Maturity and independence

I am hurt every time I read sentences that see the ability to live with less care/interaction/attention as a sign of maturity and/or independence, or somehow implicitly as a sign of growth. Especially when it is seen as a reduction in complaining and/or requesting attention, that can be a sign of resignation as consequence of requests being ignored (cfr. learned helplessness – content warning: experimental abuse).

I refuse this interpretation of independence=maturity=growth. I refuse to see growth as a direction to aim to, or worse, an inevitable fate, that normalises the fight for having one’s needs met while everybody around consider themselves optional or at least available on their terms.

I understand that this is actually the case, from the point of view of the outside world (albeit a bleak perspective, to be fair), but it is more of a consequence than a cause: “I am more independent because I have developed sufficient internal stability and resources, so that I am not relying on external stability any longer” is a healthy, sustainable stand; and not: “I am forced to improvise and beg for external stability, available at its own rate that meets my needs only randomly – I should be thankful when I receive support, because it is not expected at all, and I should at some point stop relying on external support altogether, no matter how much I still need support”.

I am not forcing anyone (in particular, nor in general) to meet my needs, oh, that would be the wrong solution, and I have already been told often enough that I can’t expect anyone to help or even just be there. I don’t need to be told, I can see it for myself that it’s the case. My perception is that I have been cared for a certain amount of time, then support was over, without me having actually learned enough to care for myself, let alone identify my needs. I have been considered grown up by definition, which means being left alone without support, and honestly, teaching me to care for myself and to identify my needs by means of leaving me alone is the most drastic and risky way to make me learn anything. I am aware that this will sound like moving the responsibility to people around me, but my first step here is to recognise that if I only rely on my skills/resources, then I am not equipped to deal with most of the challenges that are part of my existence.

Sorry for the variously-faceted bitter stance on this. I’m tired of getting better at identifying my needs and be met with the toxic positivity of “Nice! Now you know how to deal with yourself on your own” – no? at least not right away?

I will keep thinking about this, until I find ways to process this that make sense to me.

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Fragile autopilot

Here is the second post of the series “short posts about big topics”.

By Robert Frola – Flickr, GFDL, Link

I took a while to pick the topic, as Continuity is in the middle of a fan of related concepts, and it would be meta-nice to… continue on that line. Sort of connected to it, but on a different plane, is my perception on how easily I can perform common tasks according to how busy I am with one or more major ongoing tasks. I noticed that, depending on how stressful those major tasks are, I seem to lose the ability to concatenate the most common actions, stuff that I otherwise do without thinking – and losing this automation transforms a normal day in a costly, relentless manual flight mode. This is what I call “fragile autopilot”, as automation stops functioning exactly when I would give hands and feet to at least not worry about closing windows and the front door when leaving the house, and remembering what I need to take with me or buy. In this state of mind I can only follow very familiar procedures, like taking the Known Route to go shopping (to the point of using a specific sidewalk and cross the road in a specific spot, otherwise I risk getting hit by traffic), in a shop where everything is where I expect it to be. Knitting also helps a lot, as I mostly follow detailed patterns, and I have at least one work-in-progress that allows autopilot knitting (knit to end of row, based on stitches of previous row) for at least an hour. Of course (at least it’s obvious to me) the first thing that flies out of the plane is social interaction, unless it’s joining a recurring event with people I know, or joining an online group like I do every day. I’m aware that it comes through as unfriendly, and I dearly pay for it when I realise I act like I don’t care about people or take really long to answer, but I’m too busy doing all the small actions and counteractions that the plane needs to stay airborne to worry about anything else.

I think everybody has gone through one or more moments like these, where it seems hard to focus on anything and one is literally drowning in worries and anxiety. It’s when it happens often, and/or in connection with tasks that are considered mildly challenging by the majority, that I think I need some dedicated strategies and not only symptom-reducing fixes.

Until next post, take care 🙂

The way and the shortcuts

I was thinking about how setting a goal shapes the way one takes to reach it.

