The Geometry of Choice

An abbreviated version of The Geometry of Choice was printed in the May 7, 2021 issue of Georgia Voice

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Do you ever stop and think about the number of choices you make every single day? From the moment you open your eyes, you are choosing to do or not do something. How good are the choices you make? Do you ever stop to evaluate them? Are they good or bad or neutral? Further, when you make a bad or neutral one, does it register differently with you than when you make a good one? Do you take your good choices for granted? How about your bad and neutral ones?

Choices define a singular point in time. What will I have for breakfast? Will I get dressed up today or be casual? Do I need to go to the grocery store? Should I call my brother? Is it time to run the dishwasher? You get the point. It is a singular choice made at a certain point in time. We don’t usually pay a lot of attention to them because many of those that we make are habituated.

Habituated choices are those that have become automatic. I don’t consciously choose to feed the cat while my coffee is brewing. It is something I do every morning without thinking about it. I leave my keys in the same place all the time so I don’t have to think about where to leave my keys. I never let my gas tank go below half full so I just automatically turn into the gas station when the fuel indicator is at about ½ full. No thought involved. But in all of these examples, there is a choice made.

Then there are choices made around the initial choice. If I want to have coffee, how many cups do I think I want this morning? Do I want my usual Folgers or do I want one of Peet’s varieties? If I am going out to lunch, what kind of food do I feel like having? Which restaurant do I want to go to? These kinds of choices define the area around that initial determination of having coffee or going out to lunch. In geometry, the initial choice to go out, for example, would be a single point on the page. The rest of the choices about what kind of food, etc., supporting that initial decision define the area around it – Length X Width = Area.

Then there are the choices that define the space, the volume (length X width X depth) of our life in which all of those things happen. These are the fundamental choices that we make about ourselves, our beliefs, our emotions, other people, our relationships, our work, how we see rest of the world. They shape and mold, and in many cases, twist and distort the choices we make on a daily basis. They not only effect the individual ones that define a singular point in space and time but all the others we make around those individual choices. Here are some examples of the kinds of foundational choices we might make. And keep in mind, sometimes we make a number of fundamental decisions that come to define who we are and how we live our lives.

I am good enough. I am not good enough. I can forgive myself. I am unforgivable. I can trust myself. I can’t trust myself. I seek to be understanding of others. I only try to understand people who try to understand me first. Love heals. Love hurts. I can easily create successes. I have to struggle with everything. I can handle it when challenges arise. I have to control everything so there are no surprises. I can handle my feelings. I avoid my feelings. I am responsible for my life, the good and the bad. I get to blame everybody else for anything bad in my life. I get to decide what matters in my life. I let other people tell me what matters in life. People are basically good. People are selfish and rotten. The world is a friendly place. The world is a scary place.

As you can see, the list could be and is, indeed, endless. But let’s look at one example very quickly. Love hurts. I’ve made the fundamental choice to believe that. Thus I will believe that if I love, I am going to get hurt. I will have an attitude of wariness and mistrust of others, especially anyone I might decide to date.  I will want to control. I will potentially think love is too much work or is a struggle or is not worth it. Or, that I need to keep love at arms’ length so that, if I get hurt, it won’t hurt as badly. I feel scared or mistrustful or suspicious. I may decide to sabotage my relationships before I can really get hurt. All of this and more out of just one fundamental choice that love hurts. And that colors and taints all the others I make about dating or not, intimacy on any level - not just physical, the level of caring I am willing to have and show, how vulnerable I am or am not willing to be. All the many many choices contained within that volume, that cube, that world of mine are defined by that fundamental decision that love hurts.

It is always a good idea to review the choices we make. The simple, point-in-time ones and then those we make around it that make it happen. And also to evaluate and review the environment, the structure of our own direction and design, that we have created for ourselves by the big choices, the foundational choices we make about ourselves and our lives.

