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Contradictions

HMO
4 months ago

This is just an extension of things not making sense to us.

I've known of people telling me that as an adult, friendships are very different and hanging out together and having a fun time isn't something people have the time for. At the same time, I'd see photos of them on Instagram at a theme park or basking in the sunshine or whatever, and fairly regularly.

I get it, adult friendships ARE different to those you had as a child, but I don't get why people tended to discourage me, or made me feel bad for wanting those experiences.

Especially as I didn't get to have much of them as a child so there's a degree of "wanting to make up for it" now, as someone in my mid 20s.

I'm sure someone will tell me that I'm reading into it too much, or I've misinterpreted it. 

Parents
  • 4 months ago

    There's an adjacent NT phenomenon that it would probably be oversimplification to call 'black and white thinking'. It's more of a blind-spot to the fluid continuum between two polar extremes of action as if only a binary yes/no exists for a certain kind of scenario. And yet despite that perceived limitation one gets total damnation, the other total veneration. An example: Someone is being harassed in the street. A passer by either unthinkingly jumps in to yell at the harasser or they stay more peripheral/are paralysed by the anomalousness of the situation in their life and having no quickly accessible mental rule-book for what to do. Now obviously, we all know what we'd LIKE to do in that situation, and maybe we would - getting it all impeccably right. 

    However, in any general variant of scenario A, the interceding person is later hailed as 'a hero', 'a saint' and so forth. In any general variant of scenario B, they are 'scum', 'a coward', etc. It's like only the extremes exist... and in a way they do, giving us a momentary glimpse - if we stand a little obliquely to the norm- into something peculiarly fishy about the construction of reality. Not entirely graspable for any of us... but there nonetheless. 

Reply
  • 4 months ago

    There's an adjacent NT phenomenon that it would probably be oversimplification to call 'black and white thinking'. It's more of a blind-spot to the fluid continuum between two polar extremes of action as if only a binary yes/no exists for a certain kind of scenario. And yet despite that perceived limitation one gets total damnation, the other total veneration. An example: Someone is being harassed in the street. A passer by either unthinkingly jumps in to yell at the harasser or they stay more peripheral/are paralysed by the anomalousness of the situation in their life and having no quickly accessible mental rule-book for what to do. Now obviously, we all know what we'd LIKE to do in that situation, and maybe we would - getting it all impeccably right. 

    However, in any general variant of scenario A, the interceding person is later hailed as 'a hero', 'a saint' and so forth. In any general variant of scenario B, they are 'scum', 'a coward', etc. It's like only the extremes exist... and in a way they do, giving us a momentary glimpse - if we stand a little obliquely to the norm- into something peculiarly fishy about the construction of reality. Not entirely graspable for any of us... but there nonetheless. 

Children
  • 4 months ago in reply to Shardovan

    I'm certainly the kind of person who would be accused of "over-explaining", trying to answer every possible question the other person might have before they even get the chance. Not sure if it actually works, either way.