Errrh.. what line? Somebody is about to ask. Tough – it’s that mysterious line in the sand. Read on or get stuffed.
I’ve been reflecting on a certain theme over the last few weeks. I’ve been thinking about individuals who I have distanced myself from. By that I mean A] either kept well away from, or B] sever relations permanently.
I’ve also been thinking about why I’ve done this, in order to define some criteria about my own existence in relation to others. I’ve come up with some of the following and I have not weighted them (as yet). At the moment I don’t think any particular criterion is absolute – leading to ‘sudden death’.
- Dishonesty and unreliability
- Inability to benefit from factual feedback.
- Lack of self-awareness.
- Inability to self-correct.
- Inability to change where change is necessary and within capacity for change.
- Maliciousness.
- Deviousness.
- Hateful and revengeful attitudes.
- Misdirected anger.
- Strategies for defeating the self.
- Laziness and stubbornness.
The above features are usually across the domains of: profound, entrenched, persistent, intractable, unmodifiable after real and direct feedback based on hard evidence, enduring over a long periods of time and observation, pathological, and not limited by any issue of innate or acquired deficiency (due to ill-health for example).
All the above means that I don’t do A] or B] above quickly. I observe. I try. I test. I assess carefully over long periods. Some say I give people four ends of the rope (when there are only two). I rarely ever ‘sack’ people in a snap or in the heat of personal distress.
No – I don’t say that I have a formula on the above. People vary. I cope well with people’s abnormality. After all we can’t be all clones of some predefined ‘norm’. Life would be rather bland without wide variation from ‘norms’. So I don’t do a weighted checklist on people and make a decision. As I was saying, I’m discovering all of this as I write these words. I’ve not thought of all this before the start of the post.
Of course this is me today, at this point in time. I do reserve my right to change my own mind should I so choose at some point in the future – thank you very much! Now off you go: Look at a TED video on ‘The Psychology of your Future Self’ – if you please.
