I was at work when I remembered that it was Mother’s Day. One of the children I work with was just coming down from a temper tantrum. Her voice was raspy from screaming obscenities and threats at me. She stood in front of me, panting, fists clenched. My jaw tightened, and I tried not to flinch, preparing myself to be the recipient of another noisy insult. My heart thundered in my chest.
But then there was a moment of silence. The child’s lips began to quiver, and with a soft thud, she crumpled into a tiny pile at my feet. “I MISS MY MOOOOOOOOOM!” She gripped my ankles and sniffled. “I miss my mom. I miss my mom!” Right, today’s Mother’s Day, I thought. It clicked. That's why she's like this.I haven’t been home in a while. I miss my mom too, kid. I could feel the little sniffling heap shaking against my feet.
I took a long, deep breath. It rattled in my chest and out through my nostrils.
~
I had a great childhood. Of course, it had setbacks and confusions, as everyone’s childhood does, but my family was always a positive constant in my life. My parents were very supportive, nurturing, and kind.
Every evening, from kindergarten through high school, on the way home from school, I looked forward to 7:00pm. This was because 7:00pm was a very special time for me. It was dinnertime. My mother always crafted incontestably the greatest home cooked dinners. I had a couple favorites, including Japanese style curry, rice bowl with chicken and egg, and grilled mackerel with vegetables. Every meal had the perfect balance of nutrients (vegetables, proteins, carbohydrates), textures (crunchy, doughy, fluffy), and tastes (savory, spicy, sweet). It was a sumptuous dinner every day. And every day, regardless of how exciting or disappointing or frustrating my day was, my mother’s cooking was waiting for me at 7:00pm. Regardless of what happened, at 7:00pm, I ate, recharged, and knew that I was alright, that tomorrow was going to be a new day.
That’s just one special example of how my mother’s quiet but constant support helped me navigate the world safely and without much fear.
My mother has always been a quietly strong lady. When I was a child, she went to work on weekdays, and sometimes worked overtime. Upon her arrival home, she went to the kitchen and began to cook dinner. Some days at dinner she had complaints about her coworkers or bad drivers she encountered during her commute, but she never complained about being tired because of work. Maybe I am just not remembering properly, but I do not remember her ever saying that she was tired. She always had things to do, and she always stood up straight and pushed through whatever it was. She never mumbled.
As a painfully shy child, "pushing through" was incredibly difficult for me.
My mother always told me, “Stop cowering and just do what you want,” or “Give it a shot,” or “Stop mumbling. No one can hear you. Be confident about what you think.” It was through watching my mother that I learned the value of hard work. It was my mother who pushed me to just close my eyes and jump, to hit the ground running and smash through any obstacles. When I made a mistake, she taught me to stand up, laugh loudly until it didn’t hurt, and then to sit to plan my next try. She was a pillar of resilience, of polite assertiveness, of power.
As an adult, I have days when I want to just slump on to something and whine about being tired. Days when I seriously doubt my abilities and my character. Days when every small decision feels like the edge of a cliff. On days like that, I wish my mother was here with a plate of warm and welcoming food and some blunt words of encouragement.
But I’m almost 25 now, and my mom lives far away. I miss my mom very much, but it’s no longer her job to provide comfort and brusque motivational speeches to me, and I must not expect that from her. I live alone, and thus, I need to find ways to nourish and comfort myself. I need to rely on myself to inspire myself to try harder and act with confidence, to be accountable for myself and for my dreams.I need to find the strength and kindness of my mom within my own heart and mind, and exercise them every day. On many days, this is hard and my knees tremble from anxiety and doubt.
But I can do it. I need to do it. I’m an adult now, and there is no going back to childhood.
~
I took another deep breath, a little bit less shaky this time, and looked at the trembling heap at my feet. I patted her head. She sniffed. Everything was going to be okay.
Full stop.
~
Sorry this isn’t so much insight as it is a confession or a brain/heart-dump entry. Even if this wasn’t super informative, I hope that at least maybe you can relate.
Love and Peace,
Rina
ponderista
Friday, May 26, 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017
dear racho: friendship breakups
This is the first installation of the series Dear Racho, in which my long time friend Rachel and I write each other open letters. It is in response to this.
~~~
Dear Racho,
Thank you so much for your open letter! I'm happy to hear from you! I know we met—and chatted for 6 hours—last spring, but it seems like longer ago. It’s nice to hear your voice (in my head as I read your letter.)
