Hi to yourself!

OK, I wrote a response, then I looked up my own values I had written last year (and posted them on another website, which is why they have explanations and are written in English despite that not being my native language). Now I’m reflecting your question again against the values I had written before and decided to delete my initial response 🙂

My initial thought was that I would be OK with someone having values different from mine, as long as both would respect the other person’s values and would maintain their own integrity. I’m not so sure now. Looking at my own values, I don’t think I could be with someone who would think in a completely different way. I also am not attracted at all to men who lack values of their own. I would love to inspire a man, but I don’t want to influence him to the point that he would just abandon his own beliefs at the drop of a hat to adopt mine. I have met *many* men who are ready to agree with me or change their own opinions just because they wanted to please me, and it has never pleased me 🙂

I do think that values can change as we become more experienced about the world. We mellow and become more accepting and realize that there is not just one right way to do things and the ultimate truth is quite unobtainable to us mere humans. Being flexible and understanding could also be a value 🙂

Anyway, here are my values:

Respect towards all people and other living beings
Respect doesn’t have to be earned. Respect is something that you have in your heart and mind. Being respectful towards others, regardless of who they are and how they behave is in my opinion important. Everything has value. Mocking other people and calling them stupid is an ugly thing to do. To see someone as having less value and pointing that out is the mark of an immature and insecure person. We all have those moments, but it shouldn’t be a continual state of being.

Being courageous
Everyone has bad days and we all get hurt and become fearful. Lashing out during an initial shock is understandable. Yet, when the moment passes, one should take time to heal the wounds and strive to move forward with courage. Seeing fault in everything, complaining and whining and fearmongering will not only cause damage to that person, but to everyone around them.

Honesty and authenticity
This one is difficult, because we can easily lie to ourselves and still think that we’re being totally honest and authentic. Sometimes things can be so difficult and painful to look at and admit to, that we simply deny the reality and create an alternative one. Still, it’s something we should strive for.

Supporting, encouraging and protecting others
When someone makes an effort to be authentic or show their vulnerability, it may spark fear in others who aren’t prepared to do that. I know I’ve felt that. Yet, those who are courageous enough to open their hearts should be supported and encouraged. We need to protect and nurture life, not destroy it and live as zombies.

Well, I have expanded my “experiment”, and I’m actively not getting involved in everything, not only on FB, but elsewhere as well. Especially if I feel like I have to point out my own unique point of view, I stop myself and ask “why?”. Why do I need to entangle myself with things that do not matter? Do I need to make everything public?

The less I share and the more I keep things to myself, the more I feel like I’m in control of my own life and I feel free and happy.

I’m not saying that not sharing thoughts is bad (I’m sharing my thoughts right now), but to be much more discerning about when and what. Being silent not only allows me not to get too entangled with thoughts (especially other people’s thoughts), but also enforces my boundaries. What other people think is their business and what I think is my business 🙂

Dear Breathing,

I saw this post yesterday, and felt like I needed to respond, but I was overcome by fear of saying the wrong things. I’m not a Buddhist (although I’m also not un-Buddhist-like). I haven’t experienced what you’ve experienced, so I can’t truly relate. I am sorry for all the suffering you have gone through on your journey.

After the most peculiar sequence of events, I am now awake at 3.44am after waking up from the most horrific child abuse related nightmare (complete fiction, but scary) and having to calm myself down by going through some actual events that have happened to me, which I was thinking about before I fell asleep. I’m not going to get into the details, as they don’t matter, but I feel compelled now to share couple of thoughts that came to me during tonight.

Reconnect with the reality after the dream. Not just today’s reality, but also to accept what has happened before. Turn to the child within, who’s probably feeling scared after being reminded of the past, and say something like “Yes, it did happen, I’m sorry and I refuse to carry shame over what has happened.” Something that has been suppressed and hidden for a long time has a need to be acknowledged before it can go away. I am sure that you have been working on this before, but if it does come back again, then acknowledging and accepting the reality would hopefully bring some release. Also, I think that it’s important to acknowledge the child within and his suffering. When we are children, we don’t have a strong voice and what we would’ve then most needed is someone to acknowledge and listen and validate. As an adult, you can give the much needed attention to your own inner child.

Sleep and dreams serve a purpose. We need all of it, the deep sleep and the dreams states, to keep ourselves sane. When we rest, the brain is tended to, and everything that we have been thinking of or have experienced will go through inspection. Mostly new stuff, sometimes old. Even the things we don’t want to think about, and sometimes especially the things we don’t want to think about. I have occasionally these dreams where all the rage I’ve been bottling up as a child and teenager will come out in the most aggressive ways. At first they scared me, but now I look at them as something that keeps me sane. Sure, it takes a while to calm down afterwards, but it’s also good to put the dream into perspective and not necessarily seek any bigger meaning in it.

