Adam’s Peace

The reader comments on the post Subliminal Subjective Expectations from Friday have given me a few things to think about.

First, I’m noticing that people expect me to be honest. Vitor of The Fractal Forest was the first person who used the word honest, but our resident Urban Monk Albert started the ball rolling when he said that I should be myself, living the ultimate form of honesty. Kara-Leah (who is no longer blogging, so unfortunately I can’t link to her site) didn’t write the expectations that she wants me to live up to… rather, she proposed a new idea: to live without the filter of expectations. Using her advice could most certainly lead to living the truth, since without expectations, only the truth remains. Finally, Jonathan of Advanced Life Skills points out that people expect an uncommon amount of honesty from me.

For those who haven’t done so yet, I highly recommend reading each comment on the last post.

What is my opinion of all of this? Well, I’m flattered, and a part of me feels undeserving of such high expectations.

Which came first, the expectation or the behavior?

Vitor said that an expectation that other people have for him is that he will be responsible. Expectations like these are both created within and reinforced from outside. People expect Vitor to be responsible because he is responsible… and he continues to be responsible because people expect him to be. It creates a nice little paradox, and a question of which came first, his responsibility or the expectation of his responsibility.

I haven’t always been expected to be honest. Indeed, the opposite was expected out of me for a very long time. Just as in the movie The Matrix, nobody knows who started the war between AI and humans, the fact remained that there was a war. It seems more likely to me that it was a mutual distrust, slowly building up until each group, from their own point of view, could honestly say that the other group started it all.

One of the strengths of the much-hyped Subjective Reality model is that it concentrates on what is happening right now, without blaming the past or the future. After all, if neither are set in stone (since we can always change who we are right now), then the past and future have less relevance to our lives. It turns out that it doesn’t matter how Vitor started being responsible, except if you want to duplicate his first steps. It matters that he is responsible right now, and if the feedback loop were to fail at some point, it would be more difficult for him to remain responsible.

I grew up thinking of myself as a liar. It was easy to think of myself that way, because that is what I saw other people expecting out of me. Perhaps I pushed my boundaries a few too many times as a young child… Perhaps my father was too quick to judge my behavior… How I became a liar doesn’t matter, and both my father and I could rightfully argue about why I became a liar… but that doesn’t matter today. I changed my expectations about myself, and I changed my behavior. When other people noticed my behavior change, they changed their expectations about me. This change in their expectations made it easier for me to continue the behaviors I wanted, because I didn’t have to worry about living up to those ideals… I could now enjoy living up to those ideals.

Scott H Young of the eponymous site ScottHYoung.com seems to be working on people’s expectations about him partying. Now, personally, I think that partying is a great thing. It allows us to find pleasure which, if used responsibly, greatly relieves our stress and allows us to open our minds to new experiences. From what I can tell of his latest post, Partying and Personal Development, Scott (probably rightly) believes that people have certain expectations about people who party, and vastly different expectations of people working on personal development. After all, the poster-boy of Personal Development is Steve Pavlina, a color-blind vegetarian who listens to new-age music and uses his desk water fountain as a type of clock. The typical party-goer gets D’s and C’s in college, rarely studies, and is often found on the street at night combating alcohol poisoning by regurgitating their stomach’s contents. (To be honest, I’ve fought off alcohol poisoning more times than I care to admit. For nearly two years, I would be violently ill from drunkenness about once a week.)

Scott is trying to change the expectations of his readers by describing his motivation for partying. Instead of going to clubs in order to get drunk (as I’ve done many, many times), he goes to meet people and improve his social skills. I went to bars in order to escape from an unimaginative life, where he goes to challenge his shyness and gain inspiration. The methods are the same… We go out, find a bar or club, and order drinks… but the results are different because our expectations are different.