It pains me to hear that life seems to be giving you a hard time. Ending relationships with core pillars of your support system sounds super destabilizing. I think it’s completely valid to feel angry, heartbroken, frustrated, miserable, trapped in a spiral of angry thoughts and feelings, as you mentioned in your letter. Understandable in every respect.
You mentioned in the letter that you learned that those with low self worth tend to make excuses for people’s bad behavior. And once these relationships end, these people with low self worth often rekindle their relationships with the people that hurt them or subconsciously seek people with similar issues. The fact that you mentioned this implied to me that you may have identified with the situation. It makes me wonder if the problem was that some of the people in your life were treating you poorly, and you unconsciously were permissive of that behavior.
Hence, I would like to start my thoughts to you with a couple important reminders. You do not deserve to be shouted at. You do not deserve to be insulted. You do not deserve to be condescended to. You do not deserve to be touched without your permission. You do not deserve to be deceived about important things. You do not deserve to be belittled. These actions are not okay.
You are important. Accordingly, you deserve to be treated with respect. This is true of you, as it is true of anyone else.
As adults—I guess I’m actually an adult now—we are the primary protectors or advocatesfor ourselves. We are the ones that are tasked with personal maintenance, oradvocating for our own physical and mental wellbeing. This means that we need to be aware of when we are treated poorly, and we need to be the ones to take action when we are hurt. Whether this means gently confronting the person or deciding to keep a distance from him or her, something needs to be done. You can’t let yourself neglect yourself. It takes practice but it’s an attainable skill.
One realization you had, that you mentioned only briefly in your letter was that taking some space from a person can help you to objectively look at your relationship with him or her. I get the feeling that this realization plays a bigger role in your process of your reflection than you may think. Why would removing ourselves from some important thing make it easier for us to objectively think about that thing? Objectively, rationally think. I wonder if the reason is that we are so emotionally invested in our relationships, and heavily charged emotion tends to hinder objective or rational thinking. I know for me it’s almost impossible to think about why my relationships ended or what my ideal friend or partner would be like if I feel like crying all the time. So, as an extension of your realization, we need to chill out a bit before we try to process what happened and why.
In the first paragraph of your letter, you mentioned “going through the stages of grief”, but for some reason going through spirals of anger and sadness. This made me wonder if maybe you were attempting to objectively think while also trying to handle having intense emotions. Intense emotions led to trying to “solve” them, which led to intense emotions and frustration, and so on.
Putting these two ideas together, it may be helpful to divert your attentionfrom trying to process what happened with your friends or your ex-romantic partner until you find that you are less emotionally invested in them, by shifting your attention to practicing being your own advocate and attending to your personal responsibilities, which you mentioned only seem to increase with time. Adulting is hard, as you said, but as adults (as we are), it is a really important part of our lives and wellbeing. Why not focus on that for a bit, and then revisit your beliefs about friendship or relationships in a couple months? Meh. There’s no need to rush.
I dunno. I basically think what you said makes a ton of sense and tried to string them together.
Love,
Rina
~~~
Dear Racho,
Thank you so much for your open letter! I'm happy to hear from you! I know we met—and chatted for 6 hours—last spring, but it seems like longer ago. It’s nice to hear your voice (in my head as I read your letter.)
It pains me to hear that life seems to be giving you a hard time. Ending relationships with core pillars of your support system sounds super destabilizing. I think it’s completely valid to feel angry, heartbroken, frustrated, miserable, trapped in a spiral of angry thoughts and feelings, as you mentioned in your letter. Understandable in every respect.
You mentioned in the letter that you learned that those with low self worth tend to make excuses for people’s bad behavior. And once these relationships end, these people with low self worth often rekindle their relationships with the people that hurt them or subconsciously seek people with similar issues. The fact that you mentioned this implied to me that you may have identified with the situation. It makes me wonder if the problem was that some of the people in your life were treating you poorly, and you unconsciously were permissive of that behavior.
Hence, I would like to start my thoughts to you with a couple important reminders. You do not deserve to be shouted at. You do not deserve to be insulted. You do not deserve to be condescended to. You do not deserve to be touched without your permission. You do not deserve to be deceived about important things. You do not deserve to be belittled. These actions are not okay.
You are important. Accordingly, you deserve to be treated with respect. This is true of you, as it is true of anyone else.
As adults—I guess I’m actually an adult now—we are the primary protectors or advocatesfor ourselves. We are the ones that are tasked with personal maintenance, oradvocating for our own physical and mental wellbeing. This means that we need to be aware of when we are treated poorly, and we need to be the ones to take action when we are hurt. Whether this means gently confronting the person or deciding to keep a distance from him or her, something needs to be done. You can’t let yourself neglect yourself. It takes practice but it’s an attainable skill.
