What You Aren't, You Own

If you are your actions, then that means your actions are driven by your identity. If you are still you, your actions won't change.

If you are your thoughts and feelings, then that means your thoughts and feelings could be no other way as long as you are you.

We are not actions, thoughts, or feelings. If we recognize that, then these are all relatively mutable, and our ways can improve over time if we wish.

It's by identifying less, not more, with something about us that we change it, or prove it. That doesn't mean disowning: that means recognizing we never really owned it in the first place, but were clinging to it.

Cozy in the Metro

There's a lot of weight carried by that thing everyone knows, the thing everyone knows so surely that they don't even know they know it. The sheer tonnage is immense.

Why is a thing true?

Is it true because everyone knows it and there's an explanation that makes sense to you?

That isn't good enough, though.

When everyone knows something and it's wrong, there's always an explanation that makes sense to most people.

It just ain't right.

What I've noticed is that people believe on familiarity. You can show how someone is mistaken, and give them a better explanation, and they can even see it.

But guess what? If it doesn't feel comfortable, if they aren't quite sure about it, if they're just more used to the old explanation, they'll go right on back to it.

You don't believe so much because a thing makes sense. You feel it makes sense because it's familiar. And when you feel it makes sense, you believe it. But that just means most belief is a translation of familiarity.

Plenty of things that make sense aren't true.

I get stuck.

I don't believe in writer's block, and I don't have it.

For a long time I seemed to have coder's block, until I realized that I believed in it. Once I realized I believed in it, I stopped believing in it, and I stopped getting it.

But it's useful to remind myself that I get stuck. It's a thing that happens—I feel paralyzed. Noticing that I feel paralyzed helps, because I know that I am not paralyzed. This cycle has whirled around its track so many times: I feel paralyzed, believe I'm paralyzed, hopeless, can't get going. But ultimately, I am not paralyzed. I am not hopeless. I can get going.

I get stuck.

That doesn't mean I am stuck. I and stuck are not identical. We are not identical or fraternal twins. Stuck and I are simply beings that understand each other.

When you truly understand a problem, it melts.

Art is finding a way to say what others will not hear or understand fully by the normal routes.

There is a large field of such things which need to be said, but cannot, quite.

Go and find one. Say it.

Giveaway

When you're very shy, friendlies spend a lot of time convincing you (and you'll try to convince yourself also) that people aren't noticing or judging you the way you fear. This is half true. People aren't noticing you much. But they are judging you the way you fear.

The trick is not to deny that you're misunderstood and misjudged, nor is it to insist on the primacy of the "mis-," because it's quite possible you are judged more accurately than you will admit to yourself. This is, to be sure, pretty unlikely. But the trick certainly isn't gaslighting criticisms away, neither the silent kind you seem to create from nothing, nor the blunt or aggressive or careless kind.

The trick, if there is one, is that you don't know, but you may want to know, and what you want to know is truth, not someone else's opinion.