Love is asymmetrical

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Before moving on from the topic of love, there is one more aspect that I need to address: love is asymmetrical. To really understand the significance of this feature, I will need to elaborate.

When I love my car, it may seem too obvious to comment that the car probably does not love me back. This is the simplest way to describe the asymmetry of love; the appreciation that exists on one side of the equation seldom matches the appreciation on the other side. I love my car. My car does not love me. However, this very simple and obvious discussion belays another detail that I have not really highlighted: is love something I have for someone/something else, or is it something shared between two entities? This question is a little harder to answer.

Try as I might, I am sure that in my previous blog posts I have introduced confusion by not being clear about where the love is. Most of the time, I have spoken of love as being the appreciation I have for another entity. Sometimes, I seem to have described it as being something shared between two entities. So which is it? For my purposes, I prefer to focus on the former, love being something I possess but not necessarily that the other entity has. The example above of the love of my car is a good example of this. The love that may exist between two human subjects seems like it isn’t the same at all.

However, the love between two comparable individuals is really just their respective love for each other. In the ideal, true love is often viewed as the mutual loves that the individuals have for each other. When subject A loves subject B, and subject B loves subject A, then I would like to say that they share a love. But just because they share a love doesn’t mean that the love that each has for the other is the same. In fact, it has been my experience that in any relationship between individuals, one always loves the other a bit more than the reverse. This observation often seems to lead to an imbalance of power between the individuals. For a long time, I held onto a quote that said “the one with the least interest in a relationship has the more control over that relationship.” This is an actual sociological idea, which you can read more about here.

Putting aside the discussion of power dynamics, this suggests that the love I have for another entity is not the same as the love the other entity has for me. Thinking on this, it makes a lot of sense. After all, I am a unique individual with my own personal history and my own genetics. It is unlikely my “situation” (as Simone de Beauvoir describes it) is going to be the same as any others’ “situation.” As such, my appreciation for others will be based on slightly different criteria, related to slightly different experiences, and even simply on differing genetic tastes. In this way, in the case of two entities loving each other, there will naturally be an asymmetry between those loves.

Ultimately, this suggests a mistake by people when they believe that love shared between two individuals is a single, monolithic construct. Furthermore, as each individual’s love for the other changes with time, the nature of their shared love too will change with time. If subject A loves subject B more than subject B loves subject A at a particular time, it is entirely possible that subject B will love subject A more at a later time. So not only is there a mistake in understanding love as a single monolithic construct shared between individuals due to the differences in those individuals, but the construct itself is fluid as each individual changes with time. Love, regardless of how you understand it, is far from static.

For all these reasons, I prefer not to discuss love as the shared thing between individuals, but instead as the appreciation of one individual for another entity. I think it further makes sense to think in these terms as love understood in this way can be built upon to describe the shared experience between individuals. It is much harder to coherently divide up a monolithic construct into smaller parts, especially when the understanding of the monolith is that it is a uniform, solid, atomic element.

Tying this all together with my previous posts, we find that love is a very personal experience. It is an expression of my freedom, a reflection of my personal history, and often times a subjugation to my genetics. This does not suggest that my love for others doesn’t affect their love for me. On the contrary, it is quite nice to be loved by others, and when others love me, I tend to reciprocate. This simple fact likely led to ideas such as the Golden Rule. However, it is important to recognize that the pleasure I experience at being loved leads to a reciprocity, and not the other way around. I do not reciprocate love before I am loved. I can love someone, expressing my appreciation for them, without the need for them to love me back. This again is the expression described by my love of my car.

Why is this all important? Why should my reader take all this seriously? Management of Expectations. All too often I have observed people with unreasonable expectations of their intimate partners and even of simple objects, such as cars. In the case of a car, it is fine to love a car, but one should always remember it is just a car. A car is an inanimate object, that is, it is a thing that cannot express a freedom or reciprocate love. It is good to respect your car, performing the regular maintenance and not driving it recklessly, because doing so will allow the car to exist much longer than if you did not do these things. But a car is just a car, and it can easily be replaced by another car.

Relationships with other people is exponentially more complicated. People are capable of expressing freedom and can reciprocate love. In fact, most people express freedom, even if it is just a little. The good slave who does his best to submit to the commands of his master will still express some freedom from time to time, even in the most basic decision making, trying to determine what he thinks will please his master. I do not think it is even possible for a human to not express freedom in their lives. The expression of an individual’s freedom is also what makes loving them challenging, as my appreciation for them can grow or wane based on their expressions of freedom.

To put this in another way, if my appreciation for another individual is based on their physical appearance, then my appreciation will change as their physical appearance changes. As they grow older, I may find them more attractive, or I may find them less attractive. In either case, my love for them, if it is based in eros like this, will not remain the same over time. Similarly if my appreciation is based on other aspects of their individuality. And as I suggested in a previous post that there is no static aspect of an individual, my appreciation will remain fluid regardless of what aspect I chose to base my appreciation on.

If I decide at the outset that love is a monolithic, unchanging, eternal, universal construct, then I will always be disappointed when I discover that it is not. If I expect that those that I love will love me in return in equal measure, I will be disappointed. If I make love out to be the most powerful force in the universe, able to break down barriers of time and space, I will live a life of misery as I am never able to attain such a love. I believe this is the sort of misery that many people experience, especially in their early adult lives, trying desperately to find fulfilling relationships with other people. Always looking for the Bigger Better Deal (BBD); always looking for the perfect relationship partner. The fact is, no such thing exists.

This may sound pretty bleak, but I assure you it isn’t. I found the “perfect” partner in my life, not because she is perfect in every way. She is “perfect” because I understand that she is a conscious entity that is capable of expressing a freedom, pursuing projects, and who cares about her world and those who inhabit it. She is “perfect” because I understand all of this, and I can express my love for her by helping her express her freedom, and I can provide support when she pursues projects. What makes her “perfect” has nothing to do with her physical appearance, nor does it have to do with her fondness for pineapples. She is “perfect” because I say she is, and it is my expression of my freedom to do so.

Love is a Choice, Part 2

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Love is a choice, because from the available options I have before me, I choose which path to follow. It is a choice because I must choose the path I follow. Even not selecting a path is a choice, the choice not to choose and let “fate” decide for me, which upon “allowing fate to decide,” I simply choose the path that was suggested. Like if I were standing at an ice cream stand trying to decide what flavour of ice cream to get, so I ask my buddy who suggests I get chocolate, so I then ask the server for chocolate ice cream.

However, love is more complicated than purchasing ice cream. I cannot simply get it, and then my ice cream issues are resolved for good. I cannot order ice cream and expect to have that ice cream forever. Whether I like it or not, the ice cream will slowly melt if I leave it unattended (faster if it is particularly warm out). I could place it in my freezer to try to preserve it, but then the ice cream will degrade over time there too. The freezer helps, but it doesn’t prevent my ice cream from degrading eventually. I can choose to eat it, enjoying it in the moment, or I can save it for later, when it will not quite be the same as it was in the moment.

Another thing I might consider is reconstituting the ice cream. I could rebuild it, or reinforce it. Make it better, or even simply maintain it through some strange process. This is where the analogy to ice cream starts to break down. After all, have you ever heard of someone “maintaining” their ice cream? Love is certainly not ice cream, though in the moment, it might seem like it.

