My wife wants me to get certain jobs and chores done around the house and maintain the house to her standard, but she expects me to get these things done to her satisfaction on my own. Not being a mind reader (yet), I need some consistent feedback to do this, feedback she finds hard to give because if I didn't do it her way the first time she'd rather do it herself and get it over with than stand around talking about it.
So I explained, and hope this helps her understand, how necessary the process of learning these things is, how without the experiential learning process, I won't be able to attach the right meaning and significance to getting it done. If she won't make me go back and do these things again, make me go get her standard right the second time as it were, I will never learn the appropriate prioritization and organization needed to satisfy her standard.
January 9, 2010
January 8, 2010
Love's Worth
I believe I understand something about how our symbols, our communication, our lives, are related to our experience of meaning and significance; this is why intimate, loving relationships are so important to us, because in loving so deeply we can touch something transcendent in an experience of something greater than our mundane selves.
Indeed, I have learned love's worth well enough not only to know I'll never let it go, but also to wish I had known its worth and had more of it in the past. Yet when examining this desire to change my personal history, to redact my life and my love, I discovered I only wanted to know then what I know now, not to have learned what I've already learned and so now know. (It's very much the same difference between wanting to know a language and wanting to learn a language.) The problem with this is that it is the very process of learning the love's worth which makes it significant and meaningful; if I just knew the facts without having to have learned them, then I wouldn't know their worth, I wouldn't attach to those facts about love such significant value as I do.
Intellectually I have always known I should not want to change my past because doing so would change the meaning and significance, the happiness and the person I am now. Yet it wasn't until I realized I couldn't separate the knowledge I learned from my learning experiences that those twenty-five plus years weren't merely wasted but had sudden and significant value as an experiential process of learning worth.
Perhaps we value (things) because we learn (those things), because we differentiate (those things), because we intuit (those things), because we have lived the process of valuing (those things).
~
026 math
I was twenty-five when I first met her,
twenty-eight when we first became lovers,
and at thirty I managed to admit
I was completely in love with the One.
The last four years I've spent wishing for things:
us to meet younger in life, and more, for
smarter men wouldn't have wasted such time,
never have lived love - life - out of order.
Finally I've learned what I've earned: I wouldn't
have been wiser of love's worth for cheaper.
Indeed, I have learned love's worth well enough not only to know I'll never let it go, but also to wish I had known its worth and had more of it in the past. Yet when examining this desire to change my personal history, to redact my life and my love, I discovered I only wanted to know then what I know now, not to have learned what I've already learned and so now know. (It's very much the same difference between wanting to know a language and wanting to learn a language.) The problem with this is that it is the very process of learning the love's worth which makes it significant and meaningful; if I just knew the facts without having to have learned them, then I wouldn't know their worth, I wouldn't attach to those facts about love such significant value as I do.
Intellectually I have always known I should not want to change my past because doing so would change the meaning and significance, the happiness and the person I am now. Yet it wasn't until I realized I couldn't separate the knowledge I learned from my learning experiences that those twenty-five plus years weren't merely wasted but had sudden and significant value as an experiential process of learning worth.
Perhaps we value (things) because we learn (those things), because we differentiate (those things), because we intuit (those things), because we have lived the process of valuing (those things).
~
026 math
I was twenty-five when I first met her,
twenty-eight when we first became lovers,
and at thirty I managed to admit
I was completely in love with the One.
The last four years I've spent wishing for things:
us to meet younger in life, and more, for
smarter men wouldn't have wasted such time,
never have lived love - life - out of order.
Finally I've learned what I've earned: I wouldn't
have been wiser of love's worth for cheaper.
January 7, 2010
Real-Time Attunement
When everything's a symbol but only some are symbols of significance, discovering which symbols are important (and when) is a multilayered attempt at constant attunement.
Every person uses a sort of interior shorthand of symbols, sometimes they're words sometimes images or ideas or complete abstracts, to think about, organize and represent their interior experience, and no one sees or experiences this symbols language but this one person. Even so a person naturally uses, renews, attunes their interior symbols so as to adequately match their situational experience.
Expressing yourself in adequately enough, for own yourself, is a process of taking those internal symbols and finding exterior symbols which when properly attuned and fused together you feel accurately enough convey your meaning and situational experience. We don't wait for someone who can understand us before we express ourselves; we talk out loud, we doodle, we keep journals, we talk to our pets, we create art and music and symbolic shrines in places for no one but ourselves.