Do you make good or bad choices? Do you practice making them? Do you think about their potential impacts and outcomes? Do you look at the really big foundational choices that don’t often come up for review? As you review and revise the big, fundamental choices you make, the single point-in-time choices you make will change. And as those choices change, the choices that you make around those single choices will change. And as all of those choices change, your life will change. Change for the better.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Cancel Culture & Smiting

I find it interesting that suddenly, as a society, we all have our drawers in a knot over cancel culture. The Left uses cancel culture as a means of testing progressive ideological purity and the Right uses it as a reason to whine and as a weapon to beat the Left with. Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote an article entitled, “Cancel Culture Is Not a Movement,” that was posted on the New Yorker site on March 11 of this year. He writes, “When politicians or commentators talk about ‘cancel culture,’ they are typically speaking of a fear that even ordinary people who express ideas that are politically incorrect will be publicly shamed—that social media has enabled a universal speech surveillance, and that people and institutions are now self-policing, out of fear of it.” Basically our version of Orwell’s Thought Police.

Wikipedia defines cancel culture as, “Cancel culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". In other words, banishment and exile.

Gay men are well aware of this phenomena. Gay men have been practicing cancel culture forever – and doing so in broad daylight so it isn’t new to us. Cancel culture, behaving as if someone or something does not exist and/or does not have the right to exist. If you are not pretty enough, don’t have a good enough body, have the wrong skin color, are too old, not wearing the proper trendy clothes, etc., you are toast.

Picture yourself out walking through the mall, let’s say, and a nice looking gay guy walks into your line of vision. They clock you looking at them. If you are not someone they find attractive, they will look away from you using a gesture I have come to call the “Neck Snap,” in which they turn their head, thus averting their eyes, away from you with such suddenness and ferocity, it is a wonder it doesn’t give them cervical damage. And they get to pretend you don’t even exist and, thus, get to avoid having to acknowledge you as a living, breathing presence on Earth. What would be nice would be if we learned to at least acknowledge one another.

As powerful as words are, words do not create reality. Yes, there are a lot of hurtful, condescending, demeaning pejorative phrases out there. And I have no issue with it being politically incorrect to use them, as well as morally wrong in many instances. That said, political correctness has been in use for a while now and those words or attitudes are still around. Banning words doesn’t fix the underlying problem. And if someone calls me a faggot or a pansy or says I am light in the loafers, well, sticks and stones may break my bones but you can kiss my ass. Doesn’t mean I want you banished from society. Just stay away from me. Your bad behavior is a reflection of you on you and has nothing to do with me. What I need to know is what has made you think and feel and act this way. What would be great would be if we started to ask people what led them to beliefs or opinions we find politically and/or morally incorrect and seek to understand.

It is the underlying issues of why the bad behaviors continue, in spite of political correctness, that need addressing. Yes, human history is chock-full of atrocious behavior that needs to be faced and dealt with but dealt with in the sense of what we are going to do moving forward. Rather than cancelling, I think on-going public reproach and shaming of people or groups is way more effective than banning or ostracism. Personally, I would like to see the return of public stocks and pillories. Now, I wouldn’t let the public physically harm those thus confined. I simply want them to be publicly shamed for their bad behavior. Dunce caps would be fine. Making someone stand on the courthouse steps holding a sign that says, “I haven’t mastered three syllable words yet,” works for me. You get the idea. As a friend of mine says, “If you don’t know how to act decently, we’ll show you how to act.” Problem is that those we judge as being in need of being confined to the public stocks and pillories no doubt feel the same way about us.

We live in a world where we all decry the lack of civility and decency and the shamelessness run riot though our society.  Banishing, ostracizing, excommunication, exile, cancelling, doesn’t make the problem go away. The only thing that goes away, at least for a while, is the particular offender or group of offenders. It was Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army, in his confrontation with McCarthy in hearings before McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee, in which he famously asked McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" This was widely seen as a turning point against McCarthyism. (Wikipedia) The problem here is we all no longer seem to have a consensus on what constitutes decency.

