Choice is a Demon

Some more interesting thoughts about thoughts . . . 

People are terrible at predicting outcomes.  The terrible things we imagine happening (think: dentist's office + pain) don't end up being that bad and the enjoyment we expect to get out of fun things (think: football game homecoming - hard benches - shitty hotdogs that cost $10) tend to be more "Meh" than "Wow."  Relax, okay?  It's all going to work out.  Just quit pursuing the pleasure and fleeing the pain.  You're probably getting it wrong. 

If people who are trying to decide whether to see a new movie are given the choice of seeing a short trailer of the film or reading several online reviews written by average viewers most people choose the clip option.  In reality it's much more likely that a bunch of reviews written by non-professionals we don't know is going to predict whether or not we enjoy the show.  We tend to way, way overestimate our abilities.  We are not all that.  We are all pretty average.  Most people view the world in a similar way.  If you like the clip but the average Joe reviews are terrible then you're probably not going to like the movie, either.  Who do you think you are: Gene Siskel?  The average driver rates himself as excellent and everyone else as below average.  Think about it.  The numbers don't work.

Choice is a demon.  Too much choice is a mean demon.

Uncertainty seems like a demon but it's actually not a demon.

Aphorisms and Proverbs and Other Pity Sayings

Self-Righteous:  Having or characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior; convinced of one's own righteousness, especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others; smugly moralistic and intolerant of the actions and opinions of others.

Man, these definitions are like eating Doritoes! - each successive one is better than the one preceding.  I'm especially fond of "smugly moralistic."  Whoo, boy.  "Convinced of one's own righteousness."  Oh, dude.  St. Anthony, on the other hand, reminds us that we should seek  "to understand rather than be understood."

"Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don't have to say what we want.  We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do.  And when we believe something, we assume we are right about it to the point that we will destroy relationships in order to defend our position."

Man, c'mon, read my mind!  Fuck's the matter with you, anyway?  SuperK says this to me all the time: "Use your words, Seaweed, use your words."  People should just know what I want and then fulfill my every wish. 

"If others change, it's because they want to change, not because you can change them.  Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.  If we try to change them, this means we don't really like them."

Man, nobody's listening to me!  They don't care what my thoughts are about how they can improve their morals and opinions.  Fuck's the matter with me, anyway?

"If you don't understand, ask.  Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation.  Also, find your voice to ask for what you want.  Everybody has the right to tell you no or yes, but you always have the right to ask.  Likewise, everybody has the right to ask you, and you have the right to say yes or no."

Man, somewhere in a distant galaxy long, long ago I heard the proverb "If you're unsure . .  the best answer is always No because it can more easily be changed to Yes than the other way around."  Sometimes people in A.A. will remind me that you shouldn't ever turn down an A.A. request, that you should never say no when someone asks you to be of service.  Fucking kidding me?  I say no all the time and if the petitioner presses his case I'll simply say that I don't want to do it.  Sometimes, I'll ask what the pay is and I remind folks that are looking for a sponsor that I'm very, very expensive, like a Wall Street lawyer.  I get results but it's gonna cost ya.

My Man Malik

I was walking back to my car after a meeting one morning when I stopped a grandma and a young boy who were walking to school.  I always like to see this.  Grandma and grandson.  In Spain work starts later than in the U.S. so kids often walk with their parents or a parent on the way to school a spectacle that I very much enjoyed seeing.  The presence of a matriarch or father-figure with a child heading to school in the cool morning air.  I don't go anywhere anymore where there's cold morning air.  Fuck that.  Cool morning air I can do but you can get yourself to school any way you can when it's cold.

I started a conversation with the boy.  He appeared to be ten or eleven years old.  I don't remember exactly what off-kilter thing I opened up with.  Kids generally like me.  I think my off-kilter-ness is sort of arresting.  Like: "what is this adult doing, anyhow?"  They're so eager to please and they're so willing to believe an adult even when the dialogue is so nonsensical that much of the time they stand and look at me, transfixed, flummoxed.  They moved on.  Summer arrived so I didn't get to see them regularly.  School began again and I ran into them again and we talked briefly, again.  I gave him a hug.  He hugged back.  Not long after that, as I was ambling along, I saw the two of them coming my way.  The boy - Malik - separated from grandma and came right in for a hug before the conversation began.  I always try to be super (Sorry, California word) positive with kids, super-energetic and complimentary.  I always felt like I was messing up, falling short, when I was growing up (not because I was being told this but because it was lodged in my mind) so I just can't make anyone feel bad about anything.  Same same as in A.A.

This is, I believe, a mandate I have been given by the Great Spirit.  Recharge people, recharge the world, let peace and positivity and calmness ooze from my Very Being.

I'm Unable to Change the Past

"We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything.  The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they're the truth.  We could swear they are real and this swearing is exacerbated by the fact that sometimes they are real.  We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking - we take it personally - then we blame them.  We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear.  We don't perceive things the way they are.  We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality.  We literally dream things up in our imagination."

In other words: No one is thinking about me.

"It is comforting to know that every day we are in contact with people who put such confidence in us that we strive harder to do our best.  When one person can be challenged, another may need to be told how to rise above emotions and imagined shortcomings.  We all need approval and attention, and when someone cares, it makes an important difference."

I often remind myself that the only good message is one that builds up.  I realize all of us need to get a swift kick in the ass some of the time - we're that stubborn in our beliefs and behavior - but I devote most of my time to patting the back instead of kicking the ass.  We are so incredibly hard on ourselves that I don't have the heart to yell at anyone.  

