RMiddleton

Everything is a rough draft. And that's good. For me and for everyone. Improvement is possible. Slow, difficult, frightening, and always possible. I don't need to do anything beyond survive and I do not need to know anything beyond what's necessary for survival. Everything else is gravy. I happen to like learning how to make gravy, and a variety of many other sauces beyond that. That's fun. Life is fun. I like learning. I love learning. Again, rough draft. Keep revising.

I do not need to have or express an opinion about everything and everyone. I need to stay alive, safe, happy. Since a metaphor is incomplete, another way to look at life besides rough draft is that it's therapy. Revisions in writing are drafts. Life rewrites can develop through therapy. Therapeutic processes improve physical and mental health. It can be safest to work on major improvements with professional therapists. Changes are also being field tested in real time by all of us without professional supervision. If (when) someone speaks or behaves around me in a way that I believe is “suboptimal,” what are my options? Assess whether they are putting me, others, or themselves in danger. If so consider safe interventions. In most cases the offensive behavior is not threatening, in which case I am free to ignore it. Ignoring it might be the best option for my own mental health. I'm talking online and in person, when someone is acting out I might be best served by tuning it out. Or, to use my therapy metaphor, they are working on themselves, showing me their messy process. Like many a well trained therapist I can keep quiet. Let them keep fumbling around until they get to some better behavior. Then if I happen to be around for that I can chime in with encouraging words. But when I witness someone being an ugly mess I can remain unaffected. I really believe that I can.

(This therapist angle comes from some interactions on social media. You know the kind, when someone comments and you think, “Really? Why did you feel the need to say that?” And that's exactly it. I am seeing it as almost a compulsive need sometimes for people to say completely unwanted opinions. They're working on their own issues and I need not get involved even when it's a comment on my own post. My silence says, “this response does not speak to me,” and that's enough. They said what they wanted to say. I'm unaffected.)