Focus Pocus
Dear onesoul,
Here is the picture you posted yesterday.
I can tell that the author means well, but the message is phrased in a way as to be predominately reactionary.
As I love you, I am eager to learn what, how, and why you love. I'm not so interested in hearing about what you don't love.
The message mentions a thing that is loved (fluttering words), a reason for loving it (true ownership), and a result of such love (remembering). But most of the space is consumed by a list of things unloved.
I find this cleaned up version more pleasing:
"I will fall in love with the words that flutter from your mind, because you choose them and you truly own them. When you are gone, I will remember your words and my love for you will persist."
I consider the parts about ownership and memory to be more obvious and less interesting. They go better without saying than with saying. So my version of this sentiment is shorter, and indeed less poetic: "I will fall in love with the words that flutter from your mind, because you choose them."
Here are the eight items presented as things not cared about or things not to be fallen in love with:
1. Which car you choose to drive.
2. Where you choose to live.
3. Whom you choose to know.
4. Which clothes you choose to wear.
5. The places you have chosen to go.
6. Your body: your bones and skin in particular.
7. Whether someone else chose to set up a trust fund.
8. Whether someone else chose to make a list.
The first five items are all things that you choose. I can love you for these choices just as surely as I can love you for the words you choose. You truly own all of your choices, not just your choice of the words which flutter from your mind.
The sixth item is also quite lovable. According to my model, your consciousness is integrated into your body. Your consciousness depends on the physical structures of neurons, and their continued operation requires the support of other physical structures such as bones and skin. It's all you. Your body is the cutting edge of clothing for your mind. If you manage to move your mind into a pretty cube of silicon chips, I'll love those too.
The seventh and eighth items are choices that other people have made. These sorts of things can help form your reputation, and can make an impression on me, but they're not things I will love you for. They're signposts pointing toward where to look to find choices you've made, and I might love that you made those choices.
So here I am discussing what I don't like about people expressing what they don't like, and smiling at the potential for irony. It's pretty natural for people to tap into the assumptions of their potential audience, and use the rejection of those assumptions to form a contrast with their own values. I find that method of communication distracting, because it focuses on the assumptions in order to reject them. It's cleaner to refrain from making the assumption in the first place. Where someone would pick up an unpleasant thing and then throw it down with a flourish and a cry of displeasure, I would prefer to see them pick up a pleasant thing and tell me how it pleases them.