Then of course there is talking to people when we attempt to find exterior symbols that we think adequately convey our meaning in the situation at hand, and are symbols we think they will understand in the situation at hand. And in a relationship two people can use exterior symbols to increasingly (re)attune other exterior symbols until they have created a highly functional symbol set accurate and adequate for the meaning and significance that they experience in their relationship.
And when we listen to our partner, by searching for clarity of symbols, by constantly comparing their symbols to what we understand of the meaning they're trying to convey, we glean more of their meaning, more of their interior experience. And so it is by intently focusing on understanding our partner's symbols, by maintaining constant real-time attunement to our partner's meaning and experience, despite the inevitable obstacles and distractions, we gain the most intimacy.
Every person uses a sort of interior shorthand of symbols, sometimes they're words sometimes images or ideas or complete abstracts, to think about, organize and represent their interior experience, and no one sees or experiences this symbols language but this one person. Even so a person naturally uses, renews, attunes their interior symbols so as to adequately match their situational experience.
Expressing yourself in adequately enough, for own yourself, is a process of taking those internal symbols and finding exterior symbols which when properly attuned and fused together you feel accurately enough convey your meaning and situational experience. We don't wait for someone who can understand us before we express ourselves; we talk out loud, we doodle, we keep journals, we talk to our pets, we create art and music and symbolic shrines in places for no one but ourselves.
Then of course there is talking to people when we attempt to find exterior symbols that we think adequately convey our meaning in the situation at hand, and are symbols we think they will understand in the situation at hand. And in a relationship two people can use exterior symbols to increasingly (re)attune other exterior symbols until they have created a highly functional symbol set accurate and adequate for the meaning and significance that they experience in their relationship.
And when we listen to our partner, by searching for clarity of symbols, by constantly comparing their symbols to what we understand of the meaning they're trying to convey, we glean more of their meaning, more of their interior experience. And so it is by intently focusing on understanding our partner's symbols, by maintaining constant real-time attunement to our partner's meaning and experience, despite the inevitable obstacles and distractions, we gain the most intimacy.
January 6, 2010
When the Symbol Fix Is In
Once uxorious men discover their erotic truth, they often have problems expressing and communicating their needs and wants in symbols their partner understands. The man wants new symbols to express and communicate with because the couple's previous signs of love and acceptance do not adequately address his new uxorious experience. Yet in the man's attempt to change relationship symbols, he often fails to adequately differentiate sex and erotic interest from love and acceptance. Because his own interior symbols remain compact, in relationship communication he uses these new and undifferentiated symbols in ways that are unclear and don't quite work for his partner.
The man often 1) wants her to express holistic acceptance of him and his uxorious nature, 2) wants her to express erotic interest in his uxorious sexuality and 3) wants her to express long term intentions of power dynamic authority. Usually the man wants these things expressed in specific ways, certain compact symbols he knows will work for him, the sexual act he desires (whatever his kink may be), semi-sexual physical objects (such as male chastity devices, collars, panties, whatever), and also language symbols (such as contracts, commands and other various authoritative statements of authority, names of power dynamics such as mistress, queen, boy, slave etc).
Sometimes these new symbols work, but often they fail because she sees them less as giving 'acceptance, interest and acknowledgment' and more like giving in to 'sex demands and kink.' Men fail to recognize their partner is not necessarily going to easily understand the new love symbol; in fact she's more likely confused as to why previous love symbols are suddenly no longer adequate. It's a problem both men and women struggle with; indeed, since it takes two to tango on this two way street, a woman's ability to understand her man and adapt her symbols to her partner is not only helpful but equally valid and valuable.
And though solving this is as simple as men and women learning to look outside their usual symbol box, symbol confusion remains difficult for anyone to conquer because it's difficult to know exactly which symbols are mismatched and affixed inaccurately when on your own interior you haven't differentiated where different symbols need to be used. In these classic cases of only understanding what we're looking for and only understanding what we expect to see, reattaching symbols more precisely so they are clear to both people can sometimes be a lengthy and frustrating process, one fraught with inherent instability and insecurity, and it often requires sincere trust to not feel offended, repulsed, or unloved.