One realization you had, that you mentioned only briefly in your letter was that taking some space from a person can help you to objectively look at your relationship with him or her. I get the feeling that this realization plays a bigger role in your process of your reflection than you may think. Why would removing ourselves from some important thing make it easier for us to objectively think about that thing? Objectively, rationally think. I wonder if the reason is that we are so emotionally invested in our relationships, and heavily charged emotion tends to hinder objective or rational thinking. I know for me it’s almost impossible to think about why my relationships ended or what my ideal friend or partner would be like if I feel like crying all the time. So, as an extension of your realization, we need to chill out a bit before we try to process what happened and why.
In the first paragraph of your letter, you mentioned “going through the stages of grief”, but for some reason going through spirals of anger and sadness. This made me wonder if maybe you were attempting to objectively think while also trying to handle having intense emotions. Intense emotions led to trying to “solve” them, which led to intense emotions and frustration, and so on.
Putting these two ideas together, it may be helpful to divert your attentionfrom trying to process what happened with your friends or your ex-romantic partner until you find that you are less emotionally invested in them, by shifting your attention to practicing being your own advocate and attending to your personal responsibilities, which you mentioned only seem to increase with time. Adulting is hard, as you said, but as adults (as we are), it is a really important part of our lives and wellbeing. Why not focus on that for a bit, and then revisit your beliefs about friendship or relationships in a couple months? Meh. There’s no need to rush.
I dunno. I basically think what you said makes a ton of sense and tried to string them together.
Love,
Rina
Saturday, March 4, 2017
on excess and me
Picture this. It's Sunday, and you are in your home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea, looking out the window at the sunset. The sky melts from orange to deep red. It has been a pleasant weekend. You met up with a friend to go to the gelato shop that both of you have been excited to see for the longest time. You finished all of the housework. You paid your neighbor's kid to wash your car, and now that's clean too. Well, clean enough--what do you expect from a nine-year-old, really? You bring the cup of tea to your lips. The sky is a deep indigo now. You feel the steam envelop your nostrils, and you put the cup down as a strange, sinking feeling hits you in the chest. It's a creeping, nagging feeling that seems to come back at dusk, oftentimes on Sundays. What am I doing with my life? What am I trying to achieve, really? You glance around at your apartment. What is this? The sinking feeling spreads to your stomach and you take another gulp, but the tea just doesn't cure it.
Discontentment. Confusion. Shame. By any of the typical ways to measure happiness, you should have happiness. You have a well-paying job, a humble home, and most of the things you've ever wanted. Everything seems to be in place. And yet... With a sigh, you dump the rest of the tea into the sink and close the curtains.Emptiness remains.
I think we all have this experience. At some point, we acquire the things that we've always wanted, and we expect these things to make us happy. Yet, after finally collecting it all, we're left feeling exhausted and famished rather than content.
There's clearly a problem here. Are we so silly that we expect material items to make us happy? The simple answer is: yes. But the issue is far more complicated than that, and upon looking a bit more at the issue and a bit more gently at myself, I find that it's not all my fault. I don't think that demeaning or degrading anyone solves the problem. So, let's investigate.
Firstly, it can't be your fault because you've been tricked! You've been told this your entire life. We are constantly assailed by advertisements, which promise us the world. The perfume ad promises to turn you into the minx of the city. The car ad promises to make you into the family man (which will make your wife the happy lady she was hoping to be). People grow up in these environments that quietly encourage them to remedy their insecurities through shopping, so it is not at all surprising if the seeds of this idea has been planted in your mind as well.
Secondly, there is some truth behind the idea that materials make us happy. A warm cup of hot chocolate after a long day of work can heal the soul. A three piece suit can sometimes give us the confidence we need to assert ourselves at the job interview. It's easy to look at these experiences and extend our conclusions to say that things are the cures to our ailments, but this is obviously not the case, as there are many exceptions. There are certain things that can make us feel better under certain circumstances, but the abstraction to "all things" and "all circumstances" cannot be made.
So the problem here are that people grow up being taught implicitly that shopping can solve their problems, and through experience they notice that sometimes certain things make them feel better. However, they have their expectations consistently betrayed when shopping repeatedly fails to solve their deepest issues. This gap in expectation and the reality leaves us with a damaged psyche and a ruined Sunday afternoon.
This leads me to the soul-crushing truth: items can make us feel things, but most often, they will not solve our important problems. The problems that people face are far too complex and deeply rooted to be fixed with one purchase. If one truly wants to solve life's problems, one will have to face the problems head on.