"We might be able to go back and do things differently if we had new knowledge, new understanding.  Otherwise, we would do the same things.  We work with what we have, with what we know.  To anguish over what we did in the past is foolish.  Most of our regrets, of course, are either imagined or history."

I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time.  And I know this to be fact: I am completely unable to change the past.

Twenty Bucks

As the current thematic drift has been sorta along the lines of "quit bullshitting yourself" and also "quit repeating yourself" I'm going to repeat one of my favorite themes: how good we are at bullshitting ourselves.

This may be an old example but it's so damn good I'm going with it again:
If I offered you a twenty dollar coupon that you could apply to a thirty dollar grocery bill with the only stipulation that you had to walk an extra fifteen minutes past your regular grocery store to a second store to earn the discount, what would you say?  No brainer, right?

Now let's change the offer: would you make the same fifteen minute walk to earn the same twenty dollar coupon if you were purchasing a fifty thousand dollar car?  No fucking way, right?  I'm spending fifty grand so twenty bucks is chicken feed, right?

This is illogical.  This makes no sense.  Zero sense.  The coupon is a reward for walking fifteen minutes out of your way but in one case you jump at the offer and in the next you laugh it off, even though it's the exact same thing.  This is why people pay money for a navigation system they'll never us or for a bigger engine that provides no extra performance.  They compare instead of looking at the math.

I don't trust my thinking.  And I think a lot.  The message to myself is that most of it's bullshit.

Our minds do this stuff all the time.  There's an evolutionary reason behind it, no doubt, but it's not helpful in all cases.  This is why those of us who have been around for a while know how important it is to talk to other people.  We're nuts, basically.  We're not really nuts anymore and we're not nuts all the time but we're still nuts.  I cannot tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a story or an anecdote or a justification when I see a skeptical look grow on the face of the person I'm talking to.  Just because I've manipulated the facts so that they make sense to me doesn't mean that they make sense in an absolute sense.

Self-Restraint

Self-Restraint:  Control over your own actions or feelings that keeps you from doing things that you want to do but should not do.  If you show self-restraint you do not do something even though you would like to do it, because you think it would be better not to.

The benefits of a close reading of our literature continue to accrue.  Highlights and underlining also 

help because they show me how repetitive our Founders were when they wrote the books.  They knew we wern't listening most of the time so they had to say the same things over and over and over.  Most of the time they didn't even bother to use different words.  They used the same words to say the same things, often in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same sentence.

I may have made that last point up.

From Step Ten in the 12&12: "In all these situations we need self-restraint . . .  Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint.  Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.  For we can neither think nor act to good purpose untile the habit of self-restraint has become automatic.  Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the only ones that call for self-control."

All of these lines were from the same paragraph in Step Ten.

I definitely made part of that up.  The last sentence was the first sentence in the second paragraph and not in the same paragraph but that's so close I hoped I could get away with such a minor lie, one given with such noble intent.  A good lie, right, not an evil, nasty lie.  But the point is that apparently self-restraint is one of our goals.  Because it is repeated five times in a manner of seconds.

OK, I made that up, too.  It's not repeated in a manner of seconds - more like minutes - but seconds sounds so much more impressive.

Toltecs and Bill W and Dr. Bob, Oh, My

"Sometimes wisdom is knowing what to overlook.  Because we never know when we are going to be in another person's shoes.  If it should happen, we want to be forgiven - for a variety of reasons.  Overlooking shortcomings is not just wisdom - it's kindness as well.  Who has not hoped the world was looking the other way when he or she fell short of being admirable?"

  

The Toltecs are killing me here.  How important is the spiritual lesson that "to err is human, to forgive divine?"  To realize that my annoyance at someone else is due to the fact that I quickly jump to the conclusion that their actions harbor ill intent, bad motives, a desire to do me personal harm, instead of deciding that maybe they just made a fucking mistake?  Priceless.  Priceless in the peace of mind department.

"Me, me, me, always me!  Nothing other people do is because of you.  It is because of themselves.  All people live in their own dream, in their own mind, so don't take it personally.  That person tried to send poison to you and if you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours.   When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts.  You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong."

The two sure steps to serenity are 1) Don't sweat the small stuff and 2) It's all small stuff.  Or an elephant is really a mouse built to an alcoholic's specifications.  Do you really think that the guy in front of you who is driving too slowly or too quickly or with their left hand turn signal blinking continuously or making a turn without using a turn signal is doing something to you?

Or . . . do you want to be right?  Or do you want to be happy?  (Ed. Note: I always thought this was a trick question, the answer being, natch, both!  I'm happy because I'm right!)

"It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don't take what you think personally.  It does not affect me because I know what I am.  I don't have the need to be accepted.  I don't have the need to have someone tell me what I am.  It doesn't matter to me."

While the axiom of "I don't give a shit" can get out of control from time to time not giving a shit can really save me some angst.

"You are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor.  Everyone else is a secondary actor.  It is your movie.  It is no one's truth but yours.  Then if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself.  I am the excuse for you to get mad.  And you got mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear.  If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me.  If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of those emotions.  Because you like the way you are.  Because you are content with you.  Because you are happy with your life.  You are happy with the movie that you are producing, happy with your agreements with life."

Here's Alcoholics Anonymous: "Every person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in his own way.  If only people did what he wished, the show would be great.  Everyone, including himself, would be pleased.  The show would be great.  In trying to make these arrangements our actor may be quite virteous.  On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, and selfish and dishonest." 

This idea that I need to figure out what everyone else should be doing is simultaneously preposterous and profound.  I'm the actor.  I'm not even the actor, I'm an actor.