This post and the last one have been in my head for a couple of days now – only getting to them tonight. I wanted to blog about another interesting theory regarding criticizing people. It seems to me that in order to criticize a person, you assume one of two things:
1) They are in fact incapable of doing whatever properly – or more specifically incapable of doing whatever to your satisfaction.
2) They are not doing their best.
The second thought really fascinates me. It comes into play for lots of people when they criticize people (and/or their actions) and get very passionate about it. I have two major issues with this reasoning. The first is how can a person honestly know where another person is at. The second is that people in glass houses sure do throw lots of rocks.
It’s like back-seat drivers who live in the world of fantasy, the world of imagination. What is criticizing and blaming, other than trying to put someone else down? Think politics, think our childhoods (our horrible parents), think high school, think our neighbours, think our children, think everyone else but me. I think that criticizing is usually a sort of masturbatory mental game isolating one specific aspect of a little corner of life and showing how much better we are at it than whomever we are criticizing.
It’s essentially a waste of time unless somebody outright asks us to do it some constructive way for them – or if they work for us, at which point they just have to do things our way.
But to get back to my point…it’s that imaginary moment in our heads, when we think about the person doing or saying something or other. Our caricature of them is usually laughable. We need to create a dramatically exaggerated thought or image so that we can even believe our own storytelling. It’s a really good thing to keep in mind when we get upset with another person – to try and maintain something real in the mental game, it will usually protect us from saying nonsense (or worse, actually believing nonsense).
It’s funny to wonder sometimes whether someone is asking for you to do them a favour – or whether they are requesting that you do something specifically the way that they want you to do it. This comes up lots in relationships. “Can you do this for me?” …. “No, no, no, you have to…” “Oh jeez, was it so difficult to…”
It ends up being passive aggressive sometimes when people ask for favours when they do not allow you to do it as you see fit. If I am to ask a favour of somebody, then they are in fact doing something for me which they have no obligation to do – I should just say”Thank you.”
My son was explaining to me in tremendous detail (show included) how his toy cars were crashing into each other and how they flew through the air. I smiled to myself because he just went on and on and really it was just nonsense that he was yapping about. I also realized that maybe someone else watching would become bored almost instantly – for me it was the greatest show on earth. After the cars, he was showing off how he could wrap his arm around his head and hold his ear, AND dance at the same time. He asked me if I could do such a feat…..
Have you ever just flown off the handle? Had a series of moments where you genuinely let it happen without exercising control? Well I have. I can be a seriously mean S.O.B. – and I feel that this blog would not be honest if it did not include the wide range of human emotions and experience. Within me and within everybody exist what can be considered demons and angels. One tries to maintain some sort of order and structure to what comes out in our day to day life – but once in a while….
A specific set of circumstances come together to form the perfect storm. Maybe a physical pain or problem, a headache, a bit of stress, some major emotional event that pushes you to your limit, maybe a belly ache, maybe someone who won’t listen to you, maybe someone is upsetting you, it can be all sorts of things. Once in a while it sets up a scenario in my life that I do try my best to deal with and resolve – and sometime I just plain fail. Sometimes I prove unable to surmount the feelings and I lose it.
If we are talking about these extreme scenarios, the control switch cannot be found after very few moments (in normal scenarios, several opportunities to shut it down become available)…it builds like a roller-coaster, eventually culminating in what is usually a most regrettable event. Maybe we say things that we shouldn’t, maybe we fight with the wrong person, maybe we hurt ourselves, maybe we hurt others, maybe we act rashly, etc. etc. I’ve gotten to a point before where I couldn’t look at my own reflection because it gave me shame to see where I was. I was a monster to myself.
The one positive thing about these things is the ability to relate to others going through difficult phases. I can be far more understanding of a person struggling with their own demons.
I try to get back on track at the very first chance that I get. The moment that I can get my footing back and am no longer sliding down the slope, I begin to walk properly once again. I don’t think that it is always as much about how fall down I fall – as much as my ability to pick myself back up and continue on my way. I imagine that those close to me would disagree with this last statement.
