Blah Blah Blah

I've developed a new response to unsolicited advice.

Blah blah blah.

That's it.

It's remarkably efficient.

Someone tells me how I should live.

Blah blah blah.

Someone explains what I should worry about.

Blah blah blah.

Someone tells me that ten people have told me the same thing, therefore perhaps I should listen.

No.

Ten people having an opinion means ten people have an opinion.

I heard you.

Blah blah blah.

Everybody Is A Life Coach

I don't understand people's fascination with telling other adults how to live.

They take their experience, their fears, their mistakes, their parents, their relationships, their beliefs, and then somehow arrive at:

Therefore, you should...

Why?

Your life happened to you.

Mine happened to me.

You learned something from your experience?

Great.

Use it.

Somebody recently gave me advice and then reinforced it with:

"My mother used to tell me this."

Okay.

Your mother told you something.

What the fuck does that have to do with me?

People seem to believe experience produces authority.

It doesn't.

Experience produces experience.

You can tell me about yours.

I may find it fascinating.

I may even learn something from it.

But the moment it becomes an instruction manual for my life, we've taken a strange turn.

Concern

Concern is another interesting one.

Somebody worries about me.

Okay.

That's real.

They experience worry.

But whose experience is that?

Theirs.

Concern may cause them to act.

They can call me.

They can tell me they're worried.

They can offer something.

They can decide what they want to do.

All perfectly reasonable.

But somehow concern frequently mutates into:

I'm worried about you, therefore you should change your behavior so I don't have to worry.

That's a fascinating transfer of responsibility.

No.

You worry.

Or don't.

I'm not going to tell you how to manage your worry.

See how easy that is?

Ten People Told You

I heard this recently:

"If ten people are telling you the same thing, maybe you should listen."

Why?

Seriously.

Why?

Maybe ten people are right.

Maybe ten people are wrong.

Maybe ten people share the same cultural assumptions.

Maybe I'm doing something unusual.

Maybe I'm being an idiot.

All of those things are possible.

But there's a strange leap between:

Ten people independently believe something about me.

and:

Therefore I should do what they say.

No.

I should know that ten people think something.

That's information.

What I do with that information remains mine.

Listening isn't obedience.

Stoicism Gets Funny Here

This gets particularly entertaining when somebody who talks about Stoicism tries to tell me how to live.

Come on, buddy.

We started this philosophy with the distinction between what is and isn't under your control.

You can tell me something.

That's yours.

Whether I listen?

Not yours.

Whether I agree?

Not yours.

Whether I change?

Definitely not yours.

So if you're repeatedly trying to make another adult behave differently because you're worried about what they're doing, perhaps we should reopen Chapter One.

I'm over here practicing your philosophy for you.

You're welcome.

Suffering Twice

There's an old Stoic idea that has always amused me:

We frequently suffer in imagination before anything has actually happened.

Somebody worries that I'm going to die.

Well, eventually they're going to be correct.

Excellent prediction.

But worrying about it today doesn't prevent it.

If the thing eventually happens, you've now experienced some version of it repeatedly before the actual event.

That seems exhausting.

I don't want to do that.

I have enough shit happening in the present without importing hypothetical shit from the future.

Then Buddhism Showed Up

The funny thing is that lately Buddhism keeps arriving immediately after something pisses me off.

It's becoming suspicious.

Something happens.

I lose my shit temporarily.

Then I put on some four-hour Buddhist lecture while I'm going to sleep and some motherfucker starts talking directly at the thing that happened six hours earlier.

Acceptance.

Patience.

Mental strength.

Not forcing things.

Not needing to understand everything.

Not allowing other people's behavior to dictate your internal state.

Goddammit.

Fine.

Keep talking.

The thing that keeps hitting me isn't that I'm discovering completely foreign ideas.

It's the opposite.

I keep hearing language for things I've already been moving toward.

Sometimes I've even said almost the exact thing to myself before hearing somebody else say it.

And then another philosophy says it differently.

Then another one.

Everybody Apparently Knows The Same Trick

Stoicism says:

Pay attention to what is actually yours.

Buddhism talks about attachment, craving and aversion.

Taoism comes along with wu wei and says, essentially:

Stop fucking forcing everything.

I'm oversimplifying all three.

Of course I am.

They're enormous traditions developed across completely different cultures and centuries.

I'm not trying to merge them into one philosophy.

I'm talking about what happens when I actually live.

Different roads keep bringing me to remarkably similar places.

You cannot rewrite the past.

You cannot control another person.

You don't need to react to everything.

You don't need to force an outcome.

You can act without demanding that reality cooperate.

You can care without clinging.

You can let something happen without immediately turning it into a problem requiring intervention.

Apparently humanity has been rediscovering this shit for a very long time.