Perhaps a better analogy is fire; love is like fire, burning fuel to maintain its energetic form. But that becomes key to the situation; there is fuel needed to keep the fire burning. Take the fuel away, and the fire is extinguished. When the fuel is used up, more fuel must be added, lest the fire is extinguished again. I can start a new fire if the old one goes out, but then it is a new fire and not the old fire. They may appear the same, providing warmth and light, but they are not quite the same. In fact, it seems like the fire isn’t the same from moment to moment either. Its shape and size are constantly changing, which alters the amount of warmth and light it provides from moment to moment. Fire is the epitome of change.

Like fire, love too needs fuel to burn. Love’s fuel is effort and interest. Interest is the part most people, I think, are already familiar with. When I talk about “love and first sight,” I am talking about interest; I am fond of that person’s appearance, and so I love them. But this sort of love is in the moment again. This is eros. My interest is transitory, and may fade as their appearance changes with time. If my interest fades, I’ve heard people say that it “wasn’t really love, because true love doesn’t fade.” True love, it seems, is eternal and infinite.

If true love is to be eternal and infinite (at least as far as I am able to confirm it is), it will have to last as long as I am able to confirm it. This amounts to the love lasting as long as I am still alive. If I stoke my love with effort, I can maintain it for as long as I wish, but then my love is not as simple as mere eros. My love must be something a bit different.

I can still have a love based on eros, but then my appreciation will have something to do with the changing nature of my subject’s immediate features. It cannot be those features themselves, unless I change what I appreciate with every passing moment. Perhaps that is the point though. Perhaps I ought to change what I consider to be beauty with every changing moment. If I do this, then my love will last much longer.

Alternatively, I could choose to appreciate more mediate features of my subject, features that are less susceptible to change. Internal qualities seem less prone to change, but they are not as static as I might want to believe. I am not the man I was 20 years ago. I value different things; desire different things. As my subject changes, so too do I change. It would be so much easier if my subject and I didn’t have to keep changing over time.

This then is the key to a lasting love, or “true love,” as I’ve often heard it described. Not to attempt to find that which does not change, as there is nothing in this world that does not change. I could choose to do as Plato did and fabricate an imaginary realm of unchanging Forms to appreciate, but then I would not love anything about this world. If I claimed to love something about this world, really all I’d have admitted is that I love the world only inasmuch as it resembles the Forms; it is the Forms that I truly love.

To love in a changing world requires me to put an effort into my act of loving. Like the fire, I have to keep adding fuel to my love. I have to keep putting an effort into love to maintain it. My love will last forever, if I forever make an effort in my love. The day that I stop doing this, my love is lost. Of course, there are those who will simply tell me, then it was never love at all.

Love is a Choice, Part 1

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In my previous post, I suggested that love is a journey. Those who have spoken with me in person will know that I have also frequently stated that love is a choice. In this post, I will elaborate on how these two statements are connected.

In any journey, I can choose to follow the most efficient path that connects where I am to where I wish to go. I can also choose any number of alternative paths, each of which will be less efficient than the first. I have already discussed why I think less efficient paths may be preferable to more efficient paths, but what I did not focus on was the fact that I am choosing between paths. Putting this another way, why I choose one path over another is just as significant as the path I choose, perhaps more so.

In a previous post, I discussed the relationship between choice and freedom or free will. How the ability to make a choice is tied with some sort of freedom. That is to say, I must be free to make a choice, otherwise the idea of choice does not itself make sense. In the case of my journey, I must be free to choose which path I am to take toward my destination. The question I might ask is whether there are cases when I am not free to choose the path I take.

In one sense, the situation I have presented seems impossible. I am always able to choose my path, even in cases where I may not like the particular choices I have laid out in front of me. When I have a gun pointed to my head, I am still able to choose not to follow the commands issued to me, even though my choice may result in the end of my life. However, I think the more productive way to view this situation is as a limiting of the particular paths available to select from. The individual holding a gun to my head may not literally be forcing me to make a particular choice, but they are certainly limiting the sorts of choice I am able to make. In particular, they have provided a choice that includes the end of my life, a choice that may not have been present before the situation I find myself in.

It is at this point considering Simone de Beauvoir is helpful, particularly her view of one’s “situation.” For Beauvoir, my situation includes the brute facts about my existence. For example, that I am perceived to be male by those around me in part makes up my situation. However, it is important to understand that my situation is much more than simply that I am part of the category “man;” it also includes all the privileges I have as a result of this brute fact. My being a man allows me access to parts of this world that those who are in the category of “woman” have no access to. For example, late at night, if I wish to go for a walk down the dark streets of my neighborhood, it is part of my selection of choices that I can do so without having to fear for my life or for other possible abuses. This is not so for most women; due to the cultural training instilled in most young girls, it is considered incredibly dangerous to be alone on a dark street at night. This example is a bit of an oversimplification, as I could still be mugged by some thief, and there are certainly some women that I know who have no fear of dark streets. However, the point to be understood here is that there is clearly something different going on between myself and the typical woman. Where I may have very little fear of a negative incident occurring, for the woman the threat seems to be much higher.

It is this very complicated set of circumstances and facts about me that make up my situation. Another way to describe my situation is to suggest that my situation has a direct bearing on the sorts of projects I can easily take up, and what projects are not really available to me. Another example might include whether I am able to attend a university in order to earn a degree of some kind. If I come from a wealthy, well connected family, not only is going to university an easily attainable project I can undertake, I will likely have many options for which university I wish to attend. On the contrary, if I come from a poor family, where we are barely able to afford to put food on the table from month to month, the opportunity of attending university may not really present a live option. In these two situations, the paths that are available to me to select from are different, regardless of the final destination that I may have in mind.

Tying this back to the topic of love, my options for whom to pursue a relationship with are limited by my situation as well. In my youth, my friends and I would ogle the busty celebrities of our time, often fantasizing about being with those women and even possessing them. It seems to me this sort of fantasizing is not uncommon and continues for many men well into their later years. This itself speaks volumes regarding the situation a typical man finds himself in. No matter how much fantasizing I did, and no matter what sorts of choices I might make, the probability of me meeting the “girl of my dreams” and possessing her are virtually zero. It is not really a live choice for me to make, nor is it a reasonable path for me to choose. Instead, more reasonable choices existed in the girls who attended my high school with me.

To be clear, I no longer condone this sort of behavior at all. This cultural phenomenon, which often is described as a part of the system of patriarchy, is something I consider reprehensible today. My present journey is one where I hope to change my world to reflect a more empathetic view of life, with compassion toward all beings, not just the human ones. But that is also my history, and to dismiss it would be to ignore an important aspect of my situation. I am who I am today because I was what I was in the past.

This also leads to the other concern I might raise at this point, regarding the pursuit of partnerships, regardless of the sex or gender of the other party. The desire most of us have to find another individual that we expect to spend the better part of our lives with, so that we are not “alone.” This was recently raised to me in a discussion regarding what constitutes a “family” in various surveys (the current definition of family in this circumstance was a military man, a civilian woman, and two civilian children). While I agree that the current definition is clearly weak, not encompassing many of the groups that I would consider to be a family, the concern I want to raise is in the desire for there to be a family unit, regardless of its specific composition. That there be families as the most basic unit of partnership among the population, instead of more complex groupings that blur the lines between “whose children belong to whom.” This is a topic I will have to address in another post.

