Pork II

pork.jpg I heard through a sec­ondary source that some­one once explained me as some­one who “nev­er assumes anything.” I’m not sure if this is cor­rect, but I will assume it is and try to watch it play out.

If I had said that myself I think I would have put it more like: I am not sur­prised when my expec­ta­tions or assump­tions are incor­rect. Maybe my mind is a sort of blend between Bud­dhism and Epicte­tus. Instead of being utter­ly pas­sive and sus­tained by my mere exis­tence in the world, like a jel­ly­fish is sus­tained by the ocean [to steal a metaphor from Ursu­la K. LeGuin] or like how I per­ceive Bud­dhism [I am going to leave this as a sen­tence frag­ment]. In my case, Epictet­ian behav­ior is my fun­da­men­tal, con­trol­ling what I can con­trol, using con­trol of myself to con­trol the world.

At the same time, my con­trol has lim­its, and my knowl­edge is only sub­jec­tive. Recog­ni­tion of this often leads me to the con­clu­sion that inac­tion is the safest route, one that dis­turbs the equi­lib­ri­um the least. So often I do not act, do not speak, do not assume because the results might be unfa­vor­able. I am not a risky per­son. When I do make assump­tions and have expec­ta­tions, I almost always keep them qui­et because I might be wrong. I try not to let them influ­ence my per­cep­tions to the point where I might treat them as fact and not sup­po­si­tion.

Per­haps this is pride­ful of me, to not state my assump­tions or act on my expec­ta­tions because I fear I might appear a fool when I am proven wrong. I appear a fool often enough with­out this how­ev­er, so it might as well not mat­ter.

5 thoughts on “Pork II”

  1. I’ve noticed now that over the past two years I too have become very reserved with the things I let out to oth­ers. This isn’t to say that I would reack­less­ly speak before, but that I have noticed a marked change in myself. I am con­tin­u­ous­ly not speak­ing for fear of upset­ting some­one, or in fear of being bad­gered about some­thing I have said.
    In admit­ting so, I am sure I do sound para­noid. That might be the case. But I think liv­ing around my father for so long has left me on my gau­rd a bit, lead­ing me to feel that I should only real­ly speak when I have some­thing to say that won’t work peo­ple up.

    Know­ing when to bite your tongue is a good thing. But often, at least to me, not speak­ing up makes me feel like I am not being hon­est. it is some­thing I have been wrestling with a lot late­ly, as I have many impor­tant things to say to peo­ple (boyfriend) that just aren’t being said out of fear of hurt­ing that per­son, or sound­ing dumb.

  2. I’ve begun act­ing the same way jane, although recent life events have made me more spir­it­ed and embit­tered and there­fore much more like­ly to state my views on a sub­ject.

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