Jump Starting an Expectation

Probably the most empowering part of this whole process that I’ve been going through has been sharing it with others. By admitting that I have lied (or at least not been completely honest) before, and publicly stating that I am working towards changing my motivations, I created both the chicken and the egg at the same time. When I started being completely honest on this blog, I had my own doubts about how successful I would be. I just knew that if I couldn’t be honest, then it wasn’t worth the trouble of writing here. It was becoming an exhausting chore to keep up the false image, especially when so much of my life was pushing me in different directions. Once I put it down in words and saw that people were reading it, I gained motivation to keep up the ‘new me.’ After I noticed people’s expectations about me change, it became much easier to be honest, and the ‘new me’ simply became ‘me.’

Of course, it isn’t all roses and kittens. Lying is addictive, though fortunately there aren’t withdrawal symptoms like with physical addictions. Lying gives me adrenaline, which gives me pleasure. I still have to recognize when I’m starting to lie, and interject a short pause while I take stock in myself. Fortunately, my wife has become very observant, and recognizes that the short pause means I’m considering a lie, so at that point, there is absolutely no way for me to lie and get away with it. Just as she expects me to continue to get better at telling the truth, I expect her to continue to be wary and hold me accountable, so that I don’t lie again.

Another expectation that I’m working on is to get housework done. Unfortunately, there is no way for people online to double check on me and hold me accountable to myself, so I can’t ask you to change your expectations here. Besides, if I ever did master the act of cleaning the litter box daily, then what example of irresponsibility would I have to write about? It would turn into an example of responsibility, and I would probably sound like I’m preaching when I explain how I was finally able to get past this hurdle.

Perhaps that is part of the problem, though. I am concentrating on overcoming my problems so much that I don’t actually act.

Yes, I do suffer from the common Personal Development Newbie problem of thinking instead of acting. I am improving, though, at a drastic rate. Each time I rate my progress though, I keep seeing the horizon get further and further away, instead of noticing that the place I started at has dipped below the horizon behind me.

Quote from KL: In this gap, joy and love explode effortlessly. Or they don’t.

There is one more thing that I’d like to add before wrapping this up. KL left a comment that seemed to be a little cryptic. Here’s my understanding of what she said, and if I get it wrong, KL, please correct me. (I’m also adding in a few of my own thoughts that I’ve had since after reading her comment as well… I definitely threw my own tangent into this)

Talking about changing your expectations is all great and wonderful… Actually changing your expectations is also great, if that is what your goal is. What about not having expectations, though?

Well, the truth is that our expectations are tools of the ego. Our expectations about ourselves are the very foundations of the ego, and our expectations of others are the tools that the ego uses to gain control of our environment. If we live without expectations, then we are outside of the control of the ego. Trust me when I say this: I am nowhere near the ability to suppress and overcome the ego. I am, however, taking the first steps.

It is said that the state of mind that comes with overcoming the ego is one of bliss, joy, and peace… as pleasurable as any drug without the nasty side-effects. That’s quite an ideal to live up to… yet it takes a discipline that I’m barely becoming aware of in myself.

I’d like to throw in an analogy, simply because I like analogies so much. Think of your own muscles. Chances are, you’re able to sit still for long periods of time… your arms and legs don’t go flailing about randomly. If you tossed a wadded up paper at a trash can, you can usually make it in, or at least get very close. The wadded up ball of trash doesn’t go flying behind you, at the very least.

What about children, though? Infants don’t stop moving except when they’re asleep… They’re always doing something. If you have ever seen a toddler learning how to throw a ball, you know that the ball has just as much chance of landing on the kid’s head as it does of landing anywhere else. The reason why you can sit still is because you have learned how to move your muscles. The reason why you can toss paper in a garbage can is because you have practiced and fine-tuned your movements so that, rather than clumsily dropping the paper behind you, it is second nature to move your arm in just the right way… you don’t even think about how you’re moving your arm anymore, or even notice when you lean slightly forward as you make your toss.

The same could be said about our expectations and the ego that these expectations create. I feel like the toddler learning how to toss a ball so that it at least lands in front of me… I have just recently learned that I actually have control over my expectations, just as infants have to learn that they have control of their arms and legs. With practice, perhaps in time, I’ll be able to wield my expectations like a professional. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to hold my expectations still long enough that I can feel that bliss, joy, and peace. Until then, it is a matter of testing and trying… of changing my paradigms to see which ones produce the best results, and changing my expectations until I find a mold that I fit in perfectly.

