Peppermint Kiss

On reddit, people are asking why others sometimes stop in the middle of a pathway and block others.

Of course that’s largely due to personality type, culture, and other reasons. Very little has to do with someone’s virtue.

But someone pointed out that their wife was spacey and un-aware in this way, but also one of the happiest, most positive people.

Someone responded to that, “Yes, selfish people usually are happy. When you don’t care about anyone else but yourself and ignore basic courtesy for your own convenience no matter what it must be liberating.”

And liiiiiiike….this person should try being “selfish” sometime, right? Because I’d sure as hell rather be (and be around) someone who was a little bit discourteous but at least they weren’t crabby, uptight, and judgmental like this commenter is being.

Listen. I can totally have a stick up my butt about a lot of things. But lately I’ve gotten a lot better at being “selfish” and it also has made me way happier, more relaxed, less controlling, and less judgmental. It makes it easier for me to be kind to others and to also mind my own business. Which like…isn’t that actually less selfish than demanding that everyone else adhere to your own standards and expectations all the time? “Live and let live.”

I think it’s important to find the balance and to adjust based on context. But that’s what I’m working on. Doing my own thing and responding to the consequences of that rather than trying to be perfect 100% up front. Asking for forgiveness instead of permission, etc.

nauseating-nostalgia:

when the insane asylum doctor flirts you with that intj stare

marypsue:

maybe this silly little coffee drink will equip me to face the unrelenting and unendurable horror of existence

Tbh it usually works pretty well.

(via mini-cakes)

honeyfaun:

How to Feign Your Life is Together

Have a signature accessory, clothing article, make up look, or hair style.

Have a fragrance. Make your hair scents and lotions match your perfume.

It’s okay to dine alone. Bring a book or people watch.

Love your hair. Research the best brands for your hair type and use masks weekly.

Your nails don’t need to be fancy, but keep them maintained.

Stay worldly. Know works of art, artists, designers, films, books, politicians. Spend your lunch break reading the paper or a magazine.

Crying is not a weapon. It’s okay to feel your emotions, but never use them as an excuse to avoid your problems.

Jealousy is boring. Love and appreciate others. If you can’t love them, forget them.

Boost others. Flatter others, but don’t deprecate yourself in the process.

Don’t sulk. Don’t let the whole world know your problems. If you don’t want someone to give their opinion, don’t share your situation.

Your life is between you and the universe. Don’t post your personal matters for others to see.

Don’t emotionally blackmail others. They hurt you? Let them know and then move on. It’s between the two of you and not the world.

Cook dinner. Cook dinner and listen to music, the radio, or a podcast.

Treat yourself to candles and flowers. Be your own cheerleader.

Take naps. Take a cat nap on a Sunday afternoon with the blinds open and the fan on high.

Drink your water, eat your vegetables. Take care of your body.

Never have time to take off your jewelry before bed, but always have time to take off your makeup. Your nighttime skin regime is important.

Mystery is beautiful. You don’t need to reveal much of or about yourself.

Never appear other than as you are. Don’t lie about yourself. Embrace who you are at your core.

(via extraverted-feeling)

vampireapologist:

bishkebab:

vampireapologist:

Something I think about from time to time is that a lot of people throughout my life have claimed I’m more uh…. “noticeable” (???) than other people. A lot of times as a kid I’d get in trouble for whispering too loudly backstage at plays and other kids and adults would rally around me and say “she was being just as quiet as everyone else” and the stage manager would say “well her voice is the only one I heard.”

Anyway it never really stuck out to me until I was living in Norway and the house was separated into the upstairs and downstairs with extremely insulated walls and a carefully sealed door because the upstairs bedrooms weren’t heated and everyone hung out downstairs in the living room by the wood stove.

And one day I came through the door and everyone in the entire living room was turned to look at me and I felt self conscious obviously and I was like “uh what….” and they looked a little confused and they all said “oh nothing” and went back to their business

But it went on like that all the time. Any time I came through a door, from upstairs or outside or the kitchen, everyone was always turned to look at me and I was always a little freaked out and they were definitely noticing it too and they’d always just sort of acknowledge it with a laugh then go back to whatever they were doing

and I started trying to walk super quietly and make no noise but it was always the same and one day one of them said

“Ok. I don’t know why, but I always know when you’re coming, even if I don’t hear you.”

He said it like it was weird, because it WAS, but then Everyone else laughed and started agreeing like “yes!!! Me too!! I know when she is coming!”