Let me pick an example with music, my most familiar environment. Let’s say my orchestra plans to play a given difficult piece for next concert. That goal will influence all rehearsals, filling them with a detailed plan, that includes the progressive steps to the full execution of that piece: separate rehearsals per section, focus on getting to play to the required speed, focus on expression, and finally playing the piece properly from start to finish.

When difficulties arise during rehearsals and it starts to look like we are not progressing as fast as we thought, it’s time to find shortcuts. We simplify our parts, play a little slower than required, remove details. This is where I start to diverge from how one is expected to work. I rarely think about the goal directly, it is for me more of a part of the landscape that I sometimes remember to look at, but my interest is on my immediate surroundings, on the atmosphere at the current rehearsal, on what I can do right now. I’m relieved that someone else is responsible for keeping the boat sailing straight towards the goal, because I just couldn’t! My work is more of a fractal exploration, without direction, with the focus on how I walk, and no eye on the time – in this mindset, shortcuts simply make no sense. I observe and I accidentally also take part to the rehearsal. This is where I’m not offering any grip to the usual motivation talks which sound like  “Don’t you feel the pressure, the urge to reach the goal?”. No, I don’t. It doesn’t mean I explicitely avoid it, but simply that it will be the side effect of me having the space to wander at will. I first had to prove that my random exploration takes me to the goal anyway, before I was given the trust to be left free alongside the bridled horses, apparently aimless, for the surprise of some.

I felt that this can be a good parallel with how one works with animals, for example during horse riding. I sometimes get the feeling that the rider has a goal in mind and gets to the point where the test approaches and they start looking for shortcuts, but that is where+why the horse loses connection – because the horse doesn’t seem to think in terms of goals, and the proposed shortcuts look like forced steps that take attention further away from the flow of observation, of being in the present. This gearing up tends to make things work both worse and slower, it requires even more shortcuts, and that brings the opposite of the desired effect!  It takes a lot of trust to stop this vicious cycle when the deadline is approaching, but re-focusing on the present seems to me one of the few respectful and efficient ways out.

I hope that makes sense! Let me know if that resonates with you, I’m curious to read about your experiences with deadlines, goals and shortcuts.

The copilot syndrome

I recently thought about my habit of being ready to take over responsibility from others. The classical situation is when I’m with one or more people in a car and I am in the passenger seat. I call it the “copilot syndrome”.

In this situation I feel I have to be alert and ready to help: I check the road signs, the directions, the weather ahead, I ask the driver if they’re tired or thirsty. The funny thing is that I would not be able to take the wheel: I stopped driving in 2010 and am too scared to try again, especially without preparation. So I am in the funny position to feel a lot of responsibility but be unable to actually do much. At the same time I can’t relax and for example simply look outside of the window, or sleep. I have the fear that I would not notice something important and that it would be my fault, that I should have paid attention; as if there were a responsibility chain and I am always the next in line, and all others (except the first in line) come after me, and even worse: none of them would step up if I don’t act.

Source: lupineandruby‘s pinterest

The other, maybe more important, funny thing I finally noticed is that it’s rarely necessary that I pay so much attention, or that I feel this copilot burden at all. It doesn’t mean not caring about how the car trip is going, or be passive if doubts or problems arise – it’s more about feeling a more reasonable amount of responsibility and not waste energy and attention being fully alert while the situation is well under control.

I can understand how my readiness to step up has often been seen as great resource and a cool fallback for the group of people I was part of, because others were reassured that I would take care of glitches before/instead of anyone else. But it’s a disaster for me, when this means that I have to constantly feel in charge: this indeed happened on a couple jobs, that I luckily managed to leave before they drained all my energies.

I have a few hunches on how I learned to feel this obligation to pick up responsibilities. The important thing now is that I have a plan to get rid of this habit. My current strategy is to pick situations where actually nothing serious can happen if I don’t pick up the lead, and see what indeed happens. The experiment is ongoing and it’s early to tell if this approach would work in more critical situations; but I can already say that I feel more relaxed, and even reassured that I’m making progress.

