This could be interesting

[liv]

wild_irises posted about Advice Day, and I think I might pass on that meme.

So, I invite you to give me some advice. Any kind at all. I promise I will consider it seriously, and not argue about why it's impossible or unreasonable. Go ahead!

Comments

[wild_irises]

I don't know you well enough to give specific advice, so I'll stick to an old standard: be as kind to yourself as you would to a beloved friend.

[liv]

I like that advice, and I agree with you that it's fairly generally applicable to most people. I've been thinking about how to apply it specifically. How do I go about being kind to my beloved friends? A lot of it is making time for them, being very interested in how they feel and what they want to talk about. So I think I could do that for myself, too, I could pay more careful attention to my own emotional state and take my own feelings more seriously. I'm also trying to maintain a practice that when I have a minor mishap, I curse the object or environment rather than myself.

One of my beloved friends pointed out something that I found extremely insightful: a lot of religious and ethical teaching is aimed at reminding people to consider others and be more altruistic, but actually many women need the converse message, they are already very much pressured into living for others, and being self-negating and self-sacrificing. Because of a quirk of my upbringing, I'm more like the default male audience of religious texts, so I'm normally quite good at self-compassion and I have to be more careful to avoid being selfish than to avoid ignoring my own needs for other people. Still, it's definitely good to be reminded to be kind to myself.

Thank you for the meme and for your thought-provoking advice.

[ajollypyruvate]

Keep a bag of inexpensive, good quality cat litter in your house for use in a minor plumbing disaster. Cat litter absorbs like you wouldn't believe and has twice been invaluable during a toilet overflow situation. I prefer crystal litters for this, myself, but those usually cost more.

[liv]

Thank you, this is excellent advice! I love how it's both extremely practical and cat-related, very you. I might well order some next time I get a big groceries delivery.

[siderea]

This is the current best, freshest advice I have. It's not you-specific.

Never identify with your virtue or lack thereof. That way lies compulsive rigidity and painful blindspots that lead one to walk off cliffs. Should you think of yourself as a "bad person", the problem is not in failing to think of yourself as a "good person", its in trying to categorize people as good or bad.

Like or dislike, love or hate whom you will, but never consider any person, whether another or yourself, "a good person" or "a bad person" or anything in between. Trying to reduce a person's virtue to a scalar is a type error, a logical error, a moral error, and the fast path to an imprisoning neuroticism. If you want to increase virtue in the world and happiness in yourself, forego trying to weigh souls in a pan balance.

[liv]

Thank you very much indeed for this, it's really pertinent. I definitely subscribe to the belief that there aren't "good people" and "bad people", but I am sometimes prone to act or think in ways that don't actually align with that understanding. (Like, I feel guilty about not liking so-and-so, since they're a good person, but in reality, the fact that they spend lots of time doing good works and helping the needy doesn't actually mean I'm going to enjoy their company or form an emotional bond with them. In some cases it might not even mean that they treat their peers and intimates well.) I feel like this advice might well be relevant to the issue of dealing with predators within communities, too, getting trapped into trying to decide whether someone is, globally, a bad person rather than considering the facts of what they may have done.

Definitely valuable advice in terms of how I think of myself, too. I am working through in my mind how to make sure that I'm not falling into that rigid thinking in my self-perception. Thank you. Also, I love your edit reason!

[highlyeccentric]

Before concluding that you are locked in an unfamiliar shed, try pulling all the doors INWARDS.

[liv]

Thank you, that is definitely good advice. And hopefully now that I've read it I will have a better chance of being able to think of the option when I'm in a panic situation and not reasoning clearly.

[vatine]

Never engage in a land war in Asia at faster than speed of light.

[liv]

Now, there is some advice that I can cheerfully and unhesitatingly follow! I suppose I might be tempted to think that if I can travel FTL I can also achieve other impossible things, but no, I shall follow your excellent advice and refrain from making a terrible mistake even so.

I'm reminded of a bar mitzvah class I was teaching where I found myself saying, if you should ever become a megalomaniac dictator – which is definitely not a good job for a nice Jewish boy or girl, but if it should happen – whatever you do, don't invade Russia or get into a land war in Asia. The things that come out of my mouth!

[jack]

A conversation from last night:

Me: Did Risk teach you not to start a land war in Asia?
K: Actually, it sort of taught me that was a good idea.
Me: Come to think of it, maybe that's deliberate.

[pensnest]

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

[liv]

Absolutely not, that sounds like it would be uncomfortable both for the unicorn and for me.

[cxcvi]

Life is either too short or too long for you to be spending your days doing something that is making you feel horrible.

[liv]

That's wise advice, thank you. At the moment I'm in a situation where I don't have too many external pressures to do things that make me feel horrible, but if that ever changes I will bear this very good point in mind.

Surveying things I spend my time on and how they make me feel... I'm contemplating whether I should start paying someone to do some of my housework. Cleaning doesn't exactly make me feel horrible, but it's very boring, and I also dislike living in a messy / dirty house. And I have enough money to do this and my life is short.