Tag: thoughts

warming my hands on bridges I’ve burnt, and why that’s okay according to Aristotle

I lost a couple friends this past year and I didn’t give a shit.

And I thought,
Am I sad enough about this?

I thought,
Did I really care about those friendships or did I waste my time on people who I shouldn’t have for too long?

I thought,
Am I being heartless?

I thought,
Will people think I’m a bad friend for being honest about not caring that much?

Then I remembered one of my favorite philosophy classes from college about relationships, and how different philosophers have defined them.

Aristotle said there are three types of friendships: one based on utility, one based on pleasure, and one on mutual appreciation of each other’s values.

A friendship based on utility is basically a relationship that lasts as long as you’re both getting something out of it. Like a transaction. Sort of like a coworker who you’re only work friends with for as long as you’re at that job. Once you leave, you don’t see them again and they don’t see you again but you mutually benefitted from being positive to each other while you were at work. Aristotle said this is popular with older people.

A friendship based on pleasure is more emotional and supposed to usually be the shortest relationship. You stay friends for as long as you both enjoy the same thing, and you break up as soon as one person doesn’t.

Aristotle said the pleasure friendship is more common between younger people because as we grow we tend to change our interests and values, so we grow out of pleasure friendships quicker than the other types.

The third type of friendship is based on virtues, and it has the strongest connections and lasts the longest. The best friendships should be based on appreciation of character — not on a transactional (utility or pleasure) value — and shape our lives for the better.

I think this really explains why I wasn’t sad about the friends that I lost this year.

One was a girl who I went out drinking with and talked about guys we were dating. We would meet up and both hop on dating apps and squeal about who we had matched with, who we’d met, and who we were dating for a while, but once I stopped caring about those things we ended up really not having anything else in common. We didn’t even like the same music or shows. Our friendship was a pleasure transaction, and as soon as I stopped using dating apps we stopped being friends.

I ended up not missing her at all as soon as we stopped being friends because she didn’t really add anything else to my life. Our values weren’t the same at all: we couldn’t relate about our jobs, our education level was different, and we had different political views. The death of our friendship was short-lived and unmourned. I actually felt better knowing I didn’t have to talk to her again, because I didn’t want to talk about the same things we used to.

Aristotle said that when you have a friendship based on appreciating each other’s values, the other two types of friendship naturally combine into it, too. Thing of your diehard BFFs that you’ll drive to the airport, invite over to watch 90 Day Fiancé, and help out during a hard time. They’re beneficial and pleasurable, and you also respect and care for them.

I’m extremely thankful for all of my top tier friends and I’m cool with warming my hands on the bridges I’ve burned with my limited time only buddies.

I think a butterfly just flew out of my mouth

I can’t stop thinking about the butterfly thing, where he really said I think a butterfly just flew out of my mouth. And it doesn’t make me feel how it did at all any more, but it is so easy to remember how it used to make me feel. Like I’m watching myself act it out in a little movie.

I remember how much I reread that text over and over and over and over and I could have survived off of just knowing that someone felt that way about anyone. I only need three hours of sleep and a daydream when I feel like that.

Where you keep starting to do something and just forget right in the middle of it because he said he got butterflies from thinking about you so you drop everything and lay on the floor to ground yourself before you go flying into the Milky Way. And every time you pass by a mirror you go !!!! She Knows Something I’m Afraid To Think and you give yourself that little smile and can’t even let your own eyes meet or you’ll lose your grip on gravity yet again.

How strange it is that we can even get to that point. Where all you feel is !!!! and the butterflies in your tummy fly up to your heart and out of your throat and out of your mouth right in the middle of the airport and everyone’s wondering how did a monarch butterfly land right here in Terminal 3? But you hardly even notice because of all the butterflies still trying to make your feet lift right off of the ground so you swallow a thousand times until you feel about 60% certain that everybody can’t tell you’re in Big L.

He sent it from the airport. We weren’t texting before and I didn’t know how to reply. I probably read it a hundred times before I even thought about how to answer and the funny thing is I can’t remember how I answered at all. Some memories are like that. I remember exactly how I felt and how I pictured him sending the message and how it made me feel for the longest time, but I don’t know what I said back. Probably something mediocre because how can you beat a lyricist at the word game and in general I never know what to say just that I feel too much of it.

The picture is from Jude Guench, from a short story called The Butterfly Eater. I feel it is much more appropriate to how I feel now and in a way I feel like our stories parallel each other’s.

hasta la vista baby! enjoy your dream life

I wish someone would tell me what to do sometimes. Like hey, we reviewed your file and decided that based on 100% reliable facts and science that you definitely should stay and be safe. The world is your oyster and will deliver you all of the opportunities you want and you will never want for anything more. Here’s a coupon to Bath and Body, go get a nice relaxing candle because you deserve it!

OR!