My situation includes an aspect that suggests I need to be in a partnership with exactly one other individual. Furthermore, the “preferred” other individual is expected to be of a sex and gender that is opposite to mine. Furthermore, it is expected that I will reproduce with that other individual and produce at least two offspring. All of these things lead into the expectation that I must find love. And all of this significantly affects the sorts of paths I have to select between. If I accept these expectations, placed upon me by the society and world I belong to, then my choice for whom to love becomes limited by various prospects, such as needing to find a partner who is a woman, of “breeding” age, and who is “attainable” by my social status. Furthermore, I should entirely dismiss and reject any individuals who would contradict these mandates. In other words, I certainly should not fall in love with a man, a woman who is infertile, or a dog. My choices for love are already incredibly limited.

As with all things, our world is not filled with black and white choices, and most people find grey within their limited selection of paths. For example, some individuals do fall in love with dogs, though they do not expect to reproduce with those dogs, nor do they expect to engage in sexual relationships with those dogs. However, what the have with those dogs I would still consider love, and I think most people would agree with me. Their partnership is the sort of partnership where they look out for each other, as much as they each are able, and they do their best to provide a happy life to their partner. Isn’t that what we would like to think love is all about?

Love is a choice. It is a very complicated choice based on our very unique situations and circumstances, limited by our cultures and societies. We engage with some potential partners and dismiss others, most of the time at an unconscious level. I could not possibly love this rock, after all, it isn’t even alive. In the next post I will continue to elaborate on how it is not just a choice at the outset, but it is an ongoing choice as well.

Love is a Journey

crimsonLeave a comment

I’ve heard it said that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love, above all other emotions or experiences, is supposed to be the most profound thing in existence. When it is described in these ways, it suggests to me that love may possibly be simply a manifestation of the most profound experience the person who is using the term has ever had. If I am correct, then love is not the same thing for one person as it is for another. In fact, this all seems to suggest that love is highly descriptive of a type of experience, but not of a particular experience itself.

There are at least three terms used by the ancient Greeks that are frequently translated to “love” in English. “Eros” is often described as being physical love, often related to the sexual affections modern people express towards one another. This leads to terms such as “erotic,” which I imagine already paints a particular picture in my reader’s mind. This term alone is complicated and controversial enough to cause problems for many people. It is often seen as an appreciation of beauty, which immediately raises the question of what makes something or someone beautiful.

There are some who suggest that eros can be concerned with an internal quality of a person, but I do not agree with this understanding. The “internal” quality that is focused on is that quality that brings about the “external” beauty or perfection in the thing being appreciated. In other words, it is not the “internal” quality that is appreciated, it is how it has manifested “externally” that calls attention in the admirer. If I exercise frequently and succeed in improving the musculature of my chest, it is my muscular chest that is loved, not the fact that I habituated myself to exercise. This is how I understand eros, as an appreciation of a sort of beauty, but one that is physical and outside a person. Eros is concerned with the surface, and what is immediately perceivable. Or, to put it slightly different, eros is concerned with immediate gratification.

Thinking in this way, eros can be related to such things as lust or infatuation. When I see another person, if I believe that I have fallen “in love at first sight,” then I am expressing eros, because the love that I want to express is concerned with what is immediately perceivable. For example, perhaps I appreciate how that other person looks, either their body or their attire or any number of other immediate qualities. I know nothing about their character, their habits, their interests, or their projects, so how could I possibly express any other sort of appreciation. Perhaps, if I observe the person for a period of time, I might develop other appreciations, based on their actions and movements, but then I will be moving beyond simple eros into something else.

“Philia” is usually associated with an appreciation for the less immediate qualities of something, especially as it approaches a sort of perfection. For example, the term “philosophy” is usually translated into a “love of wisdom,” where the “philo” is the “love of” and the “sophy” is the “wisdom.” Philia is frequently associated with deep friendships and comradery, suggesting that the appreciation needs to be developed over time. After all, it is through our shared experiences and the building of trust that deep friendships come about. I do not become lifelong friends with another person upon meeting them for the first time. Through a long term exposure to the other person, where I am able to observe their actions and choices, and how those actions and choices affect the world, I may develop a growing love for that person. It is possible for me to appreciate other things in a similar fashion as well. I may immediately experience eros for a car, seeing its sleek appearance and smooth curves, but then I will need to test drive that car to understand how it responds to my driving it to be able to appreciate it on another level. I would argue that philia requires a bit more exposure than a simple test drive, but the idea is there. Through time, being able to observe the subject of my appreciation at length, can I develop philia for that particular subject.

Philia is not a love that happens immediately. There is no “love at first sight” that is philia. A deep connection with another person takes time, and there are no guarantees that it will develop in a particular pairing. I may spend time with another person and through my observations of them (perhaps they are cruel or messy or dismissive) I may not ever develop feelings of this sort of love. I may pursue a relationship on the basis of eros, but never fulfill the requirements of philia. On the other hand, perhaps through many experiences of philia with various people, I may begin to feel an appreciation for a wider, intangible thing such as humanity.

“Agape” is the term used to describe a sort of unconditional appreciation. Instead of requiring some sort of observation of the subject, whether immediate or mediate, I appreciate the subject simply in virtue of my association with that subject. I am human, and other humans share something with me, what I might call my humanity. I can appreciate other humans, even those I have never experienced, simply in virtue of their being humans too. Another example of agape is the unconditional appreciation of a parent for their children; their love is not a reflection of an appreciation of their appearance nor of their habituated actions and choices. A parent loves their children simply because they are the parent’s children, and not necessarily for any other reason. This is agape.

Agape seems like it ought to be immediate, like eros, but it is not. To experience agape, one needs to build up to it, in a way. It can be viewed as a sort of expansion or widening of experience and appreciation. If I experience eros once, and only once, I have no basis for anything else. I cannot consider why I love one thing versus another. If I experience eros many times, I can reflect on my experiences and begin to consider what it is about each of those experiences that is common and not common. Why do I find one car beautiful but not another, or one tree beautiful but not another. Similarly with philia. Through my experiences, and especially my observations, I can reflect on what about my friends makes them my friends. In my life, I have often found that my friends are my friends through common morality and similar world view. We behave in similar fashions, being charitable at similar times.

For me personally, through extensive reflection, I have come to realize that I appreciate certain behaviors and habits. When I observe similar behaviors and habits, I am drawn to those performing those behaviors and habits. I wish to observe them further, and see if they are consistent. And if they are, I tend to prefer to associate with those people. I would describe my behavior as a project of love. I begin with eros, seeing something I consider attractive (for any number of reasons). It is eros because it is immediate, but I also recognize that my feelings are subject to change with further observation. I have to start with eros because it is at the beginning; I have no experience of the subject at this point, or at least very little to begin with.

Having been lured in through eros, I take time to “get to know” my subject. I spend time with them and listen and learn about them. I watch closely to what they do and how they are; what choices they make, and how they conduct themselves. How a person moves is quite significant for me. Through time, my appreciation for the subject grows. If I am lucky, it grows into philia. I can still appreciate them immediately, through eros, but I can also appreciate them mediately, through philia. My love for the subject grows and become more and more over time.

You might have expected me to suggest that my philia for my subject will eventually grow into agape for my subject, but that is not the case, because agape is not about the subject. Philia is the height of my appreciation for my subject, becoming lifelong friends and comrades. Through many such relationships, I can develop agape, but it does not focus on an individual, unless perhaps that individual is me. That I have developed within me an appreciation for all beings of a particular nature. For me to be able to love unconditionally, not because of the subject itself, but because the subject belongs to a category, and I can appreciate the category. I love my son, not because I love the person that my son is, but because he is my son, and being my son is sufficient for that love.