And I was obviously like hey uh what does that MEAN? Do you mean you hear me? Like distinct footsteps??

And they all said no, they just get some “sense” or “feeling” that I’m about to come through the door or come home, and they can’t explain it but they always just get the feeling to turn to look and I’ll be there and then I am. I was like hello???? But they all said I shouldn’t worry about it because ultimately it doesn’t matter and after a few more minutes they all just let it go.

But this HAUNTS me

I have the exact opposite problem where people (especially at work) won’t notice me entering a space and will get exaggeratedly startled when they see me or I speak to them. Every single time they’re like “you’re so quiet!! You snuck up on me!!” Even when I had made a deliberate effort to loudly stomp up the stairs and close the door firmly so they’d have some warning before I started talking, somehow my quiet energy overcame the actual noises I was making.

We put too many stats into charisma and stealth respectively

Do we know the types of these people?  Because the former is true of me as an ENFJ and the latter is common of INxPs.

(via extraverted-feeling)

Anonymous asked: When reading or watching something that I find is feeding me a lot of unimportant information, I start to skip to the important stuff right away. I can't stand useless info, but I've noticed some people just sit through it to experience everything or just because they don't find it unimportant maybe, idk. Could this be related to a function?

extraverted-feeling:

I actually don’t know if this is related to a function, but I’d say if it is, it could be Ni? I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks about this. 

But I am the same way. I listen to things at 2x speed, I speed-read faster than most people I know, and I have gotten low grades in classes before just because I didn’t want to do busy work. 

I’d argue Ni because Ni is generally accepted as a ‘why’ function, that focuses on patterns. Very prone to confirmation bias, but always wanting to acquire more information to build a better picture of ‘why’. Again, I’d love to hear opinions on this.

Skipping ahead is most related to Pe (Ne and Se).  ExxPs and Creative (ExxP) subtypes don’t have a lot of patience for things they’re not interested in.  ExxJs of any subtype can also do this but tend to have somewhat more patience than an ExxP simply because they’re less likely to have their OWN ideas of what is important and more likely to take their cues from external sources.  Followed by IxxPs who are looking for something specific.  Non-Creative IxxJs are the least likely to skip around.

(via extraverted-feeling)

I didn’t believe in free will for a long time - or rather, I thought it was an illusion.  If all of our choices are determined by 1. our biology, 2. our experiences, and 3. our environment, where do *we* come in?  What space is there left to have freedom?  For this reason I believed that the universe was deterministic.

Conversations with my husband, however, have made it clear that I was unknowingly performing some rhetorical trickery to reach this conclusion.  I was defining “free will” as something tautologically impossible - “making a decision without any influences at all”.  However, the fact that the term exists, and that so many people have a visceral sense of what it means to have free will, means that that definition is worth taking a second look at.

Firstly, it’s a mistake to imagine that something can be either free or not free, as a binary judgment.  A mistake that people often make is to conceptualize freedom as a total lack of limitations or boundaries, but in fact such a situation is explicitly *not* free.  Maria Montessori discusses this quite a bit in her education philosophy:  “‘To let the child do as he likes,’ when he has not yet developed any powers of control, is to betray the idea of freedom.”  A metaphor I like is an image of standing on a bridge in the darkness.  Only when an individual is sure that there are railings along the edge of the bridge to prevent them from falling can that person feel free to explore, to test, to run.  Despite our conception of freedom as “a lack of constraints”, we all implicitly understand that bridge without railings is not a “freer” bridge.

So when we discuss freedom, it’s important to clarify what exactly that means.  Freedom is absolute sovereignty within the bounds of our desire, as well as protection to keep us from accidentally straying out of those bounds.  Any deviation from this standard in either direction renders us *less* free, but there is also clearly a meaningful distinction between different degrees of freedom we’re afforded.  So if we start from the position that “will” is a real thing (which we’ll get to in a moment), we understand that there is no such thing as a perfect free will (except perhaps in a metaphysical sense), but that on Earth we find ourselves in positions of more and less freedom.

So let’s discuss the concept of “will”, which is I think where my primary hangup lay.  I think again my rhetorical trickery was to define will as a concept that was tautologically impossible: a desire uninfluenced by any external circumstances.  But without external circumstances, what is there to desire?  “Will” did not exist because I defined it as something inherently meaningless.

So broken down to square one, I had to rebuild - what is will?

