There's an awful lot of "black-and-white" thinking in this world of ours.
I watch that, and I watch how often it causes strife, and infighting, and even wars. So often, that arises out of this pervasive need for people to shoebox everything into neat "either-or" cubbyholes.
"Black-and-white thinking" is a weird thing to me, and it always reminds me of the classic Christmas tale of the grandmother who lovingly knits a couple of sweaters for her grandson, to give him as gifts because it gets cold in the winter. One sweater is blue; the other is gray.
On Christmas Day, the grandson dutifully wears one of the sweaters to dinner, to show grandma that he appreciates her kindness.
However, grandma's response to the grandson — who chose to wear the blue sweater — is "so you hated the gray one!"
How often do we see variations of this?
"If you're not supporting my cause/political party/religion you're obviously AGAINST it!"
Not true.
Like the case of the sweater, I'm not against you, I simply have a preference for something else.
This can get even more weird and twisted when you have far more options than merely a "blue" and a "gray" sweater. Maybe you have twenty different sweaters to choose between. And let's say that you have your own internal "ranking system" that assigns a score between 1 and 100 (with 100 being the highest) to each sweater.
When you then choose to wear the blue sweater (which you scored at 97) instead of the 2nd place dark green sweater (which you scored at 95) it would be patently ignorant and narrow minded of someone to declare that you "must hate green sweaters."
Now, substitute in some "hot topic" in the place of "sweaters," and this is none-the-less the sort of thinking the world is filled with. And it tends to cause us a world of hurt.
Surely, there most be a better approach...
Just musing out loud, here...
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Sequence: 051 — Timestamp: 2022.04.19 - 18:20 PDT
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Hahaha. This post touches on some very at times funny yet real interactions.
A little off subject but close at the same time.
I remember when I was married, we were going out as a family. I came out of the bedroom and my then wife looked at me and her face scrunched up in disgust. She says to me
I'm thinking to myself, of course not. I always put on a shirt I'm not wearing to go out before spending more time taking it back off to put on the shirt I'm really going to wear. lol.
Such a passive aggressive action on her part over something that was really none of her business. I never for example asked her not to wear her bright red lipstick she loved that made her look like a clown. Because it was her decision how she presented in public and I respected that even though I thought it denigrated how she looked. But at the end of the day, it wasn't my place to decide for her how she appeared in public.
Well, I tell my husband when I think something doesn't suit him and I would like him to do the same. If he's my partner and I love him, I advise him, of course, I don't impose what he should wear, but for example, dark clothes make him look thinner than he is and I've told him so, so he wears those clothes when you have no other choice or when we go somewhere not so important.
I see where my comment was lacking.
If you had heard the tone of sheer disgust she used when she asked, it made clear it wasn't a question. It was a demand with a promise that if there wasn't compliance on my part there would then be a lot of draining passive aggressive insults and arguments as a result. As though she were my mom and I was a little kid to stupid to know what I should be doing.
hahaha there are couples who have complexes of parents
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