I used to spend a lot of energy being concerned what other people thought of me. How I dressed, how I acted, what I owned, etc. One day I realized 2 things:
Most people are too busy thinking about themselves to spare any meaningful thoughts for me.
I’m never going to see most of these people ever again so it doesn’t matter what they think.
After that I started directing that energy into making sure that I approved of my choices rather than hoping strangers would.
Don’t apologize unless you actually mean it. Saying sorry when you didn’t really mean it, or you did the same thing again only devalues any future apology until it means nothing to the people you care about.
When I was a kid I heard people talking about how kids learn better than adults.
So I realized that the “way a kid’s brain works” is probably correlated with “the way it feels to be conscious as a kid” so I used my autistic super-memory to save a snapshot of the feeling of consciousness itself.
Then I instructed my brain to keep track of that, and never lose it.
Now I’m in my 40s, and I can still learn like a little kid.
If you put in the work upfront it will make the back half easier. If you slack on the front end you’ll need to sprint to the finish.
Mainly came to this conclusion in school with academics, but started applying it to everything. It’s not perfect—you can absolutely work hard and still not get the results because of forces of nature (or oppressive systems). But in general I’ve found it’s a good rule to live by.
As a kid I got a lot of “Do as I say not as I do.”
The lesson I learned is that a lot of grown ups are hypocrites. I saw this so much it made me decide I would always be honest with myself and others about why I was doing the things I was doing. It is not always easy, especially now that I have kids of my own, but it is much healthier in the long run. I teach my kids by example rather than preaching fake piety.
Friends can matter to you more than family, and that’s ok, but family does a lot more for you than you realize.
I didn’t have a great family, but it was only when I was upset about a birthday party when I was like 12 where my mom made all the cards and buttons and stuff and I was so mad that it wasn’t the cool cards and prizes that you buy that I kind of realized it.
It dawned on me like two weeks later that my parents couldn’t afford any of that, but they took time out of their day, for like two weeks, even though they both worked too much, to hand-make approximations as best they could. Without me knowing, so I would be surprised.
Ever work a double shift and then spend the few minutes you have not working, sleeping, or cooking to hand-make party favors? Yeah, me either.
It still makes me cry thinking about how ungrateful I was and the look of sadness and yearning on my mom’s face when I got mad at her for not buying the “good” stuff.
When I was 20, I sat her down and told her about it and how bad I felt, and how I never knew how to apologize for it. We had a good cry, and she thanked me for seeing it eventually, and how happy it retroactively made her knowing I realized it so soon after.
When I was about 10 I realized that people of other religions probably felt just as strongly that their religion is “true” as I felt about mine and that I had no grounds to look down on them.
I’m bad at decisions so I will name a few that stuck with me:
In 5th grade I realize that lines are hypothetical and all that really exists are line segments. (My teacher basically said yes, but you’re confusing the class shut up.)
There are lies in all truths and truths in all lies. (A mantra I had).
The best way to get your way is to let someone else be the leader, act as the compromiser between the most disparate view points by saying you’re adding ideas of both sides, but actually give your positions and lipservice to the others, then finally make it all seem like this was literally everyone else’s idea and not yours. Ex. Working in a group project of 4 people to create a alternate energy model. A wants to make a wind turbine and it needs to be yellow. D wants solar panels made from copper. B just wants to do what’s easiest. So you suggest a crank powered flash light that uses copper wiring, because it captures A’s desire to have a kinetic energy conversion and using the copper wire shows D’s desire to prove the usefulness of copper in alternative energy designs. A and D didn’t say that’s why they wanted the designs, but by making the argument in a good light and attributing it to them it makes them much more likely to go along. I believe my 4th grade teacher saw what I was doing as she had us do a lot of group work because after a while she had me do my own thing.
Negative numbers. I just asked if there were numbers below zero when I was like 4, and my mom about pissed herself. Not that it stopped her from homeschooling me into ignorance instead.
It’s alright, I asked why Santa would get me presents for Christmas and not my parents; was about 4… My dad still doesn’t like me today. Might be different reasons, but he has never said hahaha
We were studying XYZ, coordinates during one math class in the middle school.
I asked where's the Z if X and Y were on the paper. My friend pointed with his finger that Z would come out of the paper like this.
Mind blown 😂
I still reminiscent on it once in a while.
There’s a book series called The Hammer and the Cross about an English bastard child of a noblewoman that resulted from her being taken by a Viking raid and later escaping back to her home. Then the Vikings invade to avenge the death of Ragnar (his 4 sons are each powerful Viking Jarls).
The way it handled the two religions clashing, where each was powerful based on how many followers they had, along with it being the first time I’d seen where Christianity isn’t presented as the Underlying Truth but was just another thing. I realized that it was a metaphor for how religion actually worked. If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth. There wasn’t anything special separating Christianity from other former religions we largely now refer to as myth other than the one Empire that united most of Europe declared it to be the truth and people were slaughtered until they went along with it.
That’s when I stopped being a Catholic that just hated going to church and was an atheist at first, then later settled into agnosticism since who knows what’s going on beyond what we can directly detect with our senses and tools.
It’s circular with my version and yours of the first sentence both applying. It gains power from people believing which then leads to more people believing. Though it also depends on the aggressiveness of the religion’s followers.
I was about 11 or so and acting out, my teacher said my name. I just froze for a moment and it dawned on me that was the first time he had said my name all day. Completely invisible unless I was doing something wrong. Just a square shape in a square hole unless I choose otherwise and if I do it by making my life worse.
I guess it doesn’t sound profound. Every guy knows this on some level but it really knocked the wind out of me at the time.
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