182. The Urge To Reciprocate

If you tell someone you like them and they immediately respond by telling you they also like you, there are two possibilities. The first is what you’re hoping for: they genuinely appreciate you and they feel the same as you do about them. The second is much less desirable: they have not considered their feelings, and when they’re forced to quickly do so, they return your words as nothing more than a friendly platitude.

181. There Is Always A Choice

For every situation I find myself in, I’m faced with a number of possible options. It’s up to me to choose among them and decide what I will do. Sometimes it feels like there is no choice, or like the choice has already been made for me. I have to remind myself this is never true. There are always options. There is always a choice.

When it feels like there is no choice it’s because something is weighing me down. It’s influencing me so heavily that I feel I cannot possibly go against it. If I’m paying attention to the forces that are at work in me, I can notice when this happens and respond. I can allow myself to imagine alternatives. I can posit them as real possibilities. I can investigate what might happen if I were to choose one.

180. Not Like Us

You’ve done something I consider wrong. Your actions aren’t criminal but I still find them reprehensible. I tell you that what you’ve done is wrong, but you ignore me and you keep doing it. I cannot accept this and I feel I must distance myself from you. You are bad and I am not. You are not like me at all.

You are someone I cannot work with. You are someone I can only fight. You are my enemy, and the best I can hope for is to defeat you and bring an end to your wrongdoing. I will work with others who are like me and who agree with me that you must be stopped. Together we will form a group to oppose you and anyone like you. For you are not like us. You are outside of what is included in us.

179. Creative Reflection

Every experience benefits creativity. An experience might inspire a creative impulse or a new project. It might combine with other experiences to influence the direction of future creative efforts. Or it might offer little on the surface, but bring forward an important insight through a careful investigation of its qualities.

In every case, the full value of the experience is only realized through reflection. To reflect is more than simply to remember the events of the experience as though you were reciting them to a friend. It involves a deeper exploration of the experience and all of its facets. It means looking carefully at the thoughts, feelings, and intuitions that arose both during the experience and afterwards.

178. An Odd Conversation

He has been talking to her for over an hour now. What began as nothing more than a simple conversation has gradually expanded into something else entirely.

The strange thing is that they seem to be talking past each other. He hadn’t noticed this before, but now it seems obvious. He makes a point about something and then she makes an entirely different point about something else. It’s as though they’re simply stating their separate opinions on the matter rather than actually conversing.

177. Action And Description

When you do something you’ve done thousands of times before, you do it without thinking. Your past experience of doing the same actions over and over has accumulated into a kind of memory that does not require conscious thought.

If someone comes along and asks you how to do what you’re doing, you might be able to come up with a list of actions they should follow. But when you do the thing, you do not follow this list or any list at all. Nothing like this is necessary for you to access your understanding of how to do it. For you, the next action in the sequence simply arrives when it must.

176. Overwhelmed By Anxiety

I’m worried about an upcoming event. You don’t think I should be worried, and you tell me you’re not worried about it. You give me reasons to believe my worry is unfounded. You carefully explain why the bad outcome I’m worried about is unlikely to happen.

Despite your determined efforts, I’m still worried. I’m afraid of doing anything that could increase the chances of a bad outcome. I want to retreat, I want to hide, I want to stay safe. This is frustrating for you, because you know there is no reason for this and I shouldn’t be afraid.

175. The Beauty Of Existence

We seek beauty because it seems to promise something beyond what we have already seen and what we already are. We seek beauty everywhere we can find it — in art, in literature, in the clouds and stars, in flowers and animals. But perhaps most significantly, we seek beauty in our fellow human beings.

Every human being contains a unique world created by the mere existence of a living, growing, reflective consciousness. We want to see these other worlds, we want to experience the beauty of them — a beauty that is different from the world we ourselves contain and inhabit.

174. Predicting Experiences

You’re thinking of trying something you’ve never done before, so you start looking for information about it. You want to learn as much as you can before you actually try it. You investigate every aspect and every detail until you have a strong understanding. Now you can imagine how it will go once you do it. You can see yourself doing it and you have an idea of how you’ll feel during and after. You’ve developed a complete prediction of your future experience and you believe this is what will happen.