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There's an awful lot of contention going on lately. Let's share some important beliefs in an attempt to get to know each other and build bridges. I'm hoping we can spark some really awesome conversation here about things which are really important to us. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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My friend Eugene invented a science called "Eugenics". It had to do with making everyone more like himself, because he was so awesome. I never looked up what it meant, though.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I'm wrestling with the middles now. For some time, I strove always to turn the other cheek, to answer a harsh word with a soft one, and to buffer ill will as much as I could without returning it. This wasn't spectacularly successful, but it was a sincere attempt, and in some cases I think it made the situations I was in better for all overall.
However. However, I found myself (of my own responsibility and out of my own choices) flattening out psychologically. I found my own limits there, and it felt like my buffering abilities wore out (like baking soda can only buffer the acidity of so much vinegar). And more and more, it seemed to be making the overall situation worse -- angry people became angrier, users became more comfortable with using, and I felt like I was actively participating in the degradation of my own soul by not speaking out in my own defense (or at least naming what I saw in front of me that was wrong).
By the way, I'm not speaking of Hatrack here. I am speaking more to my work life, including working full time for 6 months without a paycheck, and then learning I would not be back-paid after all (leaving no money that we had counted on for tax payments, and thus leading to the wiping out of our retirement accounts altogether). Ouch. And also a medical residency earlier, which left me a very bitter and mean-mouthed harpy towards everybody. Double ouch. (But still as a result of my own choices, forseeable even.)
Well. I tried both extremes -- the meek and the witchly -- and neither really suited as good, useful, viable approaches in the long term. I need to do the fearful thing and find the right path through the relatively uncharted middle. Egads, this is much, much more difficult, but it's more difficult in the end not to do it.
---
Edited to add: I love Mayflies. *warmly
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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The middle road is definitely a harder path, but I agree that is it most often the better one. The Rambam (Maimonides), drawing on Aristotle, called it the shvil hazahav, the golden mean, and recommended it for almost everything.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Ah, but it lacks the satisfyingly angsty and bright-flashing drama of burning out at either end. What to do, what to do? Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I'll be happy to tell you all exactly what to do with your lives. And then my daughter can disagree with me and tell you to do the opposite.
My mom sometimes says to me, "Remember how I used to tell you that someday you would have a child just like you? Well..."
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:"Remember how I used to tell you that someday you would have a child just like you? Well..."
hahahahah
That's what my Mum says to my Sister about my niece. The revenge of the Grandmother...
As for dating, it sucks. Fortunately for me my wife has very poor taste in men and shockingly low standards.
Posts: 892 | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: The middle road is definitely a harder path, but I agree that is it most often the better one. The Rambam (Maimonides), drawing on Aristotle, called it the shvil hazahav, the golden mean, and recommended it for almost everything.
Even moderation should be done in moderation.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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My father used to curse me that I should have a child just like me. When I was 18, he said, "Remember when I used to say you should have a child just like you? I take it back. Even you don't deserve that."
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I believe I will never be able to go to bed with a book I am enjoying and actually go to sleep without finishing the thing.
I deeply believe this. Those people who read to get to sleep and tell me I can do the same - it's a trap. A trap that sees me reading until 3 am.
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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There needs to be some more research and personal attacks before I can delete this thread in good conscience.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: ...and we're approaching our fourth anniversary next Wednesday...
Four!? Wow!
Time sure flies when it's someone else's life!
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: There needs to be some more research and personal attacks before I can delete this thread in good conscience.
You smell like elderberries and your mother dresses you funny.
quote:Originally posted by theCrowsWife:
quote:I believe I will never be able to go to bed with a book I am enjoying and actually go to sleep without finishing the thing.
There's your problem. If you really want to read yourself to sleep, go to bed with something boring and unenjoyable.
*yawn* In my case, it was simpler than that. I turned 30. Being old (but not old enough to be an archetype, dagnabbit!) and tired means I fall asleep while reading despite my every intention otherwise. Not always, but more often than not.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I've noticed something. It has become much easier to...behave how I believe I should as I've gotten older.
The thing is, I am NOT a better person than I used to be. I'm less likely (not necessarily un-, but less likely) to do hurtful things to other people, but...I'm not better intentioned. I'm not more sincere. I'm not more faithful. I'm certainly not trying harder. It's just easier not to. It is more apparent that it is in my own self-interest to be better behaved. But I'm not a better person - I know I'm not. I'm lazier.
*troubled*
The only thing that makes this better is that I'm such a work in progress.
One thing I learned on my mission is that I was every kind of missionary. I was great, I was awful; I was a flirt with the elders; I was a model of aloof friendliness; I was obedient; I was lazy (but not rebellious) about obedience; I was filled with the spirit; I was so angry and spirit-less than my companion made me stop tracting. I was every kind of missionary. I was, at one point or another, a missionary who did every thing good in the missionary guide and everything less effective. So what kind of missionary was I?
Well, it did get better as I got along. The last half was better than the first (although less productive - go figure).
Is life like that? Or is the bar raised higher as some thing become easier? Am I doomed to constantly seek what is hardest for me in a particular time of life? Is that not doom but just a way to keep myself from getting bored?
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I think it's all about the little triumphs and recognizing when you are about to enter or have left some phase, some mood, some whatever and so can moderate it a bit and maybe come out of it faster.
I don't know that the bar gets raised higher. It's just that your understanding of what it really is becomes more refined (hopefully).
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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About the middle... I like the Chestertonian take on it (there's a surprise) that the mean is not to be found by walking the middle road, but by being both extremes in their approriate places
quote:"Nether swagger nor grovel" was a limitation, but "here you can swagger and her you can grovel"-- that was an emancipation.
Doesn't really cover it, but gives a bit of the idea. he goes on to say that Joan of Arc, as an example, outdid both Nietsche and Tolstoy at their own contrary ideas.
or, as Roger McGwinn (or maybe someone before him ) once said "To everything there is a season"
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I should have mentioned at the beginning of this thread that I'm making a pledge not to delete any Mayfly threads I make this week.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Wow, CT, that is awful. My experience is there are a lot of labor lawyers who will take your case on contingency. Mostly we are against such people, but not paying a doctor for 6 months seems criminally abusive to me.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: Um, right...
Okay, how about, um, non-soap-opera-y?
...and we're approaching our fourth anniversary next Wednesday... And no one's dead yet! Yay!
I went to a wedding a while ago that gave me all the proof I'll ever need that the soap-opera dramatics some people inflict on one another in college cease being cute by the time those people are in their thirties.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: Wow, CT, that is awful. My experience is there are a lot of labor lawyers who will take your case on contingency. Mostly we are against such people, but not paying a doctor for 6 months seems criminally abusive to me.
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Didn't you get the memo? We changed your name to "Mysterious Mystery Lady of Mystery", person formerly known as rivka.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Hatrack is my soap opera. It's like Hobbiton. Always something interesting going on.
CT, have you seen the movie Dogville? I really think you'd like it. It was fascinating and disturbing and thought provoking to me. I got really mad and sad, too. I mean, it's horrifying in a way but also it felt very much like a thought experiment. So I don't know. If you've seen it I'd love to hear what you thought.
I just had a thought that in the end we're all of us mayflies. A hundred years, a thousand years, a million years, what is that?
<happily dances for this brief instant>
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Didn't you get the memo? We changed your name to "Mysterious Mystery Lady of Mystery", person formerly known as rivka.
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