I acknowledge that not everyone has the same sorts of experiences I have. My reader likely has lived a very different life than I have lived. Perhaps you have different experiences and different observations of the world, and that has led you to different conclusions about love. However, this has been my experience. For me, love is a journey, not a destination. I do not achieve love, I experience an ongoing love through my experiences with various subjects. This also means that I can easily “fall out of love” if I am not careful.

To put this another way, for me love is something that I constantly create. If I want love in my life, I have to constantly work at it. It is not something out there to be discovered, and once I find it I have it forever. Love, for me, is something I generate by my actions and choices. I work at making love in the world and in my life. If I stop making love in the world, then I will not have love. So I have made it a part of my life to generate love in the world and in my life. Kind of like deciding to eat healthy foods so I can enjoy a strong and energetic body, I choose to generate love in my life. For me, love cannot be a destination.

The Journey and the Destination

crimsonLeave a comment

A couple posts ago I posed a problem; a seeming disconnect between one having low expectations of the world they inhabit, and their being properly motivated to complete their projects. In this post, I will address this concern. However, to do this, I need to discuss another concept that I’m sure my audience will be familiar with: the distinction between the “journey” and the “destination.”

Much folk wisdom suggests that the journey is much more important than the destination. Or perhaps it would be more fair to say that the journey is as important as the destination. But what is this journey and destination stuff exactly? To be perfectly clear about these ideas, when one decides upon a project, one has decided upon a destination of a sort. Deciding upon a project is to begin a process toward the completion of that project. One needs to determine, in some sense, how the project will be completed, what actions or tasks need to be done or even simply how to know that the project has been accomplished successfully. The things that need to be done in order to accomplish the project constitute the journey, while the completion of the project is the destination.

The analogy of travelling to completion of projects is imperfect, but fairly reliable. In order to accomplish one’s projects, one need to do various activities, and these activities might be considered sub-projects in their own right. However, all that is accomplished during the process of trying to complete the over arching project can all be as important as the project itself. Take for example the process of making a cake. To make a cake, depending on the sort of cake that is being made, there will be a need to assemble and mix a batter that will be baked, often in an oven, and then after the baking has been completed, an icing will be applied. Each of these sub-projects, the mixing of batter, the baking, and the application of icing, each has its own sub-projects as well. To apply icing, one will first need to assemble and mix ingredients to make the icing, or to bake the batter one will first need to turn on an oven and wait for it to achieve the correct internal temperature. Completing each sub-project is just as important as completing the over arching project. In fact, not completing one of the sub-projects may prevent the over arching project from being completed at all. Anyone who has missed an ingredient, or accidentally added the wrong ingredient (such as adding baking soda instead of baking powder) will understand what I am talking about.

Making a cake may seem like a silly project for me to talk about, but it is a project that many people engage in, especially recently with the pandemic encouraging most of us to stay home. Furthermore, the making of a cake is often itself a sub-project to another over arching project, such as celebrating a loved one’s birthday or anniversary. Projects are plentiful in most of our lives.

Considering the hierarchical nature of projects and sub-projects may shed some light into the relative importance that is assigned to each of these projects. For instance, mixing the batter successfully and baking it successfully may be considered more important than icing it well. After all, if the icing is a bit off, it will still taste good and as my father used to say to me, “it is all going to the same place anyway.” In this way, I assign values to each of my projects, emphasizing certain projects for completion over others. For me personally, I also tend to consider the ability to automate projects into my calculations; that is, if I can begin a project that will continue unattended, I give priority to starting those sorts of projects over the sorts of projects that require my undivided attention for the duration of the project. That way, it seems like I accomplish many more projects at the same time than others around me. I seem more efficient.

With all this in mind, it seems like the journey toward a destination is filled with many sub-destinations. My journey is likely filled with a plethora of sub-destinations, all of which I consider equally important in my over arching journey of my life. My journey has already taken me literally to reside in various parts of the world, some for longer periods than others. The simple occupation of different physical locations has, for me, profoundly increased my appreciation for the diversity of the world, both human and otherwise. I would suggest that it is my experiences in this regard that have tempered the world view that I am now extolling.

This also may subtly suggest why the journey might be considered more important than the destination. Consider that my over arching destination for my life is that I will one day expire. What’s more, I do not know what the particular conditions of my demise will be like. I don’t plan to die in a particular manner at a particular time. In fact, my general plan is to try to remain living for as long as I am able to do so. In other words, the over arching destination of my life project is not a destination that I am encouraged to consider in great detail. The journey toward that destination, for me at least, is clearly more significant to me, and something I would much rather focus on.

This example also suggests that, at least in some cases, the destination or project one has may not be one that they wish to accomplish, or perhaps would prefer to delay as much as they are able to. In a case like this, one may want to extend their journey for as long as they are able to, acquiring as may successful sub-projects as they can along the way. The journey really is more important than the destination in these cases.

This now provides a bit of an answer the the original question of how one with a low set of expectations may still be motivated to complete their projects. If one’s expectations of their over arching projects is low, then the particular journey required to achieve that project becomes less important. That is, instead of needing to follow a path that leads directly to their destination, one could decided to follow a path that is more indirect, filled with many sub-destinations. Even more than this, precisely which sub-destinations are taken become less important as well, as there is no longer the need for an efficient journey to the over arching destination. To use another folk phrase, one can “stop and smell the roses” on their journey.

It should still be emphasized that some projects may be important enough or significant enough to warrant following the most efficient and direct path to their achievement as can possibly be found. Time sensitive situations, such as emergencies involving life and death frequently fall into this category. However, not every situation is an emergency or involves life and death. And the over arching project we each have of our very lives is certainly not the sort of project we would want to follow the most efficient path to its successful accomplishment of. At least, this is what I believe; I am sure there are some out there who will disagree with this valuation.

In my next post, I will discuss a particular project that I think is quite prevalent for most people. A project that I believe most people approach as a project that requires an efficient and quick journey toward, but that I will argue actually requires the sort of slow, delayed journey I have just described. That project, is love.

I am not solid

crimsonLeave a comment

I was going to answer the question I posed at the end of my last post this week, but decided to deviate due to an interesting epiphany I had this week. It isn’t anything I would consider to be a monumental discovery, so much as an interesting realization. That I am not a single, unified entity, but really just a collection of smaller entities (that in turn are simply collections of even smaller entities, and so on).

Recently, I had a massage. Not the relaxing sort of massage most people will expect, but a therapeutic massage. If you’ve had one of these before, then you will know that it tends to be painful during the massage, as the therapist pokes and prods your individual muscle fibers and other bits. While the massage was proceeding, I realized precisely how much this therapist was focusing in on very specific parts of my body. I could feel the therapist feeling around a little in an area of my back, then once finding what she was looking for, pressing hard and literally manipulating the bit she had found. It felt to me like she was moving my muscle fibers to the sides and around in order to get them into better position. Perhaps in some cases, she was also simply massaging those fibers to loosen them up. Either way, I realized at that moment that she was objectifying me.

I don’t use the term objectifying in this case to suggest anything negative. Only to convey the fact that she was looking at me not necessarily as a person, but as a collection of parts. Specifically, my back was not the back of a person, so much as it was a large flat surface made up of skin and muscle and bone (and other things). She was focusing on finding a very particular muscle in order to manipulate it. While this muscle is technically a part of me, it was at that time not important that it was. That is, the muscle was simply an object to manipulate for a purpose. In this case, to improve my situation and make me feel better (eventually).