“Just think for a moment about what is below. It is beyond the beyond. It is the total pile of greed on the planet. It is the size of the financial weapons of mass destruction now starting to fire. The damage this is going to do to the man in the street might end with capital punishment for all identified derivative traders. The paper changers have gone way too far this time.
The size of the over the counter credit derivative non-market in which notional value becomes real value in a meltdown is unbelievably huge. That means junk all the intellectual arguments. The numbers you see here become absolute value numbers in a meltdown situation. When specific performance is called for it is all called for, a slice, portion, or any other geek speak is not acceptable.
This insures the injection of liquidity in amounts never before even imagined. Tighten your seat belts.
I would like to show you the size of this financial weapon of mass destruction. In the credit default swaps business there are only 14 meaningful dealers, of which only 5 count. Think of that. Dwell on that “minimum dealer numbers – maximum financial destruction.” What a web they have woven!
These numbers have been mainly created by 5 of the most prestigious names in finance. All 5 will fail unless college boy Ben and the rest of the Central Banks light a fire to the US dollar. These houses cannot fail without throwing the entire financial system into a catastrophe so they will not fail at any cost to the public.
The Bank for International Settlements reported the notional amount on outstanding OTC credit default swaps to be $20.4 trillion in June 2006, up $10.1 trillion (99%) from June 2005.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reported the notional amount on outstanding credit derivatives from 882 reporting banks to be $5.472 trillion at the end of March, 2006.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) reported the notional amount of credit default swaps grew by 101% over the year 2006, to $34.4 trillion.
This makes the total US debt look like kindergarten lunch money.”
www.jsmineset.com
Sunday has traditionally been the day that I go to the beach with my son. On most occasions, we are joined by my ex (his mother). I live in a tropical part of the world, so as summer comes along – the water gets nice and warm. The beach where we went had these massive waves today – some were 10 feet high. Awe inspiring really. I had brought my boogie board with me, so off I went into the ocean without wasting any time.
I think that one of the keys to survival when the ocean is throwing those size waves at the shore is having a great respect and appreciation for the power exhibited. The waves were also rolling in at a fairly fast rate, so a small period of not paying attention could bring truly undesirable events. I made my way out a bit and tested out the strength of the waves.
The undertow was tremendous, so it was important to place myself in good position to either catch the waves or be able to either swim below them or get far enough away to not get broken in two. So how did I do? Not bad really. Never did have the balls to try and ride one of the huge ones, but did ride a whole bunch of fairly big ones (5-6-7 feet). Also had my board smashed into my head by one of the bigger ones because I didn’t get away in time. Got flipped around on two occasions for the same reasons. On the whole it was awesome!
There were a few kind of magic moments. I found myself waist-high in this warm water covered in lots of foam (waves breaking nice and hard made for foam everywhere). It was like being in a jacuzzi. I was careful not to get lost in reverie, but the whole moment was overwhelming. The sound of the waves crashing and the foam bubbles popping in the sun, the warmth and smoothness of the ocean water all over my body, the sun blazing down with tremendous force, my body tingling with life because I was pushing it to its limits (I actually was left breathless two times where I just had to go an sit down from being so exhausted from battling these huge swells) – I found myself truly in the present moment and loving every second of it. Each wave rose from the ocean, slowly forming and edging its way towards forming a crest, and then this kind of timeless moment just before they broke with a thundering crash.
Once I was tired of playing with the board, I spent a good chunk of time just playing around with my son in the waves and sand on the beach. He’s growing up very comfortable with the ocean, I think that by the time that he’s 7 or so he’ll probably be a phenomenal swimmer (he is only 3 and a 1/2). That reminds me, at one point these three cute girls swim out into the waves and end up beside me. They were just swimming, no boards or anything. While I was struggling not to get killed they looked like dolphins gliding below the mammoth waves and body surfing the others. Gave me a bit of perspective to see them move with such ease in the water (local girls for sure)….and then to see them on the beach after I got out – myself trying to catch my breath and these girls relaxing with a cigarette, pretty funny. I must be getting older.
Personally, I expect this little bounce to only last a few days – I’d be somewhat disappointed if this was all the bloodshed that we will see…markets need to punish bad behaviour just as much as they need to reward good behaviour.
