mitigate your emotions, for the love of dog

here's what i want to write about at present: the internalization of relative principles of human interaction and expectations said and implied therein.

it's nothing short of miraculous that anyone has friends, romance, tolerables, acquaintences, pen pals, maids, bosses, jobs, cars, or anything requiring human interaction. our laungauge, moreover our means of communicating, seems so inadequate to facilitate a functioning society. it's no wonder terms such as "the reality-based community" are surfacing nowadays.

we nearly need to be empaths, mind-readers, like that hot counselor from star trek tng. our vernacular can't encompass the entire array of human sentiments, but worse than that is that most people have no clue whatsoever how to even offer up a ballpark amalgom. i.e. it's rare that we get a very accurate impression of what someone is thinking and/or feeling based on verbal communication.

i don't have the best command of the english language, admittedly, but some intangibles are difficult to express and share through words only. we need e.s.p. i love the concept of empathy, when you think of an "empath" you (or at least i) envision someone who can read minds. empathy, by contrast, is essentially taking your own brain -- perceptions, opinions, all of it -- and putting it in someone else's circumstances and life in an effot to understand contextual stimuli behind behavior you may not understand. it's a poor substitute for actual mind-reading, but i guess it's the best we got (those of us unfortunate enough not to be john edward).

communication barriers are the bane of my existence, and i have the feeling the same holds true for the vast hoi polloi, whether they're cognizant of it or not.

and what's worse, above all, is that most people don't even try to communicate overtly and effectively. we're more comfortable with innuendo and second-guessing and dropping subtle hints and interpretation of things that should, by all means, be blatant. no wonder so much violence and divorce and war and drama exists in the world.

shout from the rooftops whatever the fuck is on your mind, whatever your intentions are. be brutally honest. it saves time and pain. fuck the prim and proper ethos of "i shouldn't have to say this for you to understand it" or "it's not you it's me."

lastly i'll offer up a personal safeguard: be stringent with hope. it will bite you in the scrotum if you let it get out of hand. you need to put sort of a maximum on optimism, like a dog with a remote collar that shocks it when it ventures outside a designated perimeter. i realize it sounds very glass-half-empty, but it has some relevant real-life applications and benefits. call it cynical, i call it pre-emptive.