Of course, if I do decide to live without expectations, then I wouldn’t expect the peace and joy… It would come, or it wouldn’t, depending on what was really there.

Link Love:

I already included Scott H Young’s site in this post… and I think that this would be a perfect time to introduce him to everybody. I found Scott’s site after looking at some of the features of Google Reader, and seeing his site as one recommended for me to read. Scott is a pantheist, as I am (though he prefers the label atheist, because it is easier to explain). Scott is a vegetarian, as I am not. And, Scott has some pretty good articles, such as the one about partying and exploring personal development.

And now, the reader question: If people had to sum up their expectations of you in one word, what would it be? Do you feel that you deserve that expectation? And, what did you do to earn that expectation?

You might want to ask your friends and family about this one… I certainly didn’t expect my main expectation to be honesty.

That’s right, I’m getting more and more motivated to shift my pair of dimes… I mean, shift my paradigms.

The first thing to figure out, though, are what my current paradigms are. This isn’t just what I think should happen… but how I am actually acting.

I live in an objective world, with only my emotions crossing over and firmly planted in the subjective. My paradigm says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction… That quarks and electrons form the basic substance of the world.

The problem with that paradigm is it does not explain human interaction. It is an excellent map of all things chemical, but it does nothing for the behavioral world where money exists.

New Pseudo-Scientific Law:

The first paradigm shift that I want to make is one regarding people’s behaviors. I propose a new hypothesis: Subjective Behavior. People will behave the way that you expect them to.

This subjective theory has many applications. For a long time now, I have expected this site to grow very slowly… after all, who would want to come listen to me ramble on, knowing only half of the story? Because of this, I have about 30 people who are subscribed to the RSS feed. I also expected a very slow growth in the amount of income this site generates… and my Adsense earnings are hovering around $40, growing by an average of one dollar per month. (That’s total earnings… I haven’t received a check yet, despite having this site running for over a year.)

I have changed my expectations about people linking to this site. Before, I thought that many people would write many links about specific posts… after I had written some great posts. Well, people have linked in to the few select posts that I thought were great, but I have changed my paradigm about the whole site, and now the only links that I get are residual links from a list that circulated around the ‘net a couple months back.

I don’t expect great traffic from that list… but I could be wrong. Since that list came out, some great people have visited this site, and have made some great comments. Of course, some of the comments have been thinly veiled spam, but as in the case of Jonathan Wells’ comment that I approved this morning, some of these comments have been real gems. I don’t know how Jonathan found my site, but the list seems to be driving some high quality traffic, and it is introducing me to people who I would like to call friends.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Yesterday, I was in a terrible mood. When I woke up, I imagined my wife nagging me to work on some unfinished projects around the house. By the time my wife had awoken, I had run a hundred scenarios through my mind, and I wanted to get something done… yet I simply couldn’t think of what I could do. When my wife woke up, she found me on the computer, debating whether I should start programming or find something else to do, and she said that she wanted help on a couple of projects that day.

Instead of agreeing with her, and getting up to make coffee so that we would both be motivated/caffeinated enough to get work done, I fell into despair that I hadn’t thought of the projects sooner. I agreed to help, and sat at the computer filling time with idle tinkering. About an hour later, my wife asked me about one of those projects, and I took it as nagging, so I responded back that I’ll start it later. Of course, she noticed the annoyance in my voice, so she rightly took it personally. When she responded with annoyance in her own voice, I felt justified in believing that she was nagging, and the day went downhill from there.

It wasn’t until late that evening when I understood that I was wrong in my reactions. By that time, it was too late to salvage the day, but I remembered something my wife had told me before… She wants to be treated as though she were helping me, and as though we want to be together.

That night, before I went to bed, she hinted a couple of things to me, such as to do the dishes. Of course, I was completely oblivious to the hint until this morning, when I noticed the dishes still in the sink. The key is, I behaved to her exactly as she expected me to: To her, I blew off the dishes, leaving them for her to do. I certainly didn’t mean to… and if I had realized that she was getting tired of doing the dishes by herself all of the time, I would have jumped up to help… but I was expected to ignore the dishes, so ignore them I did.

