ebb and flow
i am a rather reflective person by nature, but lately i have been paying even more attention than usual to my behavior in group settings. i think this is because i have become increasingly aware of the level of anxiety that i am prone to carrying around, and i am interested in the ways that it impacts my interpersonal relationships, and in experimenting with ways to shift my behaviors for the better.
if you don’t want to hear me yammer and psychoanalze myself, spare yourself now.
go look at this amusing map of online communities instead.
those of you who remain may or may not know that something i have known about myself for a while is that i can lapse into a rather clingy mode if i’m not careful. it is most common when i am worried about making a good impression, which is annoying, since it tends to sabotage that particular goal rather handily.
which is, of course, it’s self-perpetuating psychological purpose.
isn’t being human fun?
anyway, i become clingy because i am not good at making decisions, which might not make sense at first, but trust me on this one. i developed a habit of deferring decisions in groups because i almost always prefer to follow the prevailing mood rather than risk bickering over little things that mean much less to me than interpersonal harmony, and when there is someone whose favor i am trying to curry this desire is heightened. i hover, trying to decide what the other person wants to do, allowing the conversation to dwell in the land of “oh, i don’t know… what sounds fun to you?” for an interminably long period, and it took a surprisingly long time for me to realize how god-friggin crazy annoying this is. turns out it’s usually considered a feature when our friends have opinions on things, and the most fun happens not when one person leads blindly but when everyone bounds forward with their eyes wide open, letting their quirky energies synthesize to form ideas that could never emerge from one mind alone.
it’s also a helluva lot easier to figure out if you play well with someone if they are willing to lay their cards on the table now and then. it’s a risky concept for our tender egos, but oh so simple if we look it in the face, and it still boggles my mind how hard it is for so many people (me among them but not me alone!) to grasp…
anyway, for the longest time i thought that i truly didn’t care about most decisions, be they group or solo, but at some point i realized that i am actually just very easily crippled by the desire to find The Right Answer and so it rarely seems worth it to bother much with decisions unless they are necessary and unavoidable. if, however, i let go of The Right Answer and instead focus on listening to what the information at my fingertips is best able to recommend at the moment, it turns out that i am actually very good at making decisions. i am a very observant person, and i think well on my feet, so if i trust my instincts and am honest with myself, i come up with a lot of neat things to do and say and think about.
as a special bonus my anxiety level also plummets, leaving me freer to truly consider the options and implications, and thus freer to change my mind, and thus more likely, in the end, to find a choice that makes me happy.
this is a concept that is revolutionizing my life.
to return to the point of my cling potential, though, it is interesting to watch my revolutionary self butt heads with the conservative habitmonger of vulnerability when i find myself in a group where there is someone to whose opinion i am particularly sensitive, for whatever reason. i feel myself bouncing crazily from one extreme to another. i throw out wild ideas. i use lulls in conversation to assess the mood and try to react. i shake my head at myself in the bathroom mirror and take deep breaths. i laugh and say to hell with it all and dive in and collapse and sit back and arch my eyebrows as the mood strikes me.
this process is both exhausting and invigorating, and it leaves me wondering what it’s like to meet me right now.
sometimes i feel like i shouldn’t seek out any long-term relationships for a while because so much is in flux, and there is so much that i am germinating in the window box of my independent self that i want to give things the chance to root a bit more deeply before exposing them to the more tumultuous ecosystem of the wider world.
sometimes, though, i feel like the opposite is true. like this is the best time ever to walk into my life and stay a while. like i have more to offer than ever before, and also more willingness to truly listen. i’m scoping out the land to start a garden, and i need help, and it’s going to be fun.
the truth, of course, is that i should keep my mind and eyes and heart open to whoever and whatever comes my way, and make decisions as they present themselves, and let go of worrying about clinging so that i can be relaxed enough to master a light strong loving touch.
and, all things considered, i actually think i am doing pretty well.
i know it’s always tempting to end discussions like this on an upward note, and i know that sometimes i feel less confident than i do at the moment, but it seems worth putting on the record that, by and large, one of the defining characteristics of this year in my life is that i feel like i’m experiencing a real shift in the level of my game. maybe it’s my saturn returning or maybe it’s just a coincidentally timed convergence of lots of things i have been working on as i crest the ridge of true adulthood.
whatever is to credit or blame, i feel myself making progress, but i also still laugh at myself a whole lot. i still fumble and giggle and squirm even as i become better and better at dancing and opening up and looking the people i meet squarely in the eye with a twinkle and a smile that says “i am ready to both teach and learn.” i still worry that i am missing something, even as every fiber of my experience teaches me that the only way to miss things is to spend your energy looking for what you expect instead of what’s actually there.
i breathe in anxiety and attachment.
i breathe out wonder and embrace.
May 20th, 2007 at 2:49 am
From the beginning, a more than hoped for miracle of ever-unfolding lightness and depth.
I breathe in anxiety and attachment.
I breathe out wonder and embrace.
May 20th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Won’t that leave you with lungs full of anxiety and a room full of dilute wonder which is slowly leaking out of the windows?
May 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am
:) no.
the funny thing about breathing exercises is that they really work either way.
you can think about breathing in some external goodness that then pushes out your internal confusion, or you can think about breathing in with one perspective and then using the breath to cleanse and transform your confusion into something else by the time you breathe out.
all that matters is that you breathe, and in this case, the latter approach just happens to ring truer for me.
the wonder exists in me just as much as the anxiety does.
breathing is just a way of reminding myself which one i want to put forth into the world.
so whatever works.
and besides, a room full of dilute wonder that leaks out the windows doesn’t sound half bad, does it?
i’d wager such a room would glow.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:56 am
[…] The above map (thank you, Kynthia) originally comes from Randall Munroe’s XKCD web comic. It is basically an affinity diagram, a common and effective tool for designers. It replaces geographical directions—north, south, east and west—with two spectra of categorization for online communities. In the horizontal axis is the area of focus, from real life to the Web. In the vertical axis is user mindset, from practicals to intellectual (which might be better termed “theoretical” or “technical” in their use). In the four quadrants created by those dimensions are situated examples of current online communities, circa spring 2007. […]