So how do we reverse our longtime ritual of collecting items for therapeutic reasons? Many people decide to embrace lifestyles like Minimalism or Essentialism, which encourage people to rid their homes and lives of items and activities that are not core necessities, or even asceticism, which encourages people to avoid indulgences entirely. While I have looked into these lifestyles and agree with many of the core assumptions, I have never really found the need to actively identify with them. I decided to boil them down to the key concepts and explain the essence of them here, and then use them make suggestions for little steps we can take to combat materialism without making the big commitment to lifestyles like Minimalism.
Key idea 1) You have a hierarchy of priorities. There are things that are more important to you than others.
Key idea 2) You can make yourself aware of your hierarchy of priorities though careful observation and periodic reflection.
Key idea 3) Having stuff you don't really care about around you has a net negative impact on your life. You have a scarcity of resources (money, time, and space in your apartment), so spending your money or time or space on things that are relatively unimportant necessarily takes away those resources that could be used instead on relatively important things. Spending our resources on our top priorities is more valuable and makes us feel better. Therefore, getting rid of the things you don't care about positively impacts your life.
The issue boils down to this: you have a decision to make. How should you use your resources? You need to make the criteria for decision-making as true to yourself as possible, and as abundantly clear to yourself as possible. Otherwise, you make poor decisions. This is when that emptiness-on-Sunday-afternoon feeling sets in.
So how do you decide on criteria? Practicing careful observation and periodic reflection are key to developing your criteria. Some helpful questions to think about in this process are: What are your aspirations? What could you not live without? Who are your heroes? What specifically are the qualities or achievements of those heroes that you respect? Be cognizant of your feelings and reactions to things; this is how you collect data on yourself. Next, you analyze this data. Compare your feelings about one thing to your feelings about another. Analyze how you thought and felt about things in the past, make comparisons, and identify themes.
How important is it to you to have many pairs of shoes? Is fashion important to you? Or are you just buying those shoes because your friend says that she read that they are going to be the must-have shoes of spring 2017? Reflect. Feel. Think.
After that, it's a problem of developing the habits or rituals that are conducive to efficient use of your resources. You can reverse the effects that your shopping habit has had on your psyche by replacing that habit with a better one. Replace your shopping habit with a jogging habit or a journal-ing habit or whatever it is sensible people do.
In this way, you don't have to be an ascetic to fight back against the temptation of materialism. We can take some time to reflect on what we truly need, and refocus our lenses on our real priorities: the things that give us joy and meaning.
And, full stop, I guess.
I hope you have some time to reflect on your priorities today.
Love and peace,
Rina
Discontentment. Confusion. Shame. By any of the typical ways to measure happiness, you should have happiness. You have a well-paying job, a humble home, and most of the things you've ever wanted. Everything seems to be in place. And yet... With a sigh, you dump the rest of the tea into the sink and close the curtains.Emptiness remains.
I think we all have this experience. At some point, we acquire the things that we've always wanted, and we expect these things to make us happy. Yet, after finally collecting it all, we're left feeling exhausted and famished rather than content.
There's clearly a problem here. Are we so silly that we expect material items to make us happy? The simple answer is: yes. But the issue is far more complicated than that, and upon looking a bit more at the issue and a bit more gently at myself, I find that it's not all my fault. I don't think that demeaning or degrading anyone solves the problem. So, let's investigate.
Firstly, it can't be your fault because you've been tricked! You've been told this your entire life. We are constantly assailed by advertisements, which promise us the world. The perfume ad promises to turn you into the minx of the city. The car ad promises to make you into the family man (which will make your wife the happy lady she was hoping to be). People grow up in these environments that quietly encourage them to remedy their insecurities through shopping, so it is not at all surprising if the seeds of this idea has been planted in your mind as well.
Secondly, there is some truth behind the idea that materials make us happy. A warm cup of hot chocolate after a long day of work can heal the soul. A three piece suit can sometimes give us the confidence we need to assert ourselves at the job interview. It's easy to look at these experiences and extend our conclusions to say that things are the cures to our ailments, but this is obviously not the case, as there are many exceptions. There are certain things that can make us feel better under certain circumstances, but the abstraction to "all things" and "all circumstances" cannot be made.
So the problem here are that people grow up being taught implicitly that shopping can solve their problems, and through experience they notice that sometimes certain things make them feel better. However, they have their expectations consistently betrayed when shopping repeatedly fails to solve their deepest issues. This gap in expectation and the reality leaves us with a damaged psyche and a ruined Sunday afternoon.
