We had a wonderful couple of days. We had family visit, including a toddler. I had forgot how small we start out. I had just enough time for a nap, and an old friend came to visit with her kids. It was great to see them again, and our kids got to catch up too.

Had a great talk with Helen about B (see below). I still haven't responded to her emailed apology. I need more love. +++Help me to love+++

Helen and I planned to have a monthly financial planning meeting. We need help with our mood around finances. We're not in any trouble there, but we just hate the discipline and the confrontation with our own limitations. As the Shadrach song says, "I'm not in love with money, we're just really good friends."

Anyway, to create a better mood, we promised to reward ourselves with frozen yogurt if we had completed our duties. Helen's is an account of the household spending, and mine is to reconcile the checkbook and do a budget report for the month, as well as a report on the current state of our savings plans, and file all the paid bills and statements. I've got a lot of catchup to do. I hadn't done filing (or reconciling) for over a year. I finished the filing this afternoon, but I need to reconcile the bank statements still. I use Quicken 2002 for Mac. I think it will be better to just start at the beginning of this year with a new set of books (files). My bank lets me download all the checks/transactions. I just have to fill in the payees to complete the register and reconcile. If I don't do it by tomorrow at 9pm, I don't get yogurt.

Sadly enough, I'm more motivated by the yogurt than I am about being responsible for my families future. Well, here's hoping that the yogurt does the trick. I feel like the guy in Memento when he deliberately programmed himself to go after someone not based on the "truth" but because he knew it would work to produce a future he wanted, even if he couldn't remember that he wanted it when he succeeded. That is a disturbing thought, then Memento is a disturbing movie.
- posted by Jor @ 11:41 PM -

Last night I went to our monthly book club meeting, where we usually have lively conversation. We enjoy ourselves, but we also are looking for new ways of thinking, observing our world, and ways to act which produce better situations than our current practices. That's my story anyway, and I've observed others asking the same questions during our discussions. We've read Hobbes "2nd Treatise on Government" and "Animal Farm", as well as "Jane Eyre", "The Screwtape Letters", and Sun Tzu's "Art of War". There's a lot of political discussion, but not in a wonky or partisan way. It's about the right size, I'd say, about 8 people. Several of them are previously known friends and a couple we're getting to know through the book club.

I have been known to exercise myself in conversation. I can get very passionate about ideas. There's another person in the book club, let's call her "B", who has similar characteristics. We have been known to monopolize the conversation in our frequent skirmishes. It's not like we always disagree, that would lead me to think that there was something personal going on. But some fundamental assumptions are different (well, I call them fundamental assumptions, she calls them axioms which are self-evident: existence, consciousness).

What I really love about these skirmishes is that she has new, more rigorous thinking than I have hitherto heard in these matters. Her passionate adherence to these principles provokes really hard looks at my own views. I find it very satisfying and stimulating. I revel in the encounter.

But... she interrupts me when I'm talking. Completely cuts me off. I hate that.

I check to see if I'm at fault: talking to long, monopolizing the conversation, going on about something no one else is interested in. I check to see if I'm doing the same thing: interrupting. No, I'd say its unprovoked.

I don't raise the issue in the group. I'm offended, put a pained expression on my face, and complain to my wife all the way home.

This is not a good place to be. I'm not a victim of this person. I could have said something, requested to finish. But it wrecks the mood of the party, it makes me look more like a jerk. It's easier to let B take the wrap. Easier to be offended and righteous. But that's kind of slimy to me. I'm listening to the wrong whisperer somehow.

I don't think the answer is either confrontation or victimhood. I think that my future closes down as soon as I take offense. What has she "done" to me anyway? My emotions storm around "not being respected", hmmm. I hold emotion as "a short term, triggered, ungrounded assessment of my future possibilities". So being disrespected is about a future where my conversation isn't valued, my thinking is not considered or accepted, I'm excluded. This is a bad future, but its not going to happen just because B cuts me off.

Ah, I have it, the most important thing I can't do as soon as I become offended is love B. Ths is why becoming offended is not ok for me. When I become offended I am cut off from fellowship with her, I become self-centered, isolated, barren.

So, I repent, I will abandon my offense to God. I will unclench mySelf and listen to B, even if she interrupts me; because I love her.

Postscript: As soon as I got home, B apologized via email.

(Jon, I turned on atom whosiwhatsit for you)


- posted by Jor @ 7:30 AM -