Exploring a Faulty Paradigm

The real question is, what do I currently expect from myself when it comes to housework, and what do I expect from my wife?

To be honest, I expect that I will forget the housework, and that, when I think of it myself, I will procrastinate until someone else does it.

I expect my wife to do the housework most of the time… to be resentful that she isn’t being helped, and for her to nag me when I am obviously not doing my fair share.

What, then, would be a better paradigm? Obviously, my current paradigm isn’t working… It is only adding stress to our relationship, and only reinforcing my anxiety.

Can I expect that I will remember the housework? Well, I’m perfectly capable of remembering it, with a little help. I don’t expect my wife to want to remind me all of the time… but fortunately, I have a handy PDA that I can use to set reminders.

What about my expectation about procrastinating? Simply remembering is one thing… I can easily set reminders. Getting up and doing something once I remember is a completely different beast. I have reinforced my paradigm about procrastinating to the point where, even though I know it is as simple as changing my outlook, I still see it as a very difficult prospect.

My strength must come from within. I can not find motivation outside of myself, because it simply does not exist. There are no magical words that someone else can speak that would be guaranteed to change my mind. There is no pill that I can take, or some other ‘easy’ way to change my behavior except to actually change my behavior from within.

Perhaps here is a key. I want to stop procrastinating now. I recognize that, in the past I have wanted to procrastinate… but all that ever exists is right now. When I am conscious and living in the moment, I have never wanted to procrastinate. This means that, when I am reminded, I am living in the moment… so I want to start something, and I want to finish something.

This is the paradigm shift of living now. I can’t control the future, and I can’t change the past. I do live now… so when my circumstances now allow me to eliminate procrastination, my [new] paradigm says that I want to work now, and enjoy this work now, and accomplish great and wondrous thing now.

Changing my paradigms about my wife will be hard as well. Rather than expecting my wife to do all of the housework before I get home, I need to be more realistic. I know that she is just about as motivated to get things done as I am, so my new paradigm says that she will do things only when she is living in the moment. She may or may not get everything done, so it gives me an opportunity to look around and see what I can do. It becomes an opportunity for me to create new habits and to practice living in the moment.

As for her resenting when I don’t help… that is a harder paradigm to change. She doesn’t want to resent me… so she gives me hints. Each hint should be a clue to double-check. Last night, when my wife asked how many times I had done the dishes in the new house, it should have been a hint to double-check, to see if I could do the dishes again. She doesn’t resent my inaction until she believes I have been made aware… so if I am conscious that she hints at things, even after my repeated insistence that I am terrible at getting hints (another paradigm to change. I can get hints, I just need to be aware that they’re possible), then I can prevent her from ever being resentful.

When it comes to nagging… I simply need to be aware of her hints… be conscious of the moment, and realize that she doesn’t nag, she gives straightforward reminders to come back to reality when it is obvious that the hints aren’t taking hold. My wife honestly doesn’t nag… I simply interpret her helpful reminders as nagging, because of my own emotional baggage and ego.

A Fifth of a dollar, shifted

My old paradigm is broken… I have tried to work with it for several years, but it simply hasn’t given me results.

My new paradigm says that all of human interaction is subjective… that is, by changing my own interpretations, I can realistically change what is happening objectively. To put it a slightly different way, this new paradigm says that, whatever I expect from myself and from other people becomes reality. If I expect more people to begin visiting this site regularly, then they indeed will visit more regularly, because I will take action and interact with people based on that expectation. In fact, that is one of my expectations, because I am once again getting comfortable in my own skin, and people enjoy conversations with honest, open people who are willing to explore their faults openly.

Let me start out by asking a simple question.

If a child in your family were sexually molested, would you be able to forgive their abuser?

Just take a moment to ponder that question in your head while I relate to you the story of my childhood.