This leads me to the soul-crushing truth: items can make us feel things, but most often, they will not solve our important problems. The problems that people face are far too complex and deeply rooted to be fixed with one purchase. If one truly wants to solve life's problems, one will have to face the problems head on.
So how do we reverse our longtime ritual of collecting items for therapeutic reasons? Many people decide to embrace lifestyles like Minimalism or Essentialism, which encourage people to rid their homes and lives of items and activities that are not core necessities, or even asceticism, which encourages people to avoid indulgences entirely. While I have looked into these lifestyles and agree with many of the core assumptions, I have never really found the need to actively identify with them. I decided to boil them down to the key concepts and explain the essence of them here, and then use them make suggestions for little steps we can take to combat materialism without making the big commitment to lifestyles like Minimalism.
Key idea 1) You have a hierarchy of priorities. There are things that are more important to you than others.
Key idea 2) You can make yourself aware of your hierarchy of priorities though careful observation and periodic reflection.
Key idea 3) Having stuff you don't really care about around you has a net negative impact on your life. You have a scarcity of resources (money, time, and space in your apartment), so spending your money or time or space on things that are relatively unimportant necessarily takes away those resources that could be used instead on relatively important things. Spending our resources on our top priorities is more valuable and makes us feel better. Therefore, getting rid of the things you don't care about positively impacts your life.
The issue boils down to this: you have a decision to make. How should you use your resources? You need to make the criteria for decision-making as true to yourself as possible, and as abundantly clear to yourself as possible. Otherwise, you make poor decisions. This is when that emptiness-on-Sunday-afternoon feeling sets in.
So how do you decide on criteria? Practicing careful observation and periodic reflection are key to developing your criteria. Some helpful questions to think about in this process are: What are your aspirations? What could you not live without? Who are your heroes? What specifically are the qualities or achievements of those heroes that you respect? Be cognizant of your feelings and reactions to things; this is how you collect data on yourself. Next, you analyze this data. Compare your feelings about one thing to your feelings about another. Analyze how you thought and felt about things in the past, make comparisons, and identify themes.
How important is it to you to have many pairs of shoes? Is fashion important to you? Or are you just buying those shoes because your friend says that she read that they are going to be the must-have shoes of spring 2017? Reflect. Feel. Think.
After that, it's a problem of developing the habits or rituals that are conducive to efficient use of your resources. You can reverse the effects that your shopping habit has had on your psyche by replacing that habit with a better one. Replace your shopping habit with a jogging habit or a journal-ing habit or whatever it is sensible people do.
In this way, you don't have to be an ascetic to fight back against the temptation of materialism. We can take some time to reflect on what we truly need, and refocus our lenses on our real priorities: the things that give us joy and meaning.
And, full stop, I guess.
I hope you have some time to reflect on your priorities today.
Love and peace,
Rina
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
on valentine's day and schmucks
Valentines Day is quickly approaching. I'm sure you have been made painfully aware of this by the tacky red and pink hearts in shops and the advertisements for expensive shiny things and cheap boxes of chocolates.
If you talk with anyone about this time of year, you will likely encounter some pretty strong opinions. The big schools of thought seem to be that: 1) Valentines Day is good because it’s good to show your significant other that you love them, 2) Valentines Day is completely preposterous because we should be showing the people we love that we love them every single day, 3) Valentines Day is bad because it promotes the excessive romanticization of romantic relationships and thereby devalues platonic or familial relationships, 4) Valentines Day is bad because shops use marketing that promotes materialism, and in participating in Valentine’s Day, you are promoting the capitalist takeover of the world.
Many seem to ardently hold these strong opinions and also seem very quick to make judgements. Personally, I also used to have a pretty intense distaste for Valentine’s Day, but my opinion has changed over time. Nowadays, it looks like this.
Firstly, most if not all people are emotional beings. We like to know that we are safe and loved, and we like to feel happy and excited. Knowing that, if there is someone that you love, it is likely important to you to make that person feel loved and also to once in a while inject a little of the happy, butterfly-stomach feeling into his or her life. So there, we’ve established that making kind gestures to one's romantic partner is important.
Valentines Day is a day for making those gestures, which we have established are nice to make. This brings us face to face with the next opinion: Valentines Day is silly because we should be expressing our love to our loved ones every day. A wonderful sentiment, and honestly, that was the school of thought I belonged to for a long time. And then I asked myself this question: How often do I do this? The answer was: not often, and more specifically, approximately once every one or two months if not more infrequently.
