All's fair.
OK, so the girl gives me her number and then we do this three week slow dance around avoidance. As it happens, we finally get actual voice at the end of the line tonight and she has figured out she is not ready to start dating again after her divorce.
And, you know, I could be ticked off for having been strung along a bit. I was a little annoyed at least. But what's the actual use of being angry? Righteous indignation? That I have some particular "right" to the commonly ascribed courtesy of being called back and she deserves some degree of contempt?
How does that help me? Does it change my situation? Not really. If I were a person who derived pleasure from the pain of others, possibly, but who wants to be that?
Does it somehow "punish" her if I lose my cool? Maybe it teaches her "proper" social interaction. Or maybe she crawls further into a shell and I've helped no one. Or perhaps it would merely serve to prove her correct in her rejection of someone who is, at heart, petty and small.
"I can't be with you, therefore you deserve no happiness."
Alternatively: "I am too weak to accept the reality of you at face value."
It certainly requires too much energy to be cheerful all the time, to be artificial. But it seems like spite actually takes more energy, mostly because more often it's not an artifice.
I think maybe telling other people what they "should" be may itself be a form of spite [even when we really mean it in good faith]. We come to these formulaic conceptions, the classic "oughts", for all the common reasons and make all the common mistakes. And for what? To prove we know better? In some cases we do, and in some cases we need to push others to do the good thing. But it's *so* easy to project the good the onto ourselves... or, worse, project ourselves as the good.
And then maybe at that point we're just part of the problem.
And, you know, I could be ticked off for having been strung along a bit. I was a little annoyed at least. But what's the actual use of being angry? Righteous indignation? That I have some particular "right" to the commonly ascribed courtesy of being called back and she deserves some degree of contempt?
How does that help me? Does it change my situation? Not really. If I were a person who derived pleasure from the pain of others, possibly, but who wants to be that?
Does it somehow "punish" her if I lose my cool? Maybe it teaches her "proper" social interaction. Or maybe she crawls further into a shell and I've helped no one. Or perhaps it would merely serve to prove her correct in her rejection of someone who is, at heart, petty and small.
"I can't be with you, therefore you deserve no happiness."
Alternatively: "I am too weak to accept the reality of you at face value."
It certainly requires too much energy to be cheerful all the time, to be artificial. But it seems like spite actually takes more energy, mostly because more often it's not an artifice.
I think maybe telling other people what they "should" be may itself be a form of spite [even when we really mean it in good faith]. We come to these formulaic conceptions, the classic "oughts", for all the common reasons and make all the common mistakes. And for what? To prove we know better? In some cases we do, and in some cases we need to push others to do the good thing. But it's *so* easy to project the good the onto ourselves... or, worse, project ourselves as the good.
And then maybe at that point we're just part of the problem.