Posts tagged Cool Thing
It’s Not My Fault I Have Problems!
Oct 22nd
According to post-structuralists (Derrida, Lacan, Foucault), it is not my fault whether I am screwing up my life. Post-structuralists say I am not the only one to blame. They say that everything that is external to me determines how I behave. So when I can’t stop drinking and my wife wants to leave me, it is not solely my fault. Rather, everything that has happened in my life up until this point has led me to drink or behave in the way that I do.
But regardless of whose fault it is, the question still lingers…What can I do to change? The post-structuralists say that you cannot change unless you change the things around you. In other words, you would have behaved differently had your context been different. Hence, something external to yourself is keeping you from doing your best.
The really cool thing about post-structuralism is that merely understanding that you are not to blame for your problems, will create change. If you stop blaming yourself and share the blame with something or someone else, then your attitude changes. The change in attitude consequently incites change.
Post-structuralist philosophy says that our environment inscribes our bodies and that our bodies, in turn, inscribe our environment. What they mean is that you cannot separate the part from the whole and that we are one with what surrounds us. Hence, our reality is merely a reflection of this relationship. So, a change in one individual means a change in the environment and vice versa.
How can we put this philosophy to work? First, by believing that we are not responsible or can determine how we behave. Second, after we stop blaming ourselves, and feeling deficient, we can try something different, whatever is possible at that moment. Remember, we cannot determine what those possibilities will be. After we try that, we keep on trying. Eventually, according to post-structuralism, things will turn out in the only way they can. If you still have problems, then you need to keep on trying. And if you die trying then you can conclude that even though you tried, and things did not change, that it was not solely your own doing.
To put it simply, it is not only trying to make change individually, but rather that the world and the individual are trying together. If you fail, then you both fail. For those of you who believe in God, for example, the thought would resemble the saying that you do not walk alone but hand in hand with God. In other words, the world you create is the world according to you and God.
Challenge Yourself to Clear the Clutter
Aug 20th
Is clutter taking up space in your rooms and in your life? Is it time to get busy clearing things out and getting things cleaned up and organized? How can you do this without becoming overwhelmed at the shear volume of it? I am in this situation with having to clear out fifteen years of clutter and accumulation in order to get ready for a move. When I think about it I am prone to feel like it is just too much to face. I don’t even know where to start. Every room and surface has things I need to go through and make decisions about. I have decided the only way to cope with it is to chunk it down into small bites and make a game out of it. Here is what I am doing.
I am now looking at each chunk as a store that I can go into and choose to have anything I want absolutely free. As I approach each “store” I take everything out and look at it in terms of what I do want. I have found that if I look at it in term of what I no longer want I am over whelmed by the number of things that are there. Besides deciding what I don’t want I have to deal with that pile of “in-betweens” the stuff I am not sure I want to keep or not. To get around this I go into the “store” and look for the things I do want. I select them and put them away. Then I have a pile I do not want. If I still have some of those “in-betweens” that I am on the fence about I put them in a box and label and date the box. In six months I will go back through the box and get rid of the stuff I have not used in that time.
Another trick I use is to think of the stuff I am giving away as a gift to someone else. I try to think of the usefulness and joy they will give to someone who would select them from my “store” shelves. The cool thing is that they will be free for those people who select them. What a great feeling that is. I get to imagine other people enjoying my stuff.
Hopefully these little techniques will be helpful to you. They have helped me get over the overwhelm of facing a large amount of things to go through and they have actually made it kind of fun to get on with the sorting out and organizing.