After the massage, I did feel much better. I was sore, but the pain I had in my neck and back was relieved. I felt like I was not so tight. I felt better. But I couldn’t dismiss this realization that I was objectified during the procedure. My body was simply a collection of bits and pieces.

I further recalled a bit of history about computer animation that related to all this. In particular, the difficulty with computer animation in making human beings look realistic. This issue has also been observed and experienced by various artists trying to capture the human form, especially painters. The problem that many now realize is that the skin is not opaque or solid. When light hits our skin, it is not all reflected away; some of the light penetrates our skin and then is reflected by the stuff underneath, like our blood, bones, and muscles. This is what gives us the particular hues that we have. Flesh colour is inconsistent, just as the bits and pieces beneath the surface of our skin are constantly moving around and changing. If you know what blushing is, this is a great example, where more blood flows to an area making it appear more red.

In the case of computer animation, in order to make a human look more realistic, the model of the human has to be more complete, with actual bones and muscles grafted beneath a skin’s surface. The skin, in the computer, is not entirely opaque, and whatever is beneath can be seen through. This also means that as the camera view changes, what is seen isn’t the same either, as different bits and pieces reflect light differently at different angles. Once again, the human body is not really a solid, opaque object, but a collection of smaller pieces.

I have often thought my consciousness is of a similar nature. That is, my consciousness is not some solid, uniform entity, but a collection of smaller entities as well. The best example I have to describe this is of the nature of fire. Think of a little flame on a candle. It is simple and seems pretty uniform. Then consider a roaring fire in a fireplace, or perhaps a bonfire on a beach. The fire is the same as that of the candle, only much larger and more exciting. The larger fire seems to be made up of smaller parts, perhaps like millions of small candle flames, all smooshed together. But they are so tightly packed, they appear uniform. The fire, at least in appearance, is a single entity, which moves and crackles and heats up the room. Of course I know that it can be separated into smaller parts; I can take a small piece of wood, place the tip into the larger fire, and then ignite the tip and pull it away. Is that a new fire? Or did I take a small bit of the existing fire and take it with me?

I wonder if consciousness is of this same sort of nature. Made up of tiny little bits of consciousness, generated by the cells of our body perhaps. Like the midi-chlorians that were made up in Episode 1 of the Star Wars franchise, perhaps consciousness is small bits that collect to make up a larger sentience. If this is true, then all the parts of my body may, in some way, contribute to the whole of my mind. Perhaps the nervous cells, especially those found in my brain, contribute larger bits of consciousness than the other parts, like my muscle cells. This could suggest that the link between my body and my mind is much tigher than René Descartes suggested in his meditations. Again, this is not new; there are many people who have questioned Descartes suggestion of mind/body dualism.

Ultimately, where this all leads me is to the realization that I am not a single, solid, uniform, opaque entity. I am bits and pieces of lots of other smaller entities, which seem to be also made up of even smaller entities, and so on. I am not one single thing, but a collection of things. If my mind and my body are simply a collection, where some bits can be added and others removed, without disturbing (significantly) the whole that makes me who and what I am, then perhaps I am not as static or unchanging as I might like to believe. Like the world around me, I may simply be a transient, flowing object, seen as a single entity only by convention and convenience.

It is interesting to think about, and it is always possible that it is the truth (as much a truth might exist). But I must be careful not to confuse the situation for the one that I find myself bound to. I am a part of this human world presently, with strange rules and customs that I am expected to maintain. Like brushing my teeth, or going to work, or cleaning dishes. I may be a collection of parts, but I also, at the same time, am a single unified entity, at least as is observed by society and those humans who exist around me. I have to maintain and recognize myself as a single entity most of the time. Or as one of my professors in university suggested, when I was having a bit of a crisis of identity, if I am not me, then who should he assign my grades to?

Management of Expectations

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If you have been following, you will have noticed I missed a week. I was incredibly busy and delayed in writing, but when the opportunity arose to write, I thought it might be best to delay further. Normally, I would write tomorrow, but I thought today made more sense. Ironically, all of this leads well into my discussion for today. What I often call the management of expectations.

For you, my dear reader, it is best if I keep to a schedule. That way, you know what to expect from me. If I meet your expectations, then you are (generally) not disappointed by me, as my posts will appear when you predict they ought to appear. This will make me reliable in your eyes. If I don’t keep to my schedule, as I did this past week, then you may be disappointed, and then you may also lose trust it me. In this case, I become unreliable. It affects our relationship whether I meet your expectations of me.

In my youth, I participated in performing arts. Specifically, I joined an improvisation troupe for a brief period after I had finished high school. To join the troupe, I had to take a basic class on how improve worked and what sorts of games/performances I would be expected to perform. If you’ve ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway?, then you probably are familiar with the sorts of performances I did. Improvisation, as it turns out, has a lot to do with the management of expectations.

To be successful at improvisation, one must do one seemingly simple thing: lower the expectations of your audience, and then follow it up with doing what comes natural. That’s it. It is a ridiculously simple formula that works incredibly well. If you can reduce the expectations of your audience, then they will be impressed by almost anything. This is why improve troupes often go to the audience to ask for ideas in their performances; by asking the audience for ideas, the audience typically believes that the performance that is about to follow will be much more difficult, as the performers have had no opportunity to prepare for what the are about to do. Without appropriate preparation, acting out a coherent scene seems impossible. However, the performers listen to the audience’s suggestions and then create an often wacky scene that frequently impresses that same audience.

Of course there are those performers who are not as good at this sort of play. If the performers do not actually follow or use the audience’s suggestions, or if the scene is too far fetched, then the performance may lack the impressive qualities that one might expect. Again, it is all about those expectations. What we anticipate in contrast to what we actually behold.

Life, I have found, is much like an improvisational performance. Those around me are my audience, in a sense, though they tend to be as much a part of my performance as I am of theirs. However, much like the improve audience, those around me have expectations of me. Like this blog, my readers will probably expect that I will post once a week, and usually on Sundays, because I have created this expectation by the frequency of my past posts. As I had indicated at the beginning, my audience will probably be affected by my ability to maintain that expectation.

While I do believe it is important to manage the expectations of others in this world, where this idea really becomes important (in my opinion) is when applied to one’s self. Managing one’s own expectations. I use the above examples and explanation in order to try to make clear what has to happen, but it isn’t so much about how we manage the expectations of others that is important, as much as how we manage our own for our selves. This is how management of expectations ties in very closely with the struggle and sacrifice I was talking about in my past few posts.

Managing one’s own expectations is a challenging thing. In some sense, it is nonsensical entirely. After all, I simple expect what I expect, don’t I? How can I alter my expectations? In the part of the world where I live, expectations of the self are rather high. It seems to me that most people are very concerned with taking the greatest advantage in all situations. What I often refer to as the bigger, better deal. (I did not coin this term; it has been around for a very long time, and I do not know its actual source.) The bigger, better deal, or BBD, is the mindset one adopts when they are constantly looking for some way to improve their situation. If one has a car, one is always looking around for a faster or fancier car. If one has a computer, one is always looking for a faster or better performing computer. In relationships, the BBD is quite insidious, as most people seem entirely unsatisfied with their partners, always gazing around them for a better partner. This last issue is incredibly problematic I find.