Cancelling is a form of smiting. Very Old Testament. We end up judging those we deem or who have proven themselves as being beyond redemption, thus the need to banish. Does not the Judeo-Christian ethic teach us in the Bible about mercy and compassion over judgment? Mercy is taught in the Quran. Buddhism teaches compassion and mercy. You get my point. Now, yes, there are those in our history who seem by their acts and/or beliefs to be beyond redemption. And certainly, for some, redemption would be a long, hard road. But who among us, at some point in our life, has not needed compassion and at least the possibility of and chance at redemption? But, here again, those we judge and condemn as either needing redemption or being beyond redemption no doubt think we are as equally a lost cause.

Rather than cancelling, ostracizing, banishing, public shaming, exiling, etc., how about we learn to talk with one another again rather than at one another? We do still have the facility as thinking/feeling humans to create safe spaces in which we can begin to communicate rather than cancel. We can ask one another - How did you get here? What propelled you on your journey to these beliefs and actions? - We don’t have to agree with what we hear but at least we can begin to understand and in that understanding, odds are we will begin to once again find some common ground.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Feelings, Wo-o-o Feelings

The song “Feelings” by Morris Albert begins with the lyric, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings, Trying to forget my feelings of love.” Truth is most people, especially men, would rather forget their feelings period, not just feelings of a lost love as in the song.

Feelings are messy. Feelings are problematic. Right? Where do they come from? What are you supposed to do with them? Why do you need them? Better just to not feel them, be done with them and enough already. Problem is that thoughts and feelings are a combination package. You can’t have one without the other. “Well,” they’ll say, “let me put my feelings aside here so I can be objective. Let me get my feelings out of the way so that I can be open-minded.” Or, conversely, “I need to get out of my head. I’ve been thinking about this too much and I just want to feel about it. I am just going to follow my feelings.” People try to pretend that they can do one without the other. But you can’t.

When we are determined to stay just with thinking, the thinking can lead to an endless loop of thinking-thinking-thinking that goes nowhere and you can’t make any kind of decision because you don’t get the confirmation or disapproval that feelings (your gut) provide for your thought process. Trying to deny feelings keeps you from some very important information that is available to you. Your feelings will let you know good idea, bad idea, try something else, get over it already, whatever. When we are determined to stay just with feelings, the feelings can become irrational because they are not tethered to anything, not grounded by anything. As a simple example, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you are grumpy. So whatcha going to do? “Well, I’ll just feel grumpy until it goes away and let it potentially ruin my day. Or I’ll take it out on people who had nothing to do with me being grumpy.” Do you have any reason for feeling grumpy? If not, why not just let it go and enjoy your day?

So what are you supposed to do with thoughts and feelings? Recognize that the thought or feeling is there. Then acknowledge that it is you thinking or feeling this way and that nobody made you think or feel this. And then what? Well, is it important or is it just a passing thought or feeling? If it is just a thought or feeling passing through, let it go. “Well, I can’t do that.” Why not? Most people can do that with passing thoughts but feelings – “You have to understand. I had a feeeeeeling!” OK. And?

You all have noticed that there are lots of feelings right now out there in the world, with anger being one of the predominant emotions going around. Lots of people are angry about lots of things and many of these fine folks haven’t the slightest idea of what to do with all that anger except make sure that everybody else knows they are having this feeling.  We will deal specifically with anger in a future column and there is certainly nothing wrong with anger any more than there is nothing wrong about having any emotion. It is what you do with those feelings.

So what is your pattern of dealing with feelings? There is the ever-popular approach of trying to numb them so you don’t feel them at all. Some try to numb their feelings with the refreshment of their choice – weed, pills, booze, coke, mushrooms, some combination thereof. Others try to numb their feelings with other emotions like self-pity. “Oh, poor me. I am dealing with this or that and it is causing me to feel things I don’t want to deal with so I’ll just feel sorry for myself. Or, it is all so unfair. This and that has happened and I am the victim here.” It all goes numb when I feel like a victim and complain to anyone who will listen. Numbing, long-term, regardless of your method, does not work as those feelings don’t really go away unless acknowledged and consciously released.

Or do you just stuff it in one of your pockets and walk around with it a while? Men especially, usually when angry, love to withdraw and/or stomp around for days, weeks, months, acting angry but never doing anything about it. “I’ll just carry my feelings of love, anger, hope, fear, around in my shirt pocket.” But, again, those feelings don’t go anywhere until acknowledged and released appropriately.