I still don’t have a clear philosophical definition, but I have a good visceral one, in this thought experiment: If I had a genie and could make a wish, would I wish for a million dollars?  Certainly.  Do I *want* a million dollars?  Yes.  But - do I WANT to want a million dollars?  No.  What I deeply want is to not desire the money at all.  That’s something that feels deep down and unchanging in me - I don’t want to want that money.  And yet, faced with that genie, would I wish to free myself of the desire?  No, I would wish for the money.  And this example shows me exactly where the limits lie, the limits that impinge on my free will - because of my circumstances, because of my experiences, because of my culture, my desires and actions conflict with my will.

This is also related to the concept of “willpower” - an addiction or a craving is one of the clearest examples of desire conflicting with will.

So at this point, rather than conceptualizing the universe as deterministic, and my psychology and experiences as not belonging to me at all, I’ve shifted the discussion.  The universe is materialistic - real influences that move actors in predictable ways.  However, “free will” is not an illusion, nor is it impossible.  To have free will is to be in a position where our inherent, underlying will is unimpeded, both by limits that encroach on it and by a lack of limits where they must exist.  Any deviation from this state is an infringement on our free will.

The discussion of free will is a materialist discussion of the state of society, human relations, and material conditions.  To conceptualize it as some kind of inborn “right” and argue about its existence or lack thereof is just as liberal as the discussion of other rights, such as equality.  When I told my husband I was writing this post, he told me to mention “vulgar Marxism”.  Since I don’t know what that means, I’ll reproduce his words:

Marxists argue against what they called “vulgar Marxism”, by which they meant economic determinist.  A simple conclusion from a first reading of materialism is economic determinism since our values and our culture are the products of material conditions.  It’s tempting as a knee-jerk reaction to liberal idealization of free-will.  Early Marxists called this line of thought “vulgar Marxism”, as in a naive/superficial understanding of materialism.  It’s essentially reactionary because it’s just a resurrection of slave society ideology.  Marxism is supposed to surpass that dialectic.   Compatibilism is probably the philosophical position most compatible with Marxism.

He has to go take a call so that is where we are left. :P  But I hope I’ve clarified my philosophical journey up to this point!

I have two students (siblings) that I’ve tutored for going on seven years now.  It started when I lived in Korea and I’d meet them once or twice a week in person.  Ever since I left, the sessions have continue via Skype.  When I lived in the States, I would even wake up at three or four in the morning to tutor them.

Ever since the beginning, the mom would cancel and move sessions regularly.  At the time I depended on the income, so it was frustrating, but I persevered and was flexible.  Now though, the students are late every. single. session.  Always at least 5-10 minutes late, and sometimes over an hour late.  And yet each time I would message the mom, “Are we having class today?” And she would come up with some reason to explain the lateness - usually computer problems.

But today I had enough.  I set my alarm and woke up at 8:30 am, despite this being one of my only nights to recover sleep from having an eight-month-old baby.  I sat at the computer for an hour and a half waiting for some contact from them.  Finally I had enough and I texted her that she needs to inform me if they’re going to be late.

I’m terrified of losing these girls.  The money is really good and I’ve formed an attachment.  But it makes me feel like shit to bend over backwards every single week and be treated like my time doesn’t matter.

I know logically that standing up for myself is the right choice - it’s the kind choice, because no one wants to be secretly resented either.  So why does it makes me feel so sick to my stomach?

feynites:

little-jar-of-dragons:

But what if your childhood was shitty and traumatizing and you were meek and quiet as a kid so get a sweet little kitten and eventually as you grow and realize your worth and become more confident that kitten slowly grows into a lion.

Usually, when I bring kids their Companions, it’s a happy day.

Most parents like to throw parties for their children. Make it a big ‘lifetime milestone’ type deal. Sometimes, if there are a lot of birthdays on the same day, they do events at the local schools. I never really have to call ahead - people know I’m coming. The roster at the head offices keeps a running record, and Deliverers like me pack up the Untouched Eggs (wearing gloves, of course), and set out to cover their area for the day. I work six days a week, and sometimes I take emergency runs if I’m nearby and another district is overwhelmed. Overtime is common, but so are short days, when only a small number of kids are hitting ten.

It’s a job that has me travelling a lot. i go wherever there’s the most need for Deliverers. We don’t like to be late; tenth birthdays are an important matter. But I like being on the road. It lets me see a lot of the country.

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