Early Years

When I was born in 1980, I was already in a dysfunctional family. My father had just gotten back from several years in Germany, where he was stationed while he was a soldier in the U.S. Army. Because of their financial situation, my mother was unable to move to Germany as well, so lived apart from my father with my two older sisters.

In 1981, my mother met a man who she fell in love with. Now, this was no surprise, as the relationship between my mother and father was already over after I was born… the only thing remaining to tie them together was a marriage certificate and the mutual inability to provide for us children if they were ever divorced.

In 1982, this man began to physically abuse me.

In 1983, this man was put in jail, and my parents divorced. My father got full custody, with monthly, supervised visitation for my mother (later to be weekly and unsupervised as I became more independent).

In 1985, I began kindergarten. I also began hearing that the man who was in jail had abused my sisters sexually. I didn’t know what that meant at the time… just that it was very bad, based on the tone that those rare, serious conversations took.

In first grade, I began acting out in school. I became bored easily, and I had trouble making friends. I was the favorite target of bullies, as I simply would not stick up for myself. It was explained to me that I was acting up because I had been abused as an infant.

The Step-Mom

In second grade, 1987, my father remarried. Out of courtesy, I’ll simply say that if it was difficult to raise two teenager girls and a seven year old boy, then it was only more difficult to enter that situation without any experience with raising any children.

Fortunately, I had an excuse to fall back on… “I had been abused, remember? That affected my personality, remember? My sisters were abused too… worse than I was… and I was around, so I knew what it was like. That means that I could be pretty messed up… but I’m only kind-of messed up.” For a child in second grade, this was advanced, infallible logic.

If we skip ahead to my High School years, what do you think we would find?

I’ll tell you exactly. I had very little self-esteem. I blamed my step-mom for my every problem, except for those that I could blame on the mysterious figure who was sitting in jail somewhere. Although, I couldn’t remember this man’s face at the time… yet he was still to blame for my problems. I had absolutely no self discipline. If I was not interested in a task, I simply could not make myself do it. I wouldn’t even try. If a class had primarily classwork and no homework, I would often get a perfect score. If there was ever a homework assignment, I simply would not even attempt it. I was one of the smartest students at my school… all of my teachers told me so… yet I consistently got the worst grades in most of my classes.

Turning Points

Oh, I’ve had many turning points since then. I’ve needed many turning points. I didn’t get involved in drugs because I was too scared of getting caught. I was a good kid because my self esteem was too low. I was in danger of committing suicide, except for the fear of getting caught.

My first turning point was when I was sent to a charter school. It was a wonderful environment, with classes mixed with the brightest and dimmest of minds that had ever had the good fortune to be kicked out of the public education system. Topics were presented in ways that appealed to the people who had grown to detest the mainstream. Of course, the dimmest of minds still failed their classes, but at least they learned in the process. The brightest of minds had a real chance to show what they had been hiding for years, which made all of the difference for me.

The second turning point was when I joined the Army. Even though I had finally passed High School, looking back now, I realized that I still had a lot of growing and learning to do. The biggest difference from then to now is, now I know that I have a lot left to learn. Then, I thought I knew it all. The Army helped me to humble myself enough to begin growing.

The third turning point was when I got married. That was a precious, wonderful moment for me; one which I have always cherished, and which I will always continue to cherish. Of course marriage continues to bring its own challenges and rewards, but the challenges are always worth facing. The rewards are always worth striving for.

The fourth turning point was when I was released from the Army. As much as the Army tore me apart and built me back up again, it also supplied me with its own foundation. I always had a place to live, and always had food to eat… Now, I had to find my own house, buy my own food. This is where I really and truly struggled.

Back to Basics

This fourth turning point really hit me hard. I had never really dealt with the demons of my past, and I never realized just how deeply I was affected by them. I never had to be completely responsible for myself before, and I was a bit surprised to find that I was lacking.

After a few months of working for nearly minimum wage, cleaning toilets at a retail store, I had to take stock of my situation more deeply than I ever have before. My marriage was falling apart… I was slipping behind on bills… I was becoming extremely depressed again, and something had to change.