So here’s the thing that I am now fine with conceding: I am not a purely rational being and I also do not have a good concept of time. Even if I know I should be telling people that I like them every single day, I will inevitably become completely entrenched in my professional and intellectual activities, and I will forget to make the gestures that I know I want to make. For this reason, I need a reminder.
And so, my current opinion is that Valentine’s Day is convenient and helpful because without the reminder to make nice gestures to people, I would forget. And that’s okay. With that said, I also don’t think that once a year is enough. If you took the amount of happiness someone gets from a massive gesture once a year and compared it to the aggregate happiness from tiny gestures many times in a year, it appears that the latter is far bigger for the people that I know well. Accordingly, I ask myself approximately once every one or two weeks if I have made a gesture.
Regarding the argument that Valentines Day devalues non-romantic relationships, I am a firm believer that the only two factors that can devalue my relationship with some person B are person B herself and me. Valentines Day may exaggerate the importance of romantic relationships, but ultimately I am the one to decide if I buy into that idea or not.
Regarding the opinion that Valentines Day promotes materialism, this is indeed the case. Again, whether or not you buy into the materialism is ultimately your choice. In addition, I encourage myself to remember that everyone is different, and so the things that give one person the heart flutter will differ from those of others. It could mean dressing up in an outfit that you know that she particularly likes, or cooking him his favorite meal, or writing her a slightly awkward but heartfelt letter. The gesture can be extravagant, but it doesn't have to be in order to bring about the intended effect. Remembering this can be useful in reversing any materialist influence that Valentines Day marketing has on you.
So are you a cynical grump for having a negative reaction to Valentines Day? Probably not. There is a lot of pressure put on us all by marketing and media during this time of year, and it’s completely natural to have a visceral reaction to it. If you feel stressed, you should do what you always do to handle stress--no need to take it out on people who love Valentine's day.
Are you a sappy schmuck for thinking about celebrating Valentines Day? Probably not. You’re probably just a kindhearted, empathetic person who wants his or her significant other to be happy. That’s wonderful. Just take the time to think about what makes that unique person feel loved and happy—do that thing, rather than buying a ridiculously shiny box of sub-par chocolate.
And that’s where I stand on the issue. More succinctly and elegantly put, I just wish we could chill out and love each other and ignore all the silly stuff, and it's mostly all silly stuff.
If you talk with anyone about this time of year, you will likely encounter some pretty strong opinions. The big schools of thought seem to be that: 1) Valentines Day is good because it’s good to show your significant other that you love them, 2) Valentines Day is completely preposterous because we should be showing the people we love that we love them every single day, 3) Valentines Day is bad because it promotes the excessive romanticization of romantic relationships and thereby devalues platonic or familial relationships, 4) Valentines Day is bad because shops use marketing that promotes materialism, and in participating in Valentine’s Day, you are promoting the capitalist takeover of the world.
Many seem to ardently hold these strong opinions and also seem very quick to make judgements. Personally, I also used to have a pretty intense distaste for Valentine’s Day, but my opinion has changed over time. Nowadays, it looks like this.
Firstly, most if not all people are emotional beings. We like to know that we are safe and loved, and we like to feel happy and excited. Knowing that, if there is someone that you love, it is likely important to you to make that person feel loved and also to once in a while inject a little of the happy, butterfly-stomach feeling into his or her life. So there, we’ve established that making kind gestures to one's romantic partner is important.
Valentines Day is a day for making those gestures, which we have established are nice to make. This brings us face to face with the next opinion: Valentines Day is silly because we should be expressing our love to our loved ones every day. A wonderful sentiment, and honestly, that was the school of thought I belonged to for a long time. And then I asked myself this question: How often do I do this? The answer was: not often, and more specifically, approximately once every one or two months if not more infrequently.
So here’s the thing that I am now fine with conceding: I am not a purely rational being and I also do not have a good concept of time. Even if I know I should be telling people that I like them every single day, I will inevitably become completely entrenched in my professional and intellectual activities, and I will forget to make the gestures that I know I want to make. For this reason, I need a reminder.
And so, my current opinion is that Valentine’s Day is convenient and helpful because without the reminder to make nice gestures to people, I would forget. And that’s okay. With that said, I also don’t think that once a year is enough. If you took the amount of happiness someone gets from a massive gesture once a year and compared it to the aggregate happiness from tiny gestures many times in a year, it appears that the latter is far bigger for the people that I know well. Accordingly, I ask myself approximately once every one or two weeks if I have made a gesture.
