I'm thinking again about the passage I posted a few entries back from Man's Search for Meaning. Specifically this part:

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would,or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Frankl himself admits that he wasn't always able to be his best self under the difficult circumstances he faced, but it's clear that he did try. The effort matters.

I'm also reminded of something that Joël mentioned while I was visiting Becka and him in Australia. When he was preparing to interview at Google, he spent some number of months (six, I think?) learning about Google and its culture and doing research on how to ace an interview there. He read one book that talked about how Google wants people to be very ambitious, and so they expect people to meet something like 75% of their goals. Now, 75% seems kind of low, but the idea is that if you're meeting your goals 100%, your goals are not ambitious enough. When I think about things from this perspective, I feel... somewhat better about not getting every single thing right. I'm ambitious in this regard, and that's not a bad thing, so long as I don't beat myself up over every failure. Failures are just learning opportunities, after all.

So anyway, I'm asking myself, "how can I be my best self across as many situations as possible?" and trying to give myself some basic directions to simplify things. Thinking through this, I come to the conclusion that I have to be aware of myself first and foremost. If I don't realize how I'm being in any given moment, how can I be my best self? Sort of an obvious starting point, but it is tricky. I don't think people, myself included, are often aware of the ways they're being influenced by external situations. This is a big part of why I have a checklist to run through if I notice my mood seems pretty negative. I keep it in a task tab in Gmail for quick access.


When I was younger and my mom and brother and I would fight, my dad often suggested we eat something, and I thought it was a dumb way to address the problem, but he had a point-- when you're hungry you tend to be more irritable and less charitable. Same goes for the other things on that checklist for me personally. If I'm lacking any of those then my mood can take a hit.

It's helpful to me to be aware of those influences so that I can correct for them. Otherwise it's easy to just rationalize away bad behavior. It's especially easy to feel justified in acting badly if you've been through a lot of stress. We see this commonly when people take out their anger on others (the defense mechanism known as displacement).

Frankl gives an example of this kind of behavior in his description of one of the ways some of the concentration camp prisoners reacted to being freed:

During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom "licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences. This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events. A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it. but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, "You don't say! And hasn't enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed not to mention everything else - and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!"

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted, "May this hand be cut off if I don't stain it with blood on the day when I get home!" I want to emphasize that the man who said these words was not a bad fellow. He had been the best of comrades in camp and afterwards.

I know I just shared this clip a few days ago, but it felt relevant again because of this one line:

"Well, I'm sorry that things have been so hard for you, but that doesn't give you the right to be shitty to me."

I feel like this is one of those things that seems obscenely obvious when you hear it said, but until that point it isn't necessarily. Or at least, it wasn't for me. I had to learn that it wasn't okay to take things out on other people because I felt bad, and that it wasn't okay for them to do that to me either.

There's a constant stream of choices to make about how to behave and how to view what happens to me, and for awhile I've been feeling like it's a burden to always have to choose the "right" path, but I'm reframing things now. When a difficult situation is presented to me it is a challenge and a test of my commitment to my goals. It's an opportunity to prove to myself that I can do the things that are important to me, and that's ultimately good.

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Ran 2 miles (not continuously), walked 0.7. Went to CSI afterwards.

Mood was pretty low beforehand, slowly got a bit better afterwards.

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I keep feeling like something is wrong with my vision... It feels weird... not exactly blurriness, but like a fog I can't locate. It's like I can't focus...

Hard to describe, because I think I can see things clearly, I just can't seem to process them clearly. Oddly enough I don't have the issue if I'm very close to my mirror and looking at the reflections of things... but trying to look at the things themselves is giving me trouble...

Feels like I'm slipping into a haze, but it's different than the one I'm used to...

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

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The feeling of relief doesn't hit like it used to, upon the sudden realization of what's happening.

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