091b – want to work on reactivity and patience

Last four days have been a lot. 

How much time should we be spending with people whose values don’t align with us? Is love ever enough? If values don’t align and the people aren’t open to open, honest conversations about these things I’m starting to think that’s very high incompatibility. I’m talking about people related to family, of course. With friends or peers, (personally) it’s easier to put distance between the connection in such cases. In that case we also naturally tend to gravitate towards people with similar values. At least as adults. 

I guess I’m recognising a set of people with whom my values don’t really align much and so I must now actually take some action to not put myself through the trials and tribulations of attempting to find middle ground on a regular basis. Maybe once a month meetings are enough. 

Self-awareness is also key, I think. Only through self-awareness can one know what their values are and whether their actions, expression and behaviour are aligning with them or not. It’s okay if they don’t, it’s a difficult task, but I think it should be okay to talk about the gaps. 

At the end of the day, talking about the gaps is what I often like to do but most people don’t want to talk about them. I don’t know. Need to find better framing and articulation for this. 

I find myself getting reactive in debates and discussions, still, and I’d like to not be that way. EVEN IF the other person is the one who gets reactive first, I’d like to patient, slow, and I’d like to take my time to respond. I know this is a long journey but I’d like to try to be better with reactivity. 

I don’t know if I have enough for 500 words today. I thought I did, but I spent a lot of time talking to my sister today morning which now leaves me with not much to process. Things are pretty okay, I suppose. 

Pretty happy with my social circle and setup here, also happy with some of the routines that are not setup and have become somewhat automated. In terms of systems, I do want to work on things like organisation, cleanliness, decluttering (especially electronic and digital decluttering), but these are just vague ideas, I’m not sure what it is exactly that I’m trying to fix. Is it even broken? I don’t know. 

I’m also happy with the kind of work, goals, wishes and plans I have for the next few months. Everything that I’m working towards are things I’m passionate about, and that feels quite amazing actually. I realise that I actually don’t mind doing the 10-20% of the “not so exciting” parts of a thing, when the thing itself is good enough. 

“(How) can we teach inclusivity” is something that someone asked me the other day and I have a very strong belief that we can. This person was coming from a space of “we can’t, really” and that was our primary point of disagreement. Maybe I’ll think / write more about this. 

Alright, that’s it from me today. Happy February, folks!