The first step that I took was to figure out what I was doing that was hurting me. I already had a few addictions that were hurting me, and I was in the middle of an addiction to online games as well as recently recovering from yet another round of alcoholism. I was also becoming obsessive over other activities, which were close to being addictions as well. My first step was to stop these addictions.

This first step, though, only acted as a bandage over a much deeper problem. It certainly helped with what was wrong right then, but it did nothing to solve the patterns of behavior that got me addicted and left me an irresponsible slob in the first place.

I had to dig deeper, and in order to do that, I had to travel into my past. Into the deep dark past that I had all but forgotten.

The Question, Again

Now, I would like to rephrase the question… If your anger, self pity, and addictive behaviors were all tied to a person who molested children in your family, would you be able to forgive them so that you could move on and begin to enjoy your life?

That is exactly what I found my problem to be. At a very young age, I had learned how to avoid my problems rather than deal with them… The person responsible was, of course, myself. However, I blamed the mysterious figure who’s face I can’t even remember, and this blame kept me from moving forward and fixing my problems.

I was asked the first version of this question on a message board a couple of days ago, and I was attacked for my answer. I was the only person who would be willing to forgive the worst among us… I was ashamed of why I forgave, though… which kept me open for that attack. I forgave my mystery abuser for selfish reasons. If I didn’t forgive him, my life would have been absolutely ruined.

A Monk’s Insight

I can’t take credit for putting this concept eloquently… Albert Foong of Urban Monk said it much better than I can ever say it. I can’t find the specific post where he made this distinction, so you might as well head over and read every single one of his articles. Yes, they really are that good.

In short, everybody has to deal with two versions of everybody else: Their objective self and their subjective self. You have to deal with that person, and you have to deal with your own ideas of that person.

Consciousness is vastly limited. Our topmost thoughts can only deal with the most abstract of concepts… So, our subconscious mind builds a “paper doll” of everybody who we have relationships with. The more detailed the relationship, the more detailed the paper doll… but the paper doll is about as lacking in true dimension as a photograph. It is simply a flat representation… what we expect, not what is really there.

Well, my problem was that I had built a monster of a paper doll in my early childhood, and this paper doll held all of my fears. Since I didn’t have an actual objective person to match this paper doll up to, it began to become attached to everybody… especially people who I couldn’t see. I developed a phobia of phones, because I couldn’t see the person on the other end. Another phobia that I developed was a fear of authority figures… which later turned into a stubborn subconscious defiance. I developed that phobia of authority figures because the paper doll monster was an adult, and was created when I was still quite young… when all adults were authorities. I can tell you, this phobia and defiance has certainly gotten me into trouble; especially while in the military.

The good news is, though, that when your forgive someone, you are only affecting your mental image of them. Your forgiveness can not create an actual physical change in someone else, unless you tell them directly that they are forgiven… yet the same act of forgiveness which has so little affect on the physical world has profound affects on the subjective world. You are literally re-writing the paper doll’s scripts by forgiving them.

By forgiving my mystery abuser, I rewrote the monster paper doll’s past… Instead of a creature that simply wanted to hurt, I was able to change it to a creature that was sorry that it had hurt… then to a creature that didn’t want to cause any more suffering.

That is the true power of forgiveness. By forgiving someone, your change your mental image of them into something that is worthy of forgiveness. I will most likely never meet my abuser again… and I am alright with that, even though it means never forgiving him to his face. If I do meet him, I’ll have to make a brand new paper doll for him, then forgive it as well… but forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting when your own safety is at stake. Forgiveness means accepting what was done in the past and overcoming it… improving from it.

The Final Question

So, with that further insight, let me ask this question again:

If you could recognize that you are blaming other people for problems in your life, would you be able to confront your mental image of them and forgive it, no matter how much suffering they have caused, and how much suffering they may continue to cause?

Forgiveness isn’t about making the person who made you suffer feel better. Forgiveness is about allowing you to move past blaming others and allowing you to charge of your life. Maybe forgiveness can actually make a better person of that other person, since guilt can be a powerful motivator for those who can recognize it. For the truly and habitually abusive though, I would just forgive and walk away.