Hi!

Lately it seems like life is throwing me lots of curve balls, and it has remided me that the answers are not always instantly clear to us as to why so many divergent events sometimes seem to just jump up and bite us. Sometimes we just have to play the game to "get" the score.

How we react when unexpected problems crop up, can be an interesting look over our shoulder. How we respond in times of stress/distress can help us see our beliefs, spread out through our own life views as they shape our experiences.

There was a time when another's inexplicable uncalled for actions would automatically send me off on a "fixing" expedition - something was out of order in the line-up of how I believed my own little world had to be, and I often felt pushed by a need to set everything back to its "right" order. Eventually I discovered that if I wasn't the one who disordered it through initiating an action, then most likely I wasn't the one who needed to be re-ordering it/fixing it - in fact I wasn't the one who could fix it, most likely.


(Of course, the recognition that I can't change other people's understandings of their own beliefs that have led them to any particular actions, doesn't preclude my choosing how I will answer back, or what reactions I will choose to initiate when someone's actions directly effect me; I still need to stay my own course of beliefs with my own choices. That is a very different aim.)

I've often found that a curve ball can become a boomerang - if we just don't go swinging at it. Gradually I came to understand the Speaker Material ideas about not taking on false responsibility; about not feeling as though we must be the ones who set out to throw the curve balls in our lives every time something goes askew. I finally started letting some of those wild pitches thrown by others, just go on by. We aren't necessarily, always supposed to go trying to fix other peoples learning curve - ignorance, or arrogance, misconceptions, illusions or delusions - those are problems that belong to the people who are trying to initiate an action - the people who choose to throw their curve balls into our ball game; but that doesn't mean we have to catch them and then feel compelled to throw them back, so that their game is on.

I finally stopped automatically batting away at life's unexpected "interaction" problems if/when I realize that I'm not the one who instigates them. The rule of the game changed for me, and it's not a bad thing to sit out an inning - watch the game awhile and see, more certainly, what the other players are bringing to the field - and maybe allow for that boomerang effect. I'm still making my own choices powered by my own beliefs.

I'm getting a T shirt made that says "just because I'm nice" on one side, "doesn't mean I'm stupid" on the other side.

A basic miscalculation or under-estimating of peoples' inward intelligence and understanding that assumes others cannot see or do not have their own ability to understand motive, aim, purpose, intention - this is one of those misconceptions of other people's that I really can't change; at least not in any more meaningful manner than to make a personal point, no matter how much I go tinkering with it. A life-view that kindness, respect, generosity, understanding, compassion, honesty or any of those attributes we put in the bag labeled "nice", must automatically equate to being stupid (or naive, unaware, or weak or...???) - that is a judgment. It's an opinion, a way of thinking, an attitude, a particular belief about other human beings; it's a presumption, and a decision - a choice about how to read the facts and fictions of life. Our life views reflect our personal interpretations of our experiences, and we form these views out of our Self-to-self understanding of our experience.

At any rate, the point here is that life is interaction, composed of instigated actions and re-actions as responses. To know, in any given ball game, whether we're the pitcher, the batter, a fielder, a player or a fan, is a very helpful bit of information when it comes to promoting an individual aim to win-win. The aim of the game does effect the outcome; but knowing who's winning and who's losing any particular single game is moot if you don't know what game, in which ball park, in which league - and why.

We so often forget that the outcome of the game isn't preordained - even if the game is rigged, for the final batting score of each player, is still their own - that's what each player takes home with them at the end of every ball game.

So now I think I'll go play catch!
LOL
Spinfo