I have been faced with a couple of challenging decisions to
make recently, with no previous experience to lean on. It is always harder to figure out what to do
when things aren't going well. I don't really know how to react to people
treating me disrespectfully, but it is rarely something I have to deal with. I assume it is obvious that responding
disrespectfully in return will only make the situation worse, but not letting
them affect you or get to you usually upsets them even more, which is not my
intended goal. But there doesn't seem to
be any ideal response in those situations.
And not every problem can be solved by thinking about it
hard enough. But I know that at least
for me, understanding why things are happening is much less disconcerting than
being totally confused. I am someone who
strongly believes that things don't just happen at random; they are always the
product of a long series of individual decisions. Sometimes we don't notice the sum total of
those decisions building up until it catches us by surprise, but that doesn't
change the fact that they were there all along.
Believing that things happen at random abdicates the participants of
some level of responsibility for the outcome.
I don't understand everything that happens around me, but I try to make
some sense out of what I observe. And
finding some level of order can be reassuring, in that it implies that things aren't just happening at random, without
any specific reason or cause.
Observing my own reactions and emotions has been a bit
enlightening. I have been told many
times that you learn a lot about yourself from being in a serious
relationship. I am sure that is true,
but the revelations that stand out to me at the moment are all pretty simple
and surface. I have learned that I can get swept up in things on an emotional
level more than I expected, and that doesn't necessarily lead to thinking
clearly about things, even when I am aware of that issue. And maybe I should probably put more stock in
other people's perspective, and less faith in the idea that I can successfully
be the exception to the norm.
But a big part of the relationship process still appears to
be a unique fit between two very different people, which can be troubling in
that I see no way to figure that out without just trying to see how it
goes. I don't like the numbers approach,
be it the "lots of fish in the sea" attitude, or the "make sure
you have shopped around" mentality.
I know people who are happily married to the first person they ever
dated, so there must be more to it than that. But I clearly haven't figured out what that is. Well I don't intend to stop trying, but I
don't feel too encouraged at the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment