There needs to be a texting disclaimer

I find it particularly interesting that in face to face conversation, virtually no one with a semblance of emotional intelligence can possibly bear the agonizing awkwardness and shame that comes with the act of blatantly ignoring someone who is directly talking to us, yet we find it acceptable and commonplace to both intentionally ghost and inadvertently ghost—whether due to a technical error, messages getting buried when we’re busy, or simply forgetting to respond to messages. There’s something inherently unnatural, something poignantly dehumanizing about ghosting; this act of temporarily shutting out communication is virtually never a part of our real-life social interactions, yet it has become the norm of our interactions online and through our phones.

This elicits the underlying problem of texting; it is an act so farfetched and disassociated from the nuances and minutiae that constitute the complex dance that we innately know as human communication. 

Just stop

and remind yourself,

what you’re truly meant to do.

There’s no reason

to feel nervous or uncomfortable around strangers,

to occupy my consciousness with things I cannot change, 

to relentlessly conjure up absurd scenarios and conversations that will never happen, 

to fall in love with someone I know nothing about, 

to even begin to conceive that they might just be the one I’ve been searching for after all these years,

There’s no reason. 

There’s no reason.

There’s no reason. 

As if reason will change how I feel.

Ambivalence

“A stranger,” my mind reassures itself.

“A soulmate,” my heart beckons me to listen.

To be wrong

How many mistakes must we make? How many lessons must we learn? How severe of suffering and internal dissension must we face before we decide that we were wrong?

When it’s among the most difficult things to do in our lives, perhaps the bravest, most gracious contribution we can make to one another is to simply say, “I was wrong.”

Change

There will always be exceptions to the apparent truth, to the established convention—things that defy our belief systems, that challenge our conception of reality, that threaten to question our definitions of right and wrong. We should always remain skeptical of them, but never contemptuous, because insofar as we are dissatisfied with the current world we live in, it’s the only way anything will ever change for the better, even if most of them are inconsequential or wrong. Honor not their untruths, but their genuine desire for change.

A step you can’t take back

The reality is, every step is a step you can’t take back. 

It is a mistake to construe ourselves as distinct, immutable entities navigating through time and space to find our way, when time, space, our corporeal being, and our consciousness are all one and the same—all essential, inseparable components of our universe that warp one another in inconceivable, endlessly complex ways. 

And to repeat one in a billion of those interactions amidst this incomprehensible chaos—at the same exact time, in the same exact place, in the same exact arrangement of atoms of all the molecules of our body, and all the exact sequences of chemical reactions occurring at every one of our neurotransmitters that constitute our experience of consciousness—would be an impossible task. 

Mindfulness matters because it is the only means by which we can take control of this peculiar existence we’ve all been hurled into. If we choose to operate solely based on our capricious, unpredictable emotions, we have no choice but to accept our fate. ”Providence or atoms,” divine will or this incomprehensible chaotic entropy of the universe regardless, we cannot erase the indelible, reverse the irreversible, and change the unchangeable. There’s no step that can be taken back. If we’re not satisfied with the life we’ve wrought for ourselves, that if we’re not happy with the person that we’ve become, that if we’re not content with the product of the circumstances that we’ve been given, there is no one to blame but ourselves, nothing at fault but our own ignorance.

Bandwidth

If it doesn’t consume much of our time, it will still consume our attention. 

However minute, however significant, whatever the aggregate amount of mental energy spent must be less than our total mental capacity. Whether they are larger questions in life—to engage with social media, to take on a side hustle or a second job, to get into a relationship—or something as insignificant as worrying about what brand of soap we use, what we will eat for dinner today, or what we will wear to a party, almost everything in our lives has a cascading effect that impacts us far more than we might presume. 

Regardless of how resilient we think we are, for everyone there is an absolute limit, and not only do we have to avoid reaching that absolute limit to circumvent the possibility of mental breakdown, but we must be perhaps even more mindful of the complex and dynamic interplay between all that preoccupies us. Not only is it that the quality of our work—what we originally set out to do in this world—can certainly degrade depending on what clutters our information space and our perception, but it is also that the things that we decide belong within the realm of our consciousness can shape our character, whether for better or for worse. Indeed, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Self-Affirmation

You’re on the right path. 

Maybe I’m not. 

Everything is going to be okay. 

Perhaps it isn’t. 

Believe in yourself. 

It could be that I’m wrong. 

Whenever we seek to offer affirmations, whether invoking these sanguine notions of self-worth and blind optimism within our own mind or that of others, we must not blithely assume that it’s for everyone. 

For some, self-affirmation undermines a heuristic approach to life; for those who have haplessly struggled and toiled their entire lives on the wrong path, when everything wasn’t okay, and whose beliefs were constantly proven to be untrue time and time again, the last thing they should be doing is obstinately continue doing whatever they were doing. The last thing we should be doing is encouraging them that they just need to persist with the same things that were the very reason why they’re in such an unfortunate place in life; to do so would be naive, insensitive, and cruel. 

Surely, we should self-affirm when we know we’re doing the right thing, but, again, how can we be so sure, especially when we’re wrestling with such an elusive and complicated notion of what is right for us? In this world that is seldom clear-cut, black and white, and straightforward, and often is instead incredibly nuanced, paradoxical, and absurd, constant self-affirmation is only an obstacle to truth. 

I’m not going to deny the efficacy of the delusion for those that truly do benefit from self-affirmation, but some of us simply need to hear the hard truths in life—that we’ve been walking the wrong path, that things will very likely not be okay, that we shouldn’t believe in ourselves because we’re wrong—to spur us into doing what’s right. 

Optimism has the capacity to be far more detrimental and inimical to our progress as human beings than realism. Sometimes what something should be hurts us more than what simply is.

Absolutes

The truth is, the vast majority of things operate in a continuum; it is incredibly rare for any particular thing or concept to operate in black and white terms. 

And yet, there exist only so many modifiers to affix to our adjectives; what is the discernible and objectifiable difference between saying something simply is bad, is not bad, very bad, quite bad, so bad, somewhat bad, incredibly bad, or abysmally bad? All these descriptors are subject to the whim of human language perception, forming a subjective definition of reality that contrasts greatly from person to person. And often, we don’t even use a modifier to begin with; what does it really mean when we say we are “happy” or “sad”? When we say something is “good” or “bad”? 

Most of our conversations do not extend long enough for us to understand the nuances of each others’ perspectives. Because of this discrete, often dichotomous conception of the world through the crude tool that is our language, we implicitly believe we’ve each taken a side. That if someone else says something, paradoxically, we intuitively use our own perception of what their words meant, and not their perception of what their words meant. 

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, the limits and confines of our language are more than capable of inadvertently corrupting our information space and worldview as a whole. To speak with any degree of probity and transparency, whether in our daily or professional lives, we must bear these limitations within our consciousness.