Both partners need to understand the limitations of what they can give, be sincerely open to their partner's changing interior and symbol expressions, and respect their partner's limitations. It doesn't matter how it's solved of course, it doesn't matter who 'does more' or who 'does what' to solve it, there are no 'obligations' as such on anyone to solve it in any certain or specific way - whatever a couple works out, if it works out and works for them, it's a 'good' solution.
The man often 1) wants her to express holistic acceptance of him and his uxorious nature, 2) wants her to express erotic interest in his uxorious sexuality and 3) wants her to express long term intentions of power dynamic authority. Usually the man wants these things expressed in specific ways, certain compact symbols he knows will work for him, the sexual act he desires (whatever his kink may be), semi-sexual physical objects (such as male chastity devices, collars, panties, whatever), and also language symbols (such as contracts, commands and other various authoritative statements of authority, names of power dynamics such as mistress, queen, boy, slave etc).
Sometimes these new symbols work, but often they fail because she sees them less as giving 'acceptance, interest and acknowledgment' and more like giving in to 'sex demands and kink.' Men fail to recognize their partner is not necessarily going to easily understand the new love symbol; in fact she's more likely confused as to why previous love symbols are suddenly no longer adequate. It's a problem both men and women struggle with; indeed, since it takes two to tango on this two way street, a woman's ability to understand her man and adapt her symbols to her partner is not only helpful but equally valid and valuable.
And though solving this is as simple as men and women learning to look outside their usual symbol box, symbol confusion remains difficult for anyone to conquer because it's difficult to know exactly which symbols are mismatched and affixed inaccurately when on your own interior you haven't differentiated where different symbols need to be used. In these classic cases of only understanding what we're looking for and only understanding what we expect to see, reattaching symbols more precisely so they are clear to both people can sometimes be a lengthy and frustrating process, one fraught with inherent instability and insecurity, and it often requires sincere trust to not feel offended, repulsed, or unloved.
Both partners need to understand the limitations of what they can give, be sincerely open to their partner's changing interior and symbol expressions, and respect their partner's limitations. It doesn't matter how it's solved of course, it doesn't matter who 'does more' or who 'does what' to solve it, there are no 'obligations' as such on anyone to solve it in any certain or specific way - whatever a couple works out, if it works out and works for them, it's a 'good' solution.
January 5, 2010
Pros and Cons cum Passive
I have little in common with the Prince of Elsinore, but I have discovered by weighing pros and cons long enough, I lose decision-making motivation, or with decision made I have less action-taking motivation. I shouldn’t be surprised to express less opinion about things I have less motivation for because the need to self-express comes from motivating interior passions, beliefs and desires.
Yet my wife noted recently how I'll oddly give a catalogue of pros and cons as my opinion, and the realization was startling; though makes sense because I usually arrive at my opinion after some differentiating process of analysis. Of course, contrary to the incessantly differentiating and constantly balanced way of looking at things that I have, her opinion comes from a compact intuitive feeling which she has before the question is asked.
Now I wonder if my natural passivity comes from how I like to think about things just for the sheer fun of thinking about them, and find it amusing to differentiate things until I've analyzed them to abstracted distraction. It doesn’t matter if I don't like doing things because I think too much, or if I think so much because I don't like doing things (although I'd like to have the answer to that too), because I like answers and the process of getting them.
Indeed, while I don’t want to give up my wondrous world of differentiated existence, I'd also like to have the intuitive holistic compact understanding of the world and its answers; I want the process of thoughtful answers and the gestalt of passionate opinion. Apparently I want more will to power and motivation to action as well as my lack of motivation and natural passivity - and I suppose, being an uxorious and female led man, in a way I do have both, by being a part of the whole that is my wife and I.
Yet my wife noted recently how I'll oddly give a catalogue of pros and cons as my opinion, and the realization was startling; though makes sense because I usually arrive at my opinion after some differentiating process of analysis. Of course, contrary to the incessantly differentiating and constantly balanced way of looking at things that I have, her opinion comes from a compact intuitive feeling which she has before the question is asked.
Now I wonder if my natural passivity comes from how I like to think about things just for the sheer fun of thinking about them, and find it amusing to differentiate things until I've analyzed them to abstracted distraction. It doesn’t matter if I don't like doing things because I think too much, or if I think so much because I don't like doing things (although I'd like to have the answer to that too), because I like answers and the process of getting them.
