05:37

again

If expectations cause misery, why are we so ingrained to expect a reward? Probably the associativity of law of the universe. Work, hard or soft, leads to some outcome. Repetitive observation only led us to believe our existence was a product of such successive rewards. Social laws exist in our genes because we learn from observation. Comparison, leads to ranking, which leads to reinforcement.

The solution is simple, yet somehow hard to observe it. re-Reinforcement. This time, we enforce global optima. Enforcing non binary relations. Do != Get. Our dogma must include time into the equation. Do {something for a while} = Get {something better}. This will also lead to misery though, instead, maybe we should measure success on effort. Do {something meaningful} -> Measure {meaning} -> Do {it with more interest}. Works well, but remember conditioning!; we’re wired, and somewhere in this loop our old habits will make an appearance. Great people like Goggins say the price has to be paid by just doing it. It’s true, especially when the outcome is repetitively bound in time.

I feel though however, you can never replace conditioning through hatred, it only hammers it. Hammers don’t patch, they press. The said solution is to harden the strike whenever behavior is triggered. Ah, we have the answer... hit the trigger. Not with a hammer, but with mercy. I know it, that these instincts are from your inner child. Never molded to be what it’s supposed to be. The craving is not just association, it’s merely misplaced indication. Consistently in the past, the signal was diverted to the “evil” behavior. Is it really evil? Discount the “enemy” shall we?

What’s fascinatingly fun to speculate is how we deal with it. At least, the mere meta objective to navigate this cue is quite fun to wave back at. I think problems are fun, without them, you’d be me and I’d be them. The overcoming of it has a reward, but we just derived to a point where I don’t really want the reward. I want contemplation with the temptation. Not resist it, I was wrong in the past. Entertain it, letting it fill your mind. Accepting it, not to replace it, but to... understand myself.

What gives? There are parallel behaviors to train this kindness. Not to be gentle per se. To be merciful of invariance.