Regarding the argument that Valentines Day devalues non-romantic relationships, I am a firm believer that the only two factors that can devalue my relationship with some person B are person B herself and me. Valentines Day may exaggerate the importance of romantic relationships, but ultimately I am the one to decide if I buy into that idea or not.
Regarding the opinion that Valentines Day promotes materialism, this is indeed the case. Again, whether or not you buy into the materialism is ultimately your choice. In addition, I encourage myself to remember that everyone is different, and so the things that give one person the heart flutter will differ from those of others. It could mean dressing up in an outfit that you know that she particularly likes, or cooking him his favorite meal, or writing her a slightly awkward but heartfelt letter. The gesture can be extravagant, but it doesn't have to be in order to bring about the intended effect. Remembering this can be useful in reversing any materialist influence that Valentines Day marketing has on you.
So are you a cynical grump for having a negative reaction to Valentines Day? Probably not. There is a lot of pressure put on us all by marketing and media during this time of year, and it’s completely natural to have a visceral reaction to it. If you feel stressed, you should do what you always do to handle stress--no need to take it out on people who love Valentine's day.
Are you a sappy schmuck for thinking about celebrating Valentines Day? Probably not. You’re probably just a kindhearted, empathetic person who wants his or her significant other to be happy. That’s wonderful. Just take the time to think about what makes that unique person feel loved and happy—do that thing, rather than buying a ridiculously shiny box of sub-par chocolate.
And that’s where I stand on the issue. More succinctly and elegantly put, I just wish we could chill out and love each other and ignore all the silly stuff, and it's mostly all silly stuff.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
about the value of a political opinion
Lately I have been lurking about and reading people’s political discussions. I came across a trend in the discourse that deeply, deeply worries me.
The trend in particular is this: “I can see that we disagree, but you need to respect my opinion. I’m an independent person and you need to respect my right to have an opinion.”
The speaker here is putting two things (1. his right to have an opinion, and 2. his opinion) into one group (things that deserve my respect).
Of course, the first of the two elements does indeed belong in that group. The right to have and develop his own opinion is a freedom of thought, and I respect freedom of thought without question.
The problem is that the second element does not necessarily belong in that group.
I am most certainly not obligated in any way to respect your opinion.
The value of a political opinion is derived from the truth of its premises and the validity of the logic leading to its conclusions. So, if your political opinion is based upon premises that are not true (regardless of whether or not they were true in the past) or if your conclusions are haphazardly drawn, then the value of your political opinion is significantly decreases. Accordingly, I will not respect that opinion because I have no reason to do so.
With that, I think my point is clear. Your opinion does not deserve anyone's respect simply by virtue of existing and being uttered from your mouth. The opinion needs to qualify as worthy of respect.
I apologize that this sounds so aggressive, but I’m being firm for a reason. I have had people show me an opinion that is the intellectual equivalent of a slimy, overripe banana and then demand that I offer their opinions my respect. Who is really the aggressive one here? (Hint: it’s not me.)
The trend in particular is this: “I can see that we disagree, but you need to respect my opinion. I’m an independent person and you need to respect my right to have an opinion.”
The speaker here is putting two things (1. his right to have an opinion, and 2. his opinion) into one group (things that deserve my respect).
Of course, the first of the two elements does indeed belong in that group. The right to have and develop his own opinion is a freedom of thought, and I respect freedom of thought without question.
The problem is that the second element does not necessarily belong in that group.
I am most certainly not obligated in any way to respect your opinion.
The value of a political opinion is derived from the truth of its premises and the validity of the logic leading to its conclusions. So, if your political opinion is based upon premises that are not true (regardless of whether or not they were true in the past) or if your conclusions are haphazardly drawn, then the value of your political opinion is significantly decreases. Accordingly, I will not respect that opinion because I have no reason to do so.
With that, I think my point is clear. Your opinion does not deserve anyone's respect simply by virtue of existing and being uttered from your mouth. The opinion needs to qualify as worthy of respect.
I apologize that this sounds so aggressive, but I’m being firm for a reason. I have had people show me an opinion that is the intellectual equivalent of a slimy, overripe banana and then demand that I offer their opinions my respect. Who is really the aggressive one here? (Hint: it’s not me.)
i need to write more
2017 has crept upon me. It’s February already. I almost forgot to pay rent.
One of my resolutions this year is to write more and to talk to people more.
There are a variety of reasons that I chose this resolution: I noticed that I wonder about things a lot. I like making ideas and contemplating them. However, because I don’t write or talk to people much, I’m left with half-baked ideas that I cannot communicate to others, often feeling isolated and powerless. This is how it has been for a long time, since I was small.
