[1018] Eat Equals Valuate

I had a one-off thought a moment ago; I want to see where it goes. We’re not supposed to rank and judge people. It’s as robust an ingratiated cultural sentiment as you could ask for. If you’re religious, we’re all sinners, it’s an equal playing field that you will eventually reap what you’ve sown. We establish laws that are, very theoretically, supposed to give us a chance to evaluate and discern the guilt or innocence of someone through an indifferent lens. We’ve infused our conversational landscape with language that tries to understand people not so much as a measure of their choices, but conditioned behavior as a result of their environment or trauma. We do this unironically as we cheer for our teams to win, celebrate records broken, and seek endless opportunities to passionately self-actualize.

A certain shame has gotten attached to regarding yourself or your achievements as something worthy of distinction. You seemingly can’t be “better” more than you’re part of an infinite sea of “different.” I think this is a significantly more powerful influence than we give it credit for.

As I think about how or whether I’m able to “counsel” someone, I’m up against personal and cultural forces. Part of what allows me to not take things personally is my awareness of how many things are working against some ideal “progressing” state as it pertains to the management of emotions or addiction. If, just like in the movement to cease “body shaming,” we’ve drifted so far away from the facts, ethics, or truthful acknowledgement of what distinguishes a positive or healthy direction, the conversation gets stuck in a loop of disingenuous self-gratifying, but ultimately unhelpful, notions.

I’m constantly judging and evaluating both myself and the people I’m made to engage with. It’s the thing I tried to consciously suspend in service to “friendship,” thinking my otherwise manipulative nature would unfairly reduce their agency or be “unfair” to the dynamic. I tried to do the exact opposite of what we seem to crave. We want “our spouse” and “my children” and “best friends” and so many other distinctions by way of trophies, certificates, or sobriety chips. Maybe we just want to do “better” than yesterday. Maybe we want to hold the value in ourselves today we couldn’t recognize while overwhelmed and enmeshed in drama, insecurity, or naivety.

Judging, and knowing how far your judgment can or can’t go, is a measure of wisdom. I know, forever and always, I’m just one person with one small window into the world. I have the language I was born with, the people who have influenced me, and the tools I hope I can understand and utilize to help myself or others. I’m never right just because I was the first to say it, loudest, or only one to bother to keep speaking. The moment I get something even half right, new information can swoop in to humble or disprove. This is my running license to speak with confidence or assertiveness, without a defensive ego that needs whatever I’m saying to be the “most true” or somehow infallible an inaccessible to your judgement.

If you don’t operate by the same principles, you’re always going to be afraid to speak. You’re going to seek out friendly company so you don’t have to defend yourself, or repeat the incomplete and incoherent place you’re coming from until it feels as disorienting to you as it’s made someone else. I was reading a comment from an old friend on a blog who filled her response with what I would describe as cliché and empty truisms regarding “human nature,” and a lot of empty speculating catastrophizing if anything but her narrative was to prove true. I’m thankful any time someone has the balls to comment (I do implore you often), but just like I open myself up in sharing these, you get opened as well. It’s enjoyable to me to organize the weeds, you often think I’m threatening or arguing with you I guess in bad faith.

I think it’s better to act like me. I think it’s better to try and get more refined in where you’re coming from. One of my members, a better one, who should probably taper and find a program more appropriate for her level of work and awareness, told me she wished she could phrase things like me. She thinks the same things, often enough, but can’t find herself relaying them like she routinely hears during our group. I reminded her that if I’ve come to speak to anything with any remote coherence, I’ve probably written about it dozens of times. Most of where I’m coming from is bred in these pages exploring the minutia of my experience or single sentences that stick and I stay curious as to why. I’d rather look stupid and un-informed with a positive learned-from failure mindset than find myself dying on so many hills.

We’re not equal. I think a lot of “conservatives” run with that idea without the wisdom and lack of ego. Their deepest sense of inequality isn’t in their wealth or faith, it’s their insecurity. They know one step outside the bounds of their insular environment undermines their entire identity. What’s “country livin’’” in New York? The naked cowboy caricature. It’s a thousand cookie-cutter songs referencing beer and your truck. Yellowstone is a romance with melodramatic sentimentality oozing through God’s country like a spring you’d die to defend from a commercial development. It’s a stolen valor and deliberate downplaying of the historical and circumstantial reasons behind your so-called success or station in life.

A whole language develops to dog-whistle and code to draw out the class and culture distinctions in terms of pride and nobility instead of merit, measurement, or material impact. The faithful have numbers! Don’t get me wrong, and money flows everywhere within the confines of the flock. It’s the same condition of the radicalized Lefist. Moral pontificating steps in for data. Self-righteous “safety” is sought instead of accountability. It’s the same insecurity, same ego, and same underlying fear that how you think and feel isn’t up to snuff, or isn’t worth acknowledgement from those whom you think have the power.

Whether or not we internalize and warp our self-conception based on other’s judgments is a difficult choice to discover. And, regardless, we’re feeling the impact of their judgment. It’s certainly been decided that I’m not someone worth talking to by the vast majority of people I would have at one point considered myself closest to. I am generally alone and not in conversation with “old friends,” after all. There’s an infinite list of reasons and excuses why, but we can be confident it’s not because I *haven’t* been evaluated as not meaningfully contributing to how you would prefer to converse about and understand your life or feel during the day. You’re judging. On the basis of, and in service to what, one hopes leads to serving more than taking, but I doubt it.

For what it’s worth, I don’t feel as though I’m particularly “better” at anything that I’m not practicing, and more to the point, with intention and to the best of my ability and awareness, than anyone else. I’m better at emotional regulation and mindfulness because I write, and that, combined with the whole host of failures regarding healthcare, is why I get to occupy the role of “counselor” and people are willing to exploit my capacity to pay themselves considerably more than they ever will me. I’m not an addict, or depressed, or anxious to the point of interrupting my ability to lead the life I want, or otherwise impaired disproportionately internally against conditions externally. I think I’m better at evaluating feedback and incorporating many disparate threads of information. Tests tell me I have the general intelligence to occupy almost any role I choose to put my mind towards, and I try to keep myself from getting complacent around what I “know” verses what I can lend evidence towards.

It’s been my persistent desire to find people who help enable and round-out what I do and don’t have. When I reflect on past relationships, I think the average person would colloquially say something like, “I couldn’t make them feel loved/special/beautiful” etcetera, and retreat to a commitment to make more overt displays of affection to a future partner. But this side-steps any conversation about whether anyone, including yourself, can feel loved, special, or beautiful independent of their partner. This acts like the dynamic isn’t being driven by mutual insecurity verses mutual appreciation or exchange; as though one person could be expected to account for everything missing or tell anything but a one-sided story.

I want you to trust your judgement. I want you to like yourself in a way that let’s you see and talk about the same things I try to. I want you to judge yourself accurately. I think I’m lost and stuck and lazy and wanting for a deeper connection to something meaningful or transcendent. I won’t allow that feeling to let me glom on to mythological thinking, whatever group happens to be closest, shitty familiar “friends” or coworkers, or a dialogue dripping in faux pride and moral certainty. I’m not going to pretend to like things I don’t or ever decide to “fit in.” I can’t go back, right? I can’t start lying to myself or you. I can’t unsay the things that informed your judgment. I can continue to ask if you think yours is better than mine, and what that means for either of us.