I prefer to say “I love you” only after I have specified what it means in detail

These days I have been thinking about what it means for me to say “I love you”. I realised I have said it very seldom, even to the people I loved – I found it very difficult to say. Until recently, I vaguely thought that such a sentence should not be said lightly, so I always went for alternative formulations:

Source: imgur

With the passing of time, I have been able to articulate my thoughts in more detail, and I realised yesterday that “I love you” would be too compact, too vague, and could imply things that I don’t mean, but that the other person automatically includes in the idea of love. Therefore I would rather say:

• I love your attention towards me
• I love your joy when you receive a present, when you get good news
• I love your respect for yourself and for others
• I love that you don’t compare me to a standard, so I feel free to act natural all the time
• I love how your presence calms me
• I love how little we have to talk in order to understand each other
• I love how we respect our silences and how they are meaningful to us
• I love how consent is fundamental for the both of us
• I love that we don’t feel obliged to walk up the relationship escalator
• etc …

… while I would not automatically mean:

• I want to live our lives together
• you are my only love, you will always be
• you are perfect
• I want to build a family with you
• etc …

There is an Italian song (Patrizia, by Eugenio Finardi – lyrics here) that is indeed a list like this one. It has been one of my very favourites since I first heard it, and now I am happy to have realised why.

My point is that I want to make clear what are the reasons of my attraction/love for the other person, instead of just saying that I (will always) love them, no matter how much they will change, and implying plans for the future that I already have removed from my list. So my current decision is to say “I love you” only after having specified what it means, therefore making it a safe summary. I really wish that it will keep misunderstandings away, especially in such a delicate and emotional matter.

 

Book recommendation: “Vegan to go” by Attila Hildmann

Today’s book review is about this collection of vegan recipes from Attila Hildmann:

Source: attilahildmann.de

I like the style of this book, the gorgeous pictures, the simplicity of the recipes and of the layout. You can see a preview of the book yourself. Vegan to go is currently only available in German, while two other books from him are translated to English (Vegan for fit and Vegan for fun) – I hope this one gets translated soon, because it has so many useful ideas for lunches and picnics! He also gives a ton of tips about how to optimise cooking (cook a larger amont and use it in other recipes, reuse leftovers, cook several side dishes and combine them in a tasty, varied lunchbox…)

Attila explains the basic principles of veganism in the introduction. I liked how he didn’t try to mass-convert the readers, or worse, to make non-vegans feel guilty about eating meat and dairy, and use that as a moral crowbar. He is great in telling his story and sharing his thoughts about his way of eating. I liked how he shows how vegan recipes don’t have to be boring or ascetic or the normal-recipe-without-meat, and that many recipes in Mediterranean cuisines are already vegan. I also liked how he talks about his hobbies on Facebook: fast cars, sports, vegan recipes… he doesn’t fit the description of the usual vegan, but then I got a revelation: does he have to in order to be considered a proper vegan? Shall we expect that all vegans have everything else in common? I think that he is building a bridge towards all people who are not interested in how vegans dress, have fun, shop and so on, and therefore assume are not interested in how they eat; he shows that eating vegan doesn’t involve the rest of your life, if you don’t make explicit, separate decisions to do so.

Thanks, Attila, for being a great ambassador, for your recipes and your positive vibe!

6th Winter School of Ethics and Neuroscience

I just came home after the last session of this Winter School, organised by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. As I am not a neuroscientist nor a philosopher, I feared I would end up understanding as much as this:

… while I actually  managed to follow all discussions quite well 🙂

I attended the philosophical track, that consisted of presentations and discussion around morals and ethics from various angles: philosophical, emotional, cultural and neurological. I find especially interesting to map a lot of connections among these domains. It was sometimes hard to accept that our moral views can be influenced in ways and extents we can’t imagine, but even if I feel that my convinctions are somewhat not as bomb-proof as before, I prefer to be aware of their weaknesses – just like knowing the potential shortcomings of computer programming made me trust them less, but in a more informed way.

I plan to write down a summary of the contents of each session and some of my comments in separate posts. Stay tuned! I will be happy to continue discussing about those themes in the comments.