Hey, we have predicted that you’re going to zoom up up up in life but ONLY if you leave now it’s a one night only blowout sale for your amazing future the prices are unbeatable everything must go and everything means YOU! Hasta la vista baby enjoy your dream life! You are a fucking monolith of immutable force, eat up the world and consume the stars.

It’s supposed to be the time to grow and I don’t want to mess up and shrink.

invasion of privacy

How are we ever supposed to care about somebody when we’re so busy pretending not to care?

It’s cliche and overdone, but I want to go to the Louvre next year. I will either walk into the museum with my hand firmly planted into the palm of someone else’s hand, or I will walk in alone and happy. I want to explore Paris, in love. Maybe I’ll be with a beautiful tall man or maybe I will be with my beautiful tall self and either way I will be in love.

I think I set up these big brick walls so that nobody would ever make me feel vulnerable again and it’s just resulted in hours upon hours of boring small talk that makes me feel small when I am capable of big intelligent interesting conversations that leave me with more questions than when I started.

I want to commit an act of invasion of privacy. I don’t want to hear about how you secretly like long walks on the beach because everybody with a beating heart likes the sound of water, the colors cast on the sea while the sun sets, and seeing footprints in the sand. We live in California, goddamn it, of course you fucking love the beach.

I want to know if your parents are together or if they are divorced, and why. What did they teach you about life and love that you bring into your own? Did you get along with your siblings? What’s your full name and why did your parents choose that? Were there any other names they were considering and how might your life have been different if you were named Geoff instead of Jeff? I want to learn something from you that I didn’t know I wanted to know.

I want to let you pole vault across my big brick walls of safety and I want to tell you about hyperbolic discounting, and why I think we get anxiety from placing salience on the wrong things. I want to geek out over how much I know about my boy Ben (as in Benjamin Franklin himself), and admit that the second degree I got was for fun. I can tell you all about love and sex in the history of America, because I’ve read hundreds of love letters from dead American couples for my senior thesis.

Tell me about somewhere I’ve never been, about how it feels to be able to fix a broken watch and hear it tick again and know that you put something back together with your hands and how that’s when you decided you were going to be a good engineer.

Above all, argue with me. Tell me I’m not right, and prove me wrong. I’ve never felt challenged intellectually in a relationship and now it’s my top desire in a man. I’m tired of the first two weeks of knowing someone getting filled up with misspelt “your beautiful,” because they never specify exactly what part of me is beautiful and I’m left on a riveting cliffhanger that never gets answered after we have one boring date and never talk again but they always reply with heart-eye emojis to my selfies forevermore.

I don’t know how to ask for these things and I‘m afraid that I come across as someone that may be incapable of connecting on a deeper level.

I don’t know when it’s appropriate to politely say, “Obviously we both find each other attractive or we wouldn’t be on this date, so let’s skip to the chase and peel back the layers of heartbreak that made us so tough to get to know and let’s really get to know each other for the next two hours so that we can make an informed decision on whether there’s something here or not and decide if we should see each other again or not waste our time.”

Is that not recommended? It’s not in my copy of the Why Men Love Bitches book, and it’s not in the “What Guys Really Want To Hear” articles in Cosmopolitan. I know I’m supposed to only be available two-thirds of the time so that he finds me mysterious, and that I have to wait four hours before replying to his Snapchat, but how am I ever supposed to care about someone if I’m busy acting like I don’t care about them?

I live a fulfilling, exciting life. I have the job that I want, my own apartment, a nice little cat, and the best friends ever. I am comfortable with myself and I am proud of my accomplishments. I want to learn more, travel more, and I want to fall in great love with someone that I get to experience new things with. I’m not in a rush, but I am so over 50 First Dates with 50 Boring Guys.

I know it’ll come at the right time, and I guess the right time isn’t now, but lately I’ve been wishing it was. Being in love would probably make this pandemic suck less. For now, I’m just going to live vicariously through Zac Efron’s Down to Earth show and keep trying to perfect my homemade gnocchi recipe.

sudden repulsion syndrome

Sudden Repulsion Syndrome is what happens when a small decision or behavior puts an abrupt end to a budding relationship.

I get fight or flight but for relationships.

Like I loveloveloveloved maybe one or two people in my life, and out of nowhere I’d wake up one day and be so disgusted by them. The day before I was writing them in my diary and daydreaming about their cologne, and then suddenly I would gag at the thought of one guy’s laugh, at another guy’s little moles.

I think my least favorite part about myself is how I can never decide on anything but I always know how I feel about someone because my brain sends some strong chemicals 3000% too quick. I don’t know I’m over a relationship until I’m physically repelled by the person I thought I was happy about.

Or I’m 3000% the other way, and the norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin are like little butterflies trying to make their way out of my throat while I profess some kind of undying love.

I’ll fight so hard or I’ll run so fast, and neither of us is ever ready for that.