The Past Is Closed

One of the things I heard recently was something I've thought about many times:

Whatever decision you made in the past, you made it as the person you were then, with the information available then.

Present-you has more information.

Obviously.

Present-you knows what happened next.

Past-you didn't.

So judging past-you for failing to possess information acquired afterward is a ridiculous trial.

I don't even particularly like calling old decisions good or bad anymore.

The question I sometimes ask is:

Would I make that choice now?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

And then there's another realization:

It doesn't fucking matter.

The choice isn't available anymore.

There's nothing to choose.

The past happened.

Case closed.

Not Understanding Is Allowed

This one has been useful.

I don't have to understand everything.

Why did somebody do that?

What were they thinking?

What did they mean?

Why did this relationship end?

Why didn't somebody answer?

Why did somebody behave completely differently than I expected?

Maybe I'll understand eventually.

Maybe I won't.

Nothing in the universe appears to require me to complete the analysis.

This is particularly funny because my brain loves analysis.

It stores shit without asking me.

Months later, sometimes years later, three completely unrelated memories suddenly show up and my brain goes:

LOOK. PATTERN.

Thank you, brain.

I was trying to sleep.

But even when I recognize a pattern, I don't necessarily have to do anything about it.

Information does not automatically create an action item.

That's been a useful discovery.

Dating Is Excellent Practice

Online dating may be one of the greatest laboratories ever constructed for learning not to force things.

You match.

You say something.

They respond.

Sometimes you get:

"How are you?"

"I'm well."

And that's apparently the entire contribution.

Okay.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

I can manufacture another question.

Then another.

Then another.

Eventually I've accidentally become a journalist conducting an interview with somebody who supposedly matched with me because they're interested.

No.

The conversation can sit there.

Maybe she says something.

Maybe she doesn't.

Nothing requires me to create momentum simply because momentum doesn't exist.

Another woman told me:

"Destiny."

Interesting.

Then contributed almost nothing to the conversation and eventually unmatched me.

Apparently destiny had a remarkably short runtime.

Fine.

Destiny has spoken.

People Want Things

Someone recently said something to me that sounded vaguely like:

"I want things. But not now."

Okay.

People want things.

I want things too.

That doesn't mean they're going to happen.

It doesn't mean somebody else has to produce them.

It doesn't even necessarily mean they're relevant to whatever is happening right now.

This has become another surprisingly useful distinction:

Your desire is information about you.

It is not automatically an instruction for me.

Want away.

Not Every Fight Requires Two People

This might be my favorite one.

Sometimes somebody behaves as though there's a conflict happening.

They maneuver.

They plan.

They send messages through other people.

They position things.

They expect responses.

And eventually I realized:

You can have a fight with somebody who isn't fighting you.

At least for a while.

They're doing all this shit.

You're making coffee.

They're executing Operation Whatever-The-Fuck.

You're walking the dog.

They're anticipating your next move.

You don't have one.

Eventually the whole thing becomes funny.

Not because nothing matters.

Because participation is optional far more often than we realize.

Patience

I used to think patience meant waiting.

I'm beginning to think that's only part of it.

Patience can also mean not demanding that something resolve itself immediately.

Someone doesn't reply?

Okay.

A relationship is uncertain?

Okay.

A legal process is moving slowly?

Okay.

Somebody wants something from me later?

Cool.

We'll deal with later when later becomes now.

This is profoundly annoying to the part of the brain that wants closure.

Fortunately:

Blah blah blah.

Detachment Isn't Apathy

I used to think becoming detached would be frightening.

I imagined becoming cold.

Nothing matters.

Nobody matters.

Whatever.

That's not what I'm experiencing.

I still care.

Sometimes enormously.

I still get angry.

I still get hurt.

I still like people.

I still love people.

I still want things.

The difference is that increasingly I don't require those feelings to dictate what happens next.

I can like somebody and not chase them.

I can care about somebody and not solve their problems.

I can be angry and eventually let the thing go.

I can want something and accept that I may never have it.

I can hear somebody's opinion and leave it with them.

That's not apathy.

If anything, it feels considerably cleaner.

Blah Blah Blah

So perhaps "blah blah blah" isn't as dismissive as it sounds.

Sometimes it means:

I heard you.

Sometimes:

I understand.

Sometimes:

You may even be right.

But none of those statements necessarily require action.

The world produces an extraordinary amount of noise.

People have opinions.

People worry.

People advise.

People demand.

People predict.

People want.

People misunderstand.

People tell you who you are.

And apparently I've spent a lot of my life believing I had to respond.

Explain.

Correct.

Argue.

Defend.

Convince.

Fix.

Increasingly, I don't.

Sometimes the strongest response I have is:

Blah blah blah.

And then I continue with my fucking day.