I hope you will find a way to face the emotional turmoil.

@zita

“What I am – is changing in any given moment – very true, but don’t you think that sometimes having a fluid sense of self can also create conflict / crisis ? For me it creates confusion. For example – am I suppose to be strong in a given moment of pain or should I allow myself to break down and let it out of my system ? If I develop a pattern of breaking down each time ( since I allowed myself to ) then will I ever know what it is to be strong ? It’s hard to separate thoughts of what I am suppose to be and what I am .”

I don’t think that you are changing constantly, but the circumstances change and you do grow and learn all the time. I think that the whole point of being fluid (or authentic) is to not create patterns or respond to things with “should” and “supposed to”.

I do think that everyone would benefit greatly from developing some skills like being patient. To not react to things without any thought, but to respond only after a moment of reflection. You can still respond to things with authenticity from your unique point of view. You’d just be doing it in a more mature way. It would be the mature version of yourself.

I’ll ask you to think of this: who is asking you to define yourself and for what purpose? We strive to define our whole being in a few keywords, but why? It is one thing to list skills in a job interview, but to describe yourself as a person is kind of pointless.

A person says that they are “confident, independent and kind”. They know it, and we know it, that they’re not those things 100% of the time. Some people aren’t those things most of the time, and they still describe themselves as such. For what purpose? So that we could treat them with prejudice instead of allowing them to show their true colours? It makes no sense when you really think about it.

Even in dating ads, one should rather describe how they feel about things rather than saying who they think they are. Because in all honesty, a person who makes a big deal about being a kind person often is everything but. Probably because they believe that they are kind, so they have become blind to their own unkind actions. Cognitive dissonance: when you really believe something, you’re unable to process conflicting information and disregard it instead. Or, run into an identity crisis. Or believe your whole life that you are something bad, which you’re actually not, and that is a tragedy.

But I digress. I guess you responded to the question of “why” in your story about the children. Having a definition of yourself makes you feel more safe, because then you have this clear place and identity in this life, and a readymade pattern of how you’ll behave in the future. You create your own destiny for yourself, which feels safer than allowing life and who you are to unfold naturally. Unfortunately life isn’t going to be any safer, life will still unfold itself all the time, but you might miss out on some of the things that are unfolded in you. You can’t see them, because you are looking at yourself through a definition you’ve created for yourself.

I think you hit the nail on the head there, Inky. Men don’t take it as seriously as women tend to do. For women, social circles are so important, and FB is like a social circle on steroids. Men don’t care 🙂 Someone’s ego got a bit bruised because you didn’t accept their friend request? Tough! In the meanwhile, women are coming up with elaborate schemes on how to juggle everything so that nobody gets hurt and everyone is happy and everything ends up looking like a bed of roses 🙂

…and this is why as a recovering codependent, FB is not good for me. I really do need to scale it back. Do something. It’s not a huge problem for me, but it can potentially derail the healing.

Proper Facebook drama 🙂 Oh, and people can be mad, no matter what you do. Because obviously it is about them 🙂

I do think that FB is starting to be quite passé anyway. They’re constantly introducing new ways to violate people’s privacy, so in a way, it would be easy to go now or start over. Just say that you want to take control over what you post, just in case. Or say that you leave FB and start a new profile under a false name and limited friends list. There’s plenty of those these days. Only those on their friends list know their true identity, so it’s easier to share. Then again, that can obviously also backfire, if you have several mutual friends with those who aren’t going to be on your new friends list.

Let me know if you find a better way to connect with others, because I’m really also looking for a way to escape 🙂

I don’t like it now, and I’m trying to figure out ways to get away from it without losing the contact with the people with whom I am only in contact through FB. I was away from there for a long time and during that time I became calmer and less egocentric. Now I can clearly see what a bad influence it can have on a person.

I have had to stop following some people. I haven’t removed them from my friends list, but I become a bit depressed when I see them post something. The endless whining over things. In most cases, it has stopped being about the actual topic, and it’s just a way for people to let others know how discontent they are with everything. I’ve also noticed that there is no point in engaging some people. I once tried, in vain, to tell someone that if they are so worried over social inequality, then perhaps they shouldn’t target one particular group of people and blame them for all the problems in the world. She didn’t understand me at all, and was hell bent on unleashing her wrath over a specific group of people, without an ounce of self-awareness. People are so focused on what they are talking about and are so obsessed with being right, that they forget what the point originally was supposed to be. Oh well.

You can have “tiers” in your FB. Just group the people you want to share things with and when ever you post, just post so that they are the only ones who see things. I know it takes a bit of effort and I honestly can’t be bothered myself anymore.

So, I guess I don’t really have any solution for you, but you do have my sympathies. I really dislike FB and I think it’s bad for people’s mental health.