Indeed, while I don’t want to give up my wondrous world of differentiated existence, I'd also like to have the intuitive holistic compact understanding of the world and its answers; I want the process of thoughtful answers and the gestalt of passionate opinion. Apparently I want more will to power and motivation to action as well as my lack of motivation and natural passivity - and I suppose, being an uxorious and female led man, in a way I do have both, by being a part of the whole that is my wife and I.
January 4, 2010
(Mis)Communicating Symbols
Symbols, even in their myriad constructions and usages, have a generally understood form, a generally agreed upon form, and miscommunications over definitions, denotations, syntax and connotations have straightforward solutions if the two parties who desire to communicate are attentive. But the variance of meaning among symbols and constructions to different people's interiors is a problem of pragmatic (mis)communication we often cannot solve. If someone believes you have given offense by some symbol or construction, there is often little you can do to convince them different, if you thought convincing them of anything was a good idea.
Ultimately reasoned thought and communication might get down to the truth of a matter, but reason and the process of differentiation isn't always valid for everyone's interior experience. And while we might make a person hear, we can’t make anyone listen, and we certainly can't make anyone use the same symbols we use in the same way we use them, and it's a compounded difficulty if differentiated concepts are falling on compact ears (or vice versa) no matter what symbols are used. So as frustrated as we may get (as I may get) and no matter what concepts we give (or how accurate our symbols), we cannot control what other people take to their interior from the exterior interchange of symbols.
Ultimately reasoned thought and communication might get down to the truth of a matter, but reason and the process of differentiation isn't always valid for everyone's interior experience. And while we might make a person hear, we can’t make anyone listen, and we certainly can't make anyone use the same symbols we use in the same way we use them, and it's a compounded difficulty if differentiated concepts are falling on compact ears (or vice versa) no matter what symbols are used. So as frustrated as we may get (as I may get) and no matter what concepts we give (or how accurate our symbols), we cannot control what other people take to their interior from the exterior interchange of symbols.
January 3, 2010
To Confuse, Frustrate or Offend
'To offend' – (Latin 'to strike against' and so) 'to cause hurt (feelings), anger, irritation, resentment or displeasure'
'I'm not easily offended' - 'but' - I've always thought 'offend' implies intent to harm, and without intent to harm there is no offense, despite constructions such as 'his ignorance was offensive.' Indeed I rather think ignorance should never be offensive, and since I also believe most people intend harm out of their ignorance, I'm not only 'not easily offended' but I am rarely offended as well.
What I get is frustrated; I have never understood what it is about human nature that seeks to intentionally harm, to intentionally misuse and misrepresent, to be intentionally untrue. Of course I admit myself to all these things, but only out of fear for myself and mine, never out of harmful or malicious intent.
But the collapsing and compacting of 'harm felt' with 'harm intended' can sometimes interfere with effective communication. I do not always take care with my communication but when I do take especial time and effort to say what I mean I get frustrated by ineffective communication. Often people believe I mean more, or different, than I say; sometimes someone will hear only part of what I say, miss my point entirely, take offense where none was given, and (the worst by far) tells me what I mean by my words.
I understand people might sometimes feel offended, feel I mean something different than I mean, and I believe feelings are valid; what I do not understand is why people do not seek first to understand others as a solution to miscommunication, to confusion, to frustration, before taking offense.
'I'm not easily offended' - 'but' - I've always thought 'offend' implies intent to harm, and without intent to harm there is no offense, despite constructions such as 'his ignorance was offensive.' Indeed I rather think ignorance should never be offensive, and since I also believe most people intend harm out of their ignorance, I'm not only 'not easily offended' but I am rarely offended as well.
What I get is frustrated; I have never understood what it is about human nature that seeks to intentionally harm, to intentionally misuse and misrepresent, to be intentionally untrue. Of course I admit myself to all these things, but only out of fear for myself and mine, never out of harmful or malicious intent.
But the collapsing and compacting of 'harm felt' with 'harm intended' can sometimes interfere with effective communication. I do not always take care with my communication but when I do take especial time and effort to say what I mean I get frustrated by ineffective communication. Often people believe I mean more, or different, than I say; sometimes someone will hear only part of what I say, miss my point entirely, take offense where none was given, and (the worst by far) tells me what I mean by my words.
I understand people might sometimes feel offended, feel I mean something different than I mean, and I believe feelings are valid; what I do not understand is why people do not seek first to understand others as a solution to miscommunication, to confusion, to frustration, before taking offense.
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