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How to communicate this? If I don’t get it, then I don’t get it. If I have to stress about it, I won’t do it. The route there may involve stress; many worthy things do. But I will let it happen as it does. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘵.
It’s like when I realised when my ex had always been trying to tell me. She didn’t care about the place, Yatharth. She cared about 𝘮𝘦. https://t.co/Uo6rbMRUOF
There was a way in which she was more committed to presence with me than with catching the bus on time. I didn’t get that at first. It’s a kind of refusal to abandon yourself; an ability to see yourself and your relationship as greater than the circumstances that succeed you.
What I’m saying is: There is no opportunity great enough to make me leave my sphere of integrity. (Like I so often did.) https://t.co/vtwFdvIhJp
(Does this feel like a conversation with my parents? It’s totally a conversation with my parents and society and the well-meaning lindy structures of scarcity I absorbed.) https://t.co/a3W1tH7NwT
They’re unlearning the lie that it was 𝘣𝘢𝘥 to lose $30. They’re unlearning the lie that it’s a 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭 to lose $30. It’s none of those things actually. Losing $30 isn’t a big deal. But acting as if it was WAS a lindy rule to keep you from ruin. https://t.co/911jobA1tk
Hmm. That’s not quite it. I’ll stress about it. I’ll be happy to accept stress about it. But I won’t 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵. https://t.co/phVPbF90CR https://t.co/XHIiOsyH1E
I won’t sign away my autonomy into doing it, because I 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵. I can try, but it would be fake. Because it’s not the thing I’m actually committed to. It’s not the thing. https://t.co/s13eEjQ2G9
Because then suddenly, it becomes something different. I lost something. It went from being something I had autonomy over, something I was playing-to-win. Ssomething where I had zero drama about 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 that wanted this (me) and why . . . https://t.co/eMTlEDBiKR
. . . and instead it became something bigger than me, something I felt beheld to. I didn’t want to do it anymore; I resented it. It no longer 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 doing, because it had lost its worthy context. https://t.co/lSvZ0h475r
Somehow in promising I will do it, I had lost something; I had let the egregore become bigger than me, and become lost within it. https://t.co/hI7Sg5IgVI
I 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 do that, I can’t promise that with sovereignty, because I’m not committed to doing it. “I can’t vow to that. This is not a choice. It is a description of the state of affairs.” https://t.co/jfYPJeK8dn
“I can fake-vow to you. If you pressure me. Eventually, when I become strong enough, I will either overthrow you or whatever sense of scarcity led me to do it, or honour it anyway, just out of respect, but not do such things again.” https://t.co/JSlKWFVE1P
I don’t want to commit to doing it—just to soothe someone’s anxiety. Just to present a normal, conventional interface where if I say I’m applying to grad school, it means “i commit to doing this. that is the thing i want.” It’s not.
It means “I’ll still figuring things out, and this is the best guess I have for right now, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.” https://t.co/G7HZelEj5L
Whatever move would entail me committing to that, I want to just not-do that. Why would I commit to it??? Why???? Am I dumb?? I don’t want to; what I am committed to is exploring. Accept my vow on that level. That I “vow to continue exploring this.” https://t.co/ls1TOBjKjn
And I take that vow to explore this seriously. But I can’t precommit to eventually deciding to wanting to this. I can’t authentically say that. https://t.co/9FyujHcbuF
The thing I want is to stay connected to my worthy context, and it so happens grad school or the job are currently part of it, and you are invited to help me along in this journey, as I authentically commit to whatever I can commit to right now.
“Authentically” here maybe means: from a place of budding autonomy and *non-naïve self-trust*. Non-naïve trust in the sense that it’s actually built on something. Validated, checked through experience, built. https://t.co/jWHR4zu9SA
Autonomous in the sense of it is part of an ego-structure I am creating that I identify with and feel good about, not some super-ego I will eventually tear down becase I resent it (or be too weak and live a resentful, unfree life).
I suspect @nvpkp would get what I’m saying. Her brain seems to work differently; here, maybe similar enough to mine. https://t.co/tJVRSEZxoh
“The job is not the thing I want.” I do not just want the job for job or school for the school. There is a basic social contract implied there, but that’s 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘐’𝘮 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯. It’s not worth it to me. https://t.co/CJJTcbaGOx
And because I didn’t know better, all I knew is suddenly I didn’t wanna do the thing anymore; it had lost its worthy context That’s why I feel threatened by interacting with people who strongly infer it that way, and sort of have no way to infer otherwise (e.g. parents).
It’s literally destabilising to talk to them, because I don’t fully know what I want too well yet, except that there’s consistent move that they manage to make (of no fault to them) that makes me feel off-balance again.
I’m not fully confident in what I’m trying to do yet. If I was, I wouldn’t feel so threatened by all this as much, because I’d just continue to know what I want. https://t.co/h59xIYLArM
or in fact, rebel against it the old-fashioned way—become increasingly unhappy with the rules until you act out! become a teenager. get into enough shit that the *actual environment rewards* finally start to feel bigger than the loud emotional voices that’d drown everything out https://t.co/cFBzW69mOk
My best summary of this thread: There is this thing I try to avoid doing, which make a mental move that says “This job thing or grad school thing is the thing I want to do” that suddenly makes it feel disconnected from my sense of why I wanted to do it or why it felt worthy to do
The best way I had to point at it was to say: “The job is not the thing.” Because it’s not. The thing I was committing to was not the job. It was towards moving in its direction. At all times connected to a sense of self, and why I wanted to do it, and a sense that
𝘐, as the person I am on a journey of life with, kinda matter more than the circumstances of the vacation I find myself in; I don’t want to have taken an entire vacation with my partner and have missed it, because I was trying to figure out logistics.
When I say, “That is not the thing I want,” I mean that I am committed to something greater than that particular thing, which is a sense of the journey & worthy context overall, and I am not committing in authentically to something to which I don’t feel committed.”
If I think, “I think I should move in this direction,” I’ll say that, instead of saying, “I will move in that direction,” because sayig “I think I should move” is really saying “I want to continue trying to move in this direction, and seeing how it works out.”
@AskYatharth yeah "What I want is not a job" that seems close. I'm not sure I can render it any pithier than that "I want something on a different level than [a job]" "I want something that could be served by some jobs and not others"