Others blame, especially if it is a constricting emotion. “You made me feel this way.” No they didn’t. You feel what you feel. I can walk up to someone and tell them that they are ugly and their mother dresses them funny and get all kinds of reactions. One person might find it funny and laugh, another might be offended and insulted, and a third might wonder if I’d lost my mind. Or they might respond, “You know my mother?” But the reaction engendered reflects the makeup of the person, not what I did to them. Now that is not to say that when someone does something that evokes a response of love or fear or anger or whatever that that response isn’t important. If it is truly what you feel, then it is up to you to decide what to do with that feeling and how you are going to respond.

Some folks deny their feelings or distract themselves from their feelings or discount their feelings. “No, I’m not feeling whatever.” “Let’s go do something so I don’t have to deal with what I am feeling.” “Well, yeah, I am feeling a bit whatever but it isn’t that important.”

Finally, some people know what they are supposed to feel in certain situations but they would rather act those feelings out than actually feel those feelings. So it becomes a performance of feeling without actually feeling. And sometimes they can get away with it for a while but people catch on that there is little or no depth or substance to those performed feelings. You’ve all heard the complaint that someone is emotionally unavailable.

What is your pattern of handling feelings? It is a good time to do that self-assessment with so much free-floating anger and despair and uncertainty out there in the world. And when you do come across love or hope or joy or compassion, you will be able to access those feelings and reap their bounty.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

But, But, I Trusted You

Photo 91623375 © Romolo Tavani | Dreamstime.com

How do you know if you can trust someone? Most of us think of it as a leap of faith. “Well, I’ll take a chance.” So we make the leap. Sometimes our trust is rewarded and sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t we feel betrayed, disappointed, hurt, angry. “But I trusted you.” And then you blame either them or you or both.

Trust is actually something way more practical. Do someone’s actions match their words? When someone says that they will attend an event with you but then “something” always comes up, do you continue to trust their words or past actions? When someone says that they can keep one of your secrets but they are forever telling you other peoples’ secrets, can you trust them to keep yours? If a friend swears that this time they will be on time for a concert, a movie, dinner, whatever, do you trust their past track record of behavior or what they are telling you now? That doesn’t mean you are not willing to be pleasantly surprised if they actually do show up on time but what are the odds?

If you go out with someone and they check their phone constantly, do you still trust them to be considerate and attentive? If every time you have a disagreement or fight with a friend or family member or significant other and they always go for the jugular and then tell you that it is your fault because they have told you not to make them mad, is this someone you should trust?

If someone tells you, “Listen, I gotta be honest here . . .,” the question isn’t should you trust what they are telling you now, but if they are being honest now, have they not been previously? If every time you go out with someone and they spend the night attention seeking or flirting or cruising the room, are you going to trust them to keep commitments such as fidelity – mental and emotional, not just physical – to you?

This also applies to self. Do you keep your word? Your promises? Or do you only do so when it is convenient? Do you keep confidences or is the allure of gossip too strong to resist? Do you keep your promises to yourself regarding your goals, you hopes, living by your principles like honesty and integrity (two components of self-esteem), your commitments to yourself? Are you the good friend, sibling, partner, you say you are or only when you have time?

You know yourself and your patterns and you know others and their patterns of behavior. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis or special powers of intuition. It only takes the power of observation regarding others and the power of honesty regarding yourself. Are you trustworthy with yourself? That will also impact your process and ability of trusting others. Do you say what you mean and do what you say? It is really that simple and that practical. Maybe not always easy or convenient but it is that simple.

If you trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are trustworthy, good.

If you don’t trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are not trustworthy, good.

If you don’t trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are trustworthy, not good.

If you trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are not trustworthy, not good.

All this to say that it doesn’t mean trust will never be broken by someone who you appropriately trusted. But the odds are much slimmer. And if and when that happens, that is on them for a poor choice or series of choices they made and not a reflection on you.

It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. It starts with you. Are you trustworthy? Can you trust you?

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc