, I find that in principle it’s acceptable to defend myself when attacked – and there’s the thing; in a loving conversation why would we attack each other in the first place? “ABBAB” (Always Be Belittling and Berating) has no place in love. It can be a balancing act; taking care of me certainly requires that I speak up when something unpleasant becomes a household practice I don’t care for… right? Well, but here’s the thing – can’t it be communicated without an attack? Without tearing someone down or hurting their feelings? Without resulting in disrespect, hostility, or questioning the worth of the other person as a human being? Yes, it sure can. (I highly recommend it, however it requires considerable practice for some of us, and a lifetime commitment to being kind.)

Love doesn’t thrive in relationships built on a foundation of contempt, control, and criticism, and it won’t be particularly relevant how long it ‘lasts’ – that shit’s not love.

"You Always Have My Heart" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas with glow.

“You Always Have My Heart” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas with glow.

It seems unkind to point all this out and then not say something positive… so, here’s something amazing, and simple, and lovely that I recently read, that seems the simplest possible rulebook for building love.  Maybe you think there’s more to it? Well, okay, I recently read this, too, and it is very practical worthy advice. Considering the wealth of information on how to build love, how to make love last, how to invest well in love and loving… what excuse does any person have to continue to treat people poorly, especially those they claim to love? Hell, two strangers can meet, talk, and fall in love in hours – tell me how it is acceptable for a moment to treat someone you love with contempt, or to criticize or control them? None of us need that. It sure isn’t love.

Try love sometime; it’s quite wonderful.

Are you finding yourself in disagreement with what I’m saying about love? Are you defending yourself in the moment? Already setting up the argument in your head, and not really hearing what I’m saying? Could be a nice place to start for some handy self-exploration; a character quality of ‘being disagreeable’ is another way to kill love, and generally unproductive and unpleasant to live or work around…although not really a ‘WMD’.  “Agreeableness” is an extraordinary character quality in a human being – and one of my most favorites to cultivate, myself, and to seek out in others. “The nicest person in the room” is nearly always someone who has a character quality of being very agreeable, and it isn’t at all about whether or not they agree with some one opinion, or whether they do or don’t dispute factual errors. It’s more about being cooperative, sympathetic, kind, considerate – being ‘a good sort’, basically. Agreeable people are marvelous to be around, warm and supportive in times of difficulty, and agreeable people know intimacy on a whole different level. Seriously. Try it out sometime.

Your results may vary. There are verbs involved.

Today is a good day for love, and a good day to be the nicest person in the room. Today is a good day to build someone up, instead of tearing them down. Today is a good day to respect boundaries, and be compassionate about limitations. Today is a good day to recognize that saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t say I love you half as well as loving will. Today is a good day to change the world.

 

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Big 5, Uncategorized, Words
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