As I see it, the BBD mindset is inappropriate to adopt in all situations. It may be helpful in a limited number of situations, such as when I am shopping around for the best computer to purchase given my circumstances. However, it is entirely inappropriate when selecting a partner in life, whether romantically or even professionally. I will address my viewpoint on interpersonal relationships in a future post; for now I will simply say that BBD is incompatible with interpersonal relationships. A different strategy needs to be adopted when dealing with people in that way.

An alternative mindset to hold is one where I am satisfied with what I have. Those around me often refer to this as settling for a thing. The term settling has a negative connotation, and so I prefer not to use that term. What I have in mind is an acceptance in what I have, allowing me to gain the most enjoyment and satisfaction from whatever it is, often in the present. This is related to “living in the now,” or “living in the present,” to share a phrase that is often used. To be satisfied with today. To be able to take enjoyment with today, instead of worrying about possible futures. If I am always worrying about the future, I never spend time enjoying what I do have here an now.

To manage my expectations properly, I need to be able to be satisfied with what I have, here and now. Not absolutely everything, but enough. I live in a home with various deficiencies. There are holes in the walls in places, the floors are not perfectly flat, I have no air conditioning and the weather has been rather hot lately. I can work toward improving these deficiencies in the future, but I can also enjoy my home for what it does offer me. It provides me shade from the hot sun on a day like today. My home also allows me to sit here and write this blog to you, and I can be happy that I have this opportunity. I am in a committed relationship with my partner, and I can be happy that I have that too.

It isn’t always easy to accept the things I have. There are certainly times when I want more. However, I don’t actually need more most of the time. And sometimes, getting that more results in a decrease in my happiness instead of an increase. Food is the best example I have of this. I tend to always be hungry. I would eat pretty well all the time if I could. However, when given the opportunity to eat as much as I can, I tend to overdo it. I tend to eat until I am unable to eat any more, and then I feel bloated and very uncomfortable for hours afterward. The satisfaction at stuffing my face full of tasty food is lost by excruciating hours of dissatisfaction. Clearly, in this particular situation, for me, more is definitely not better. I have had to learn to be satisfied with much less food, and I have had to learn to not eat just because I can. I can enjoy some tasty food, and then stop myself from going too far. I can be satisfied with enough, and learn to accept the perceived lack that follows. Or, I can recognize that the perceived lack is just that, perceived. I am not actually lacking anything. The loss is all in my mind.

This also applies with types of foods. I learned a long time ago that some foods tasted very good when I ate them, but then made me feel like crap afterward. For example, potato chips and Cheezies taste quite good when I eat them, but leave me feeling sluggish and heavy shortly afterward. However, there are other foods that are the opposite. For example, when I eat Kashi Go Lean cereal, the original cereal and not any of the plethora of other varieties available, I find that eating the cereal isn’t terribly exciting and the taste is not all that great, but for the rest of the day I feel much, much better. In other words, some activities I engage in have an instant gratification, and others have a gratification that follows, and sometimes I am lucky to find something that can satisfy both, like eating an apple or a pear. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of expectations as it relates to food that I believe is the cause of obesity in North America, as well as the adoption of the BBD with food.

Understanding how food works, and therefore recognizing what I ought to expect from my food, helps me to make better decisions and live a happier life. I understand that I cannot simply eat anything I want simply because it happens to taste good in the moment, because I expect that I will feel like crap later. Or, I expect that eating that Kashi cereal will result in a benefit to myself later. A non-food example like this is exercise. Exercising is not generally an enjoyable activity in itself. Exercising means pushing myself to do difficult things. However, if I push myself and do those difficult things, later I can enjoy a stronger body that looks much nicer as well.

Looking at this in the other direction, if I do not understand how food works, and I do not recognize the effects that it will have, then I will be left disappointed. If I think that eating all those Cheezies will make me feel good, without the feeling of sluggishness afterward, then I am disappointed later when I feel sluggish. In other words, I need to have appropriate expectations of the situations I put myself into. I cannot expect things to be better than they actually will be. This is often brought about by a lack of information, or misinformation. This is likely why I have such a significant distrust of marketing and advertising, and sales in general, as most of the time those activities lead to a lack of information or misinformation. The opposite situation occurs to what the aim of improvisation is; instead of the audience’s expectations being lowered, the audience’s expectations are raised and then when the performer/sales person does what comes natural, the audience is disappointed.

To be happy in this life, it tends to be helpful not to have such high expectations. If my expectations are low, then I will be impressed and happy with what the world offers me. On the other hand, if my expectations are high, then I will be disappointed by what I find in the world. This again seems like a simple situation and a simple solution to happiness, but as with all things there is much more to the story. After all, why would millions of people adopt a mindset like BBD then? It is often argued that having those higher expectations is what motivates people to try and make an effort at projects. Is there a situation where one can have low expectations and yet still be motivated to their projects?

Struggle and Sacrifice

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I’ve discussed sacrifice, and how it is a transaction where one gives up a thing of value for another thing of value (hopefully the thing gained has greater value than the thing given up). And I’ve discussed struggle, and how it is the process that generates (or reveals) value. Now I will discuss how these two ideas work together, and why this is important to me.

Both struggle and sacrifice deal with the valuation of things. Those things can be tangible, such as the value of my car or my home; or they can be intangible, such as the relationship I have with a friend or acquaintance. I personally follow the line of thought the Existentialists followed with regard to intrinsic value; that is, I do not believe anything has intrinsic value, and that all value is assigned by some sort of agent. Furthermore, I believe that the value assigned by a particular agent is not necessarily the same as the value assigned by another, different agent, when both agents are talking about the same thing. Whether intrinsic value exists or not is a long, ongoing debate by many people in our world; this post is not intended to engage with that debate. It should be enough for my reader to understand my position, and therefore why struggle and sacrifice are so important to me.

If it is not clear by now, all of these ideas revolve around the idea of value. It may be helpful to briefly discuss what value is. Value, as I understand it, is a measure of the willingness one has to submit their personal time and effort into a thing. That is, the more personal time and effort one is willing to put into something, the more value that thing has to that person. For example, if I am willing to sit at this table and spend time and effort in writing this blog post, then I am expressing or revealing that I value this blog in some way. The more time and effort I put into this blog, the more valuable the blog is to me. If I decide I’m more interested in playing a video game or making lunch, then playing that video game or making lunch likely are more valuable to me. If I forego playing the video game in favor of writing this blog, then the blog is more valuable to me. In other words, those things I decide to invest my time and effort in are the things I consider most valuable to me. This now touches on the idea of freedom.

In some sense, I need to be free in order to decide what to spend my time and effort on. That freedom is how I can assign or reveal the value in things, at least from my view point. I must be free to decide which things I will spend my time on in order to assign or reveal value. If I am not free to decide what I will spend my time on, then it is no longer an expression of valuation. For example, when I am employed with a company, and I perform duties as part of my employment, those activities are not necessarily valuable to me. My deciding to fulfill my duties reveals the value of my employment with the company, but does not reveal the value in the activity itself. As those who have worked “bullshit jobs” may already recognize, there are times when I consider the work I’ve been asked to do to hold very little if any value at all. (Consider the situation where I am working an eight hour shift at a job, and I have been asked to clean the floor of a room. Upon completing the task the first time, if I have done so in less than the eight hours of my shift, my boss may ask me to clean it again. I may argue that the floor is already clean, but my boss may insist I still clean it a second time, as he wishes me to work for the entire eight hour period. This is often referred to as a “make work project.”)

