#358

It being my preference not to see many people, talk to many strangers, or engage in group activities, it follows that long, long times can stretch themselves out before I have to handle a dude. What do I mean?

Personally, I try not to make myself other people's problem. That's the type of dude I am. There a lot of kinds of dudes, not only two, but the reason people use that expression is to illustrate the starkness of the comparison: another type of dude tries, everywhere he goes and with few breaks, to make himself other people's problem. Those dudes want to either win or be handled, and insufferably, if handled, also win. Dudes like me, dudes that don't want to make themselves problems and whose affliction is further compounded by the ailment of feeling like they need to solve problems (and answer questions), especially when no one else can or will, often have to handle this other type of dude, but ever-fleeting victory so rarely brings any degree of pleasure that it is functionally nothing but an imposition. That's what I mean.

I used to have to handle dudes all the fucking time. It is simultaneously ponderously dull, like I wish I could fast-forward the whole process, and extremely stressful, because you might (you usually don't, but you might) have to fight another person, and that means someone could (usually they don't but they could) die. So your body's doing the whole fight/flight, which is too much, frankly. Let that be a young man's game, while they're trapped in all that anyway.

So a guy's a fucking douchebag. Why does it have to be my problem? I dunno. If I'm not around, it's not. If it's the internet, it's not, plus the most total victory is ignoring them anyway. If it's right there in my fucking face, it just is. It's just how I'm built. Douchebag around where I can't see you if you don't want me in your face.

Part of the problem of the whole thing is that nothing ever ends, and consequences are ripples, not development on a straight plot line. So solving or even moving to adress problems can cause further problems, invisible problems, future problems, collateral damage, etc. If I didn't care about causing people problems, and only cared about solving problems, that wouldn't matter. But I'm both. This effectively doubles the stress and makes me have to work harder to handle dudes in an aikido rather than total warfare style; manipulate aggression and transfer its force away from what you want to protect. Back at the aggressor, or in a direction which neutralizes them. I have had to study what makes a douchebag a douchebag, the psychology of it all, and had to compose a whole library of tactics, deflections, and processes by which to keep them in as much check as possible without letting things erupt into violence or other breaches of the social contract. 

The best tools are delicate, subtle. A smile, a certain type of eye contact. A comment, spoken in a low and even tone, followed by a glance. Folding your arms across your chest at precisely the right moment can shut a dude down, if you studied the situation out correctly. 

Dudes may go around thinking they love trouble. Because of how the world is, they're rarely disabused of the notion. If you can remind them that there's trouble out there that they can't handle if they don't cut the bullshit--and there is, no matter how high and mighty a motherfucker thinks he is--you almost always already won.

But all victories last only their own moment. Victory is a a birth and a death in one. The next moment is already part of the next contest, or conflict. 

That's another reason I'm always wary about leaving the house. It's like Bilbo Baggins says: some shit that had nothing to do with you in the morning can own your ass by nightfall.

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No serious conflict darkened my personal doorstep yesterday or anything, by the way. It was quite a bloody Christmas overall, it seems to me, but my day was untroubled in the main, except by that fact. And one dude who is a memeber of my husband's family being kind of a dick. I was chill, I smiled, but I said what needed to be said and I looked him in the eye. So surely, inexorably, somehwere down the line there will be an escalation, and I will have to actually handle him, because after all family is family and the only way to really handle dudes is to teach them, if you can, to be better, to help them see that a fool is a doomed fool unless he makes a change.

Related note: making fun of people for laughing aloud, for laughing loudly, for visibly experiencing strong feelings of joy and amusement, well, that's about as stupid as low-level, baby-demon-type bullshit gets. Petty emotional fascism on the level of poking someone and not stopping when they ask you to stop. Petty, yes, but to me it feels like a massive crime, a huge problem in the collective unconscious. Fucking...if you find yourself punishing or shaming joy, take as penetrating a look at yourself as you can. Please.

Learn to laugh out loud whenever you want to and to let others, let everyone in the world laugh the same way. I beg of you. It is important. It is not a small thing.

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The best, most complete handling of a situation, of a person creating a situation, is healing. That is the opimal, master-level handling that we must pursue in all our dealings, our labors, our constests and conflicts.

--JL