When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite pastimes was to go “fishing". I had my very own fishing net and rod. I took those, some ears of bread from the kitchen, and a bucket down to the lake near my home.
I remember sitting down on the rocks by the lake and balancing the bucket precariously next to me. I balled up the bread and casted the line. The breeze tapped a rhythm on my face with my hair. The waves sighed and licked the rocks. It didn’t take long to get swallowed by the rhythm, and within minutes, my eyes glazed over and I was lost in thought.
I wonder why that homeless guy is always at the bus stop by the grocery store in the morning. I wonder how old he is. He looks pretty old. Maybe he has children. Wait, I don't think I've met homeless kids at my school. I wonder what school they go to. What kind of food do they bring for lunch? Probably sandwiches. That's what most kids have. I guess it makes sense that they would have the same.Actually, how would I know if a kid is homeless or not? Maybe I just don't know. Do I need to know? I probably don't really need to know.
And then there was a tug on my rod. My bait was gone. Ball bread. Cast line. Ponder. Repeat cycle until I became hungry and went home.
Oftentimes, through thinking while fishing, I developed a deeper understanding of the world, a person, or myself, and I could extract some kind of conclusion.
But no one could ever come inside my imagination. I could see, smell, taste, hear, and feel my world, but it was so difficult to explain my imagined experiences in it to anyone else. That was my imagination, and that was all. I couldn’t express the conclusions I drew from it or their significance. I experienced and learned by myself. And this left me feeling isolated, lonely, and powerless.
On top of that, my conclusions remained fuzzy rather than defined in words as concepts. As a result I could not always fully understand their implications, and I often couldn’t build upon them.
This is why writing and talking is important for me. I want to turn my thoughts into concepts that I can communicate to others, that I can record and thus fully analyze and understand. Otherwise, my ideas cannot grow. I cannot grow. And I cannot use my ideas to bring changes I want to see in the world. Pondering and blissfully living in a imaginary world that only I can experience is not enough for me any longer. I want to include others in my world. And I want to use my ideas to make the world a better place.
A key step I need to take is to write and speak.
And with that, I introduce my blog.
One of my resolutions this year is to write more and to talk to people more.
There are a variety of reasons that I chose this resolution: I noticed that I wonder about things a lot. I like making ideas and contemplating them. However, because I don’t write or talk to people much, I’m left with half-baked ideas that I cannot communicate to others, often feeling isolated and powerless. This is how it has been for a long time, since I was small.
When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite pastimes was to go “fishing". I had my very own fishing net and rod. I took those, some ears of bread from the kitchen, and a bucket down to the lake near my home.
I remember sitting down on the rocks by the lake and balancing the bucket precariously next to me. I balled up the bread and casted the line. The breeze tapped a rhythm on my face with my hair. The waves sighed and licked the rocks. It didn’t take long to get swallowed by the rhythm, and within minutes, my eyes glazed over and I was lost in thought.
I wonder why that homeless guy is always at the bus stop by the grocery store in the morning. I wonder how old he is. He looks pretty old. Maybe he has children. Wait, I don't think I've met homeless kids at my school. I wonder what school they go to. What kind of food do they bring for lunch? Probably sandwiches. That's what most kids have. I guess it makes sense that they would have the same.Actually, how would I know if a kid is homeless or not? Maybe I just don't know. Do I need to know? I probably don't really need to know.
And then there was a tug on my rod. My bait was gone. Ball bread. Cast line. Ponder. Repeat cycle until I became hungry and went home.
Oftentimes, through thinking while fishing, I developed a deeper understanding of the world, a person, or myself, and I could extract some kind of conclusion.
But no one could ever come inside my imagination. I could see, smell, taste, hear, and feel my world, but it was so difficult to explain my imagined experiences in it to anyone else. That was my imagination, and that was all. I couldn’t express the conclusions I drew from it or their significance. I experienced and learned by myself. And this left me feeling isolated, lonely, and powerless.
On top of that, my conclusions remained fuzzy rather than defined in words as concepts. As a result I could not always fully understand their implications, and I often couldn’t build upon them.
This is why writing and talking is important for me. I want to turn my thoughts into concepts that I can communicate to others, that I can record and thus fully analyze and understand. Otherwise, my ideas cannot grow. I cannot grow. And I cannot use my ideas to bring changes I want to see in the world. Pondering and blissfully living in a imaginary world that only I can experience is not enough for me any longer. I want to include others in my world. And I want to use my ideas to make the world a better place.
A key step I need to take is to write and speak.
And with that, I introduce my blog.
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