The point being made here is that I need to be free to decide what I spend my time on, or where I place my effort, in order to reveal or assign value in a thing. However, it isn’t necessarily clear what the thing is that I am assigning value to. When I help a friend clean their apartment, is it the act of cleaning that I value, or is it the relationship with my friend that I value, or perhaps a combination of both things and of others. Valuation can become quite complicated very quickly. In all situations, I still need to be free to decide for myself in order to assign or reveal value.

Tying this all together, when I struggle, I am assigning or revealing value in a thing. To struggle, for me, is how I generate value in this world. Sacrifice is when I purposely struggle and then release that thing of value for something of greater value. For example, as an employee for a company, I may struggle to perform my duties, revealing the value I hold in my employment, and then sacrifice my hard work for a paycheck that I will then later sacrifice for food and other things. I struggle to create something of value, that I then sacrifice in order to gain things of greater value (to me) that I likely would not be able to struggle for myself.

An example of something I may not be able to struggle for myself directly is a house. While it is true I could spend my time and effort building a house, it is likely not something I will ever do myself. For one, my skills are generally not in the areas of construction. Also, in order to accomplish the many other things I need to accomplish, such as feeding myself, it may be inappropriate to spend so much time on my shelter. Instead, I choose to spend my time on fixing computers and helping people in other ways, generating income for myself. With time, I can accumulate enough wealth that I can sacrifice in exchange for a house that others have built, typically also involving some sort of financial institution whom I will have to beg for a loan from. A rather complicated transaction with many different parts, but clearly one where I am unable (or unwilling) to struggle myself directly for the house, instead struggling on other things and then sacrificing in order to accomplish my aim of a house.

There is much more I could say on this topic, but this is likely enough for my reader for now. Recognizing the transactional nature of my free choices in order to accomplish my projects is a big deal, as I see it. It is also why when I work a job for a company, I have learned not to get too caught up in the duties I am asked to perform. Within reason, of course. If I am asked to do tasks that I consider unethical, I may reveal the value of my ethics by declining such duties. However, if I am asked to clean the floor a second, and sometimes third time, even though I know that the floor is already clean, I can reveal how I value my employment and my relationship with my boss more than rubbing a wet mop across the floor.

Struggle

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It seems to me that while the idea of struggling appears to be simpler and easier to understand than the idea of sacrificing, people seem more comfortable with sacrifice than they are with struggle. The idea that one gives up something in order to (hopefully) gain something of greater value is considered in the society I live in to be among the greatest things a person can do. Those who make sacrifices are considered the greatest among people. As common examples, figures such as Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi are considered exemplars of sacrifice, giving up their own luxuries and comforts in order to serve others. But is it sacrifice that they have done, or is it struggle (or perhaps a combination of the two)?

When I use the term “struggle,” I have in mind something similar to what in the Buddhist tradition is often referred to as “suffering.” Where suffering might be understood as a state of being, where one is not entirely settled (always wanting; always unsatisfied), struggle is the act one would take in order to at least try to escape suffering. Reading over what I’ve just written, I think I’ve made my point more confused rather than clearer, so I will try again.

When I graduated high school, my parents gave me a Toyota Corolla. It wasn’t a new car; it was my mom’s old car. They suggested I had earned it by doing well in school. However, I didn’t view the situation as they did. I didn’t understand. For me, high school wasn’t much work at all. Most of my classes came easy to me and I rarely (if ever) needed to study. I did not view high school to be something I had to work very hard at, and so graduating high school did not come with any significant sense of achievement. In fact, for me, I was simply happy to get out so that I could move on with my life. The gift of a car, under these circumstances, was not something I had earned. It was simply something I gained without any real effort. And I unfortunately treated this car with the same amount of respect as I felt toward my high school career. In other words, I ran the car into the ground, not taking care of it and damaging it greatly over the few years I drove it.

Later in my life, when I again was in need of a vehicle, I found an opportunity to purchase an Nissan Xterra at a significantly discounted price. I had been working in “the real world” for a while by then, and had learned to save money reasonably well. I had the cash in my savings account to cover the entire cost of the vehicle. This time around, I knew precisely where the money came from, as I had to earn it through my labours. Using my own father’s suggested calculations, the price of the Xterra (for me) was approximately four months’ wages. That is, were I to have set aside every single penny I had earned over the course of four months of my working, not using that money for anything else (such as rent or food), then I would have earned just enough to purchase this vehicle. Keep in mind that means working approximately eight hours a day, five days a week, for about sixteen weeks. That’s a significant expenditure of my efforts for this vehicle.

In the case of this Xterra, I understood the efforts I had to make in order to earn this vehicle. This vehicle was worth approximately four months of my life. Knowing and understanding this, I treated the vehicle with much more respect. While still not perfect, I at least tried to maintain the vehicle, performing the routine repairs and upkeep on the vehicle. I say I tried, because I discovered years later where I had been deficient when I was forced to deal with a broken timing belt. If you are not aware of such things, you’d have been in the same situation as I was at the time this happened. Most people told me that such an incident was unrecoverable, and that I ought to simply purchase a new vehicle. I was very lucky I had a friend who helped me to replace the belt, and I am happy to say I still drive the Xterra to this day.

The situation I found myself in with the Corolla was not struggle, but the situation with the Xterra was struggle. Struggle, for me, is the situation where one has to put in effort or work in order to gain something. One cannot be given struggle; one must earn it themselves through their own efforts. When I work toward something, then I am struggling. Struggle, for me, is not a negative (nor positive) thing. Struggle is simply a way to describe how something came about. If I gain something through my efforts, such as working a job, then I have struggled for it, in this case money. If I gain something because someone simply gives it to me, such as the Corolla that my parents gave me for graduating high school, then I have not struggled for it. Thus, struggle is a measure of the effort I make toward my projects.

As the example above may also demonstrate, struggling toward my projects also brings with it a respect for those projects. The more I struggle for something, the more I respect the thing I gain from my struggles. The more I respect the thing I gain from my struggles, the greater the value of the thing I have gained, at least from my perspective. If you have been reading all my posts up to this point, you will already know that I consider value to be something we each apply to things in this world. In other words, the Corolla that my parents owned before they gave it to me was likely of great value to them, as they had to work hard to earn that car. However, for me, the Corolla had very little value as I did not have to struggle for it very much at all. Struggle is part of a process that assigns value to things.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned suffering from Buddhism, and suggested it had a relationship with struggle. Suffering, as I understand it, is not a negative (nor positive) thing either. Suffering is simply a state of being unsettled. To become a buddha, one needs to no longer be in a state of suffering. To put this another way, a buddha is no longer in a state of change. Suffering is related to changing, like being in a state of flux. If you look around you, you will likely appreciate that everything in this world is in a state of change. There is no permanence in this world. We may want there to be permanence in things, but really, everything in this world is impermanent. The ground is eroding through the movement of air and water, our bodies are undergoing countless chemical and mechanical changes, the siding on my house is wearing down and will eventually need to be replaced or repainted. Everything is changing. We are changing. We are thus suffering. To be a buddha, we need to bring ourselves into a state of no longer changing, no longer suffering. The acts we take in our attempts to end suffering are struggles.

I feel like I may have overdone it in this post. Really, all I wanted to describe was what I take struggling to be. I consider it to be an incredibly important thing. Struggling is one of the important ways I generate value in my world. I work very hard, and put a lot of effort into, the things that I consider of greatest value. My relationships with other people are probably the best example of this.

Relationships, as I see them, are not static or unchanging things either. I must put effort into my relationships in order to generate the value in those relationships. The more effort I put in, the greater the value the relationship has for me. But relationships do not simply get to a state of unchangingness. Relationships change and evolve, just like everything else in this world. Thus, not only do I need to put a significant amount of effort into my relationships to begin with, in order to generate their significant value to me, I must also continue to put significant amounts of effort into my relationships on an ongoing basis. Relationships are about struggle. The more I struggle in my relationships, the greater those relationships are.

An example of what I am taking about. When I was in high school, I dated someone whom I still, to this day, consider very special. I know that that relationship is long since passed, and I do not expect to ever be in a relationship like it again, but it was special and I will always remember it. Why it was so special was the shear amount of struggle I had to put into the relationship. My parents did not want me to have a relationship with this person, and this person’s parents did not want them to have a relationship with me. We both had to fight our respective parents, and our respective friends, in order to maintain our relationship. It very much was a Romeo and Juliet sort of relationship. We both agreed that we wanted to be together, and so we both struggled very hard for the relationship. Of course, like the tragedy by Shakespeare, it also collapsed in equally fantastic fashion. I blame myself for what occurred, but the truth is we both had our respective parts to play.

The point of all of this is simply that struggle is a key and important aspect of my life. Struggle represents all the effort I put into everything, and the value that I assign to my world though all that effort. In my next post, I will discuss how sacrifice and struggle work together, and why I consider them the greatest realization for me.

Sacrifice

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My father told me that he was trying to set up my life such that I would never need to sacrifice. Ever. When I started talking about sacrificing, it upset him a great deal. It was as if he had failed as a parent or something. He believed I should never sacrifice, and I was telling him I thought it was necessary to sacrifice. Perhaps we were simply in the middle of a great miscommunication.

Sacrifice can mean a number of things. In this post, I am not referring to taking a chicken or a goat and slaughtering it to appease some pagan god. However, what I have in mind is possibly still related in some way. For my father, to sacrifice is to give something up. Not just to give up anything though; it has to be something I consider valuable. The more valuable that something is to me, the greater the sacrifice if I am to give it up. Conversely, if the thing holds no value to me, then it is not a sacrifice to give it up. So a significant aspect of sacrifice is value.

Why a person might sacrifice is not always clear. Often, one makes a sacrifice in order to gain something else they may consider more valuable. In the case of sacrificing a chicken, the person sacrificing the chicken likely holds great value in the chicken, as a source of food for his or her family. However, it may be for a thing of greater value; the sacrifice might be in order to convince their god to provide favorable conditions to grow their crops, or perhaps to keep their ships safe while travelling in the Aegean Sea. The person is giving up one thing of value for another. So sacrifice can often be a transaction of a sort.

Are there sacrifices that are not of this transactional nature? Can I make a sacrifice without gaining something else of value in the process? It may be argued that when I sacrifice my time when volunteering that I gain nothing in return (that is why it is called volunteering), but others gain something of value from my sacrifice. If considered in isolation by myself, I may sacrifice without gaining anything, but others still gain from my sacrifice, so it seems like the transactional nature still exists.

If I assume that all sacrifices involve some sort of transaction, then it seems like sacrifice is all about giving up one thing for another. And if the sacrifice is an appropriate act, I might assume that the thing being sacrificed is of lesser value than the thing gained from the sacrifice. Are there cases where something of great value is given up for something of lesser value? Again, if looked at from one person’s perspective, this may appear to happen occasionally. When I give up my time (something of great value to me) in order to help someone with moving their furniture (something of little direct value to me), then I seem to have made such an exchange. However, there is a lot going on in that transaction. I may value the relationship with the someone, and helping them may increase the strength of that relationship. So it may not be so simple for me. Furthermore, the value of moving their furniture is of great value to the other person, whereas my time may not be of significant value to them. This assessment of valuation may quickly become difficult to estimate properly.

If we briefly consider a utilitarian argument, as this is a very popular ethical theory these days, perhaps a sacrifice is a good sacrifice if it increases the overall happiness or well being in the world. That is, the thing being given up is producing less happiness than the thing gained in the sacrifice, for all people. So even if I don’t value the thing gained, I can assume that there are others who do. Again, assuming that I am making a good sacrifice, and not a poor sacrifice.

With a bit of an understanding of sacrifice, I now return to my father’s intentions as he expressed them to me in my youth. He did not want me to ever have to sacrifice. But this seems to make no sense. He seems to want me to never give anything up, even if it may offer me something greater as a result. When I pressed him on the issue later, that is indeed what he had in mind. Specifically, he did not want me to ever have to give up anything. He would still be happy for me to gain other things of greater value, so long as I didn’t have to give up anything to get them. He simply wanted me to not have to give up anything.

It took me a while to recognize the flaws in this sort of world view. Most of my life is filled with acts of a transactional nature. I consider my experiences playing Magic: the Gathering (a collectible card game) to be the most significant in teaching me about transactions and valuation, both by playing the game and by trading cards with other players. Within the game, one often has to give up a card in order to gain another card or effect. Those who play the game well have figured out the best times to give up a card, and often the giving up of cards leads to their victory in the game. When trading cards, what seems most important is to find someone who values your card the most (even if you do not) and who values the card you want the least (regardless of the value you are assigning to the card). In other words, it seems more important for me to understand the value others are assigning to things than the value I am assigning to things.

To sum up what I’ve discussed thus far, to sacrifice is to give up something of value for something of greater value. For the sacrifice to be a good sacrifice, I need to give up something of lesser value for something of greater value. The values of the things in question are related to me, but are also related to others. For me to consider a sacrifice good, I need to value the thing given up less than the thing gained. For others to consider a sacrifice good, they need to value the thing given up less than the thing gained. In other words, I may consider something a sacrifice while others do not. I may consider myself a hero (having made a good sacrifice), while others might consider me a villain (having made no sacrifice at all, perhaps even having taken advantage of someone else in the act).

This all seems to suggest that when sacrificing, I ought to consider others, lest I gain a poor reputation.

I disagree with my father’s assessment. One who never gives up anything is a hoarder, and hoarding overwhelms a person after a while. The situation where the things you own end up owning you. But then, one might consider hoarding a sort of sacrifice too; hoarding may be sacrificing sacrificing in order to hold more stuff. This sounds much like begging the question, so I will not dwell on this. I will simply suggest that hoarding is not sacrificing. And with that, hoarding is not a good choice because I need to give up things in order to gain better things.

If it is not clear, during this discussion, the things being given up and the things gained through sacrifice need not be tangible or physical. My time is not something easily grasped, nor is its value easily estimated. Only I can say whether my time is valuable or not. However, sometimes when thinking about sacrifice, it may be easier to consider physical things, like Magic cards, so that it will be easier to understand what is going on.

For me, sacrifice is a fundamentally important skill. From my observations of the world, in order to gain things of significant value, one needs to sacrifice. Furthermore, giving up extremely valuable things does tend to get me things of even greater value. These sacrifices do tend to be quite risky, as there are times when the thing gained is not guaranteed (the sacrifice is for the possibly of gain, rather than the guarantee of gain). However, with the transitory nature of our world, most things we sacrifice are lost eventually anyway. At least through a sacrifice, we can hope to gain more than if we had tried to hold onto the things that cannot be held onto.