Paper note cuts finger, then heart.

________________________

They old double whammy. But do people still write notes? Are there situations wherein hand-writing bad news is still the practiced etiquette? To be honest, I never really did any of that anyway, even when it was probably more fashionable to do so. I was apparently so good at breaking up with people (when I was in the dating pool) that I was once asked by an ex-girlfriend who had been on the receiving end of that from me for advice on how to do it, but I always delivered my bad news face-to-face.

Anyway… this story idea might be extremely dated. “Dear John” letters are part of the antiquated past. I am pretty sure that young people just text their breakups these days. I’ll have to pull myself out of the 1900s and put thought into updating my story for modern times. Can you sprain a finger swiping a touchscreen phone to open it? Is that as poetic as a paper cut?

Despite certain doom, love began anyway.

Sometimes two people catch feelings for each other, and despite the fact that they both know it will end badly, it happens anyway. It’s not always two people, though. Sometimes a person catches feelings for a puppy he or she cannot afford to care for. Sometimes you decide to move to a big expensive city before you figure out how you’re going to afford the move.

It’s a good idea to avoid situations wherein your brain tells your heart that “this won’t end well” because the brain is almost always right in the long run and eventually both brain and heart will have to deal with the fallout of letting the heart take the lead.

Career criminal laid off by homeowner.

I used to live in a house that was broken into and robbed on a somewhat regular basis. Fortunately, whoever it was that made a habit of stealing from me (and my elderly next door neighbors) preferred to do it when we were away. Also fortunately, I only lived in that house for a few years. I got tired of doing something like the following every night, all night long:

Kevin’s dad was 100% in the mob.

Anyway, it has always stuck with me that breaking into someone’s house is an incredibly dangerous and stupid thing to do. In my case, I had an alarm on the house. While it’s true the police never came quickly, it was possible that just one time they might have. I also never bothered replacing my nice stuff with more nice stuff. When my plasma screen TV exited my house through the back window, I replaced it with a 200 pound unmovable (but flat screen) television behemoth. The biggest annoyance was paying to have my glass window panes replaced. But someone kept breaking in, and risking his life, on the off chance that I got nice stuff when he wasn’t looking.

His unstirred soul hardened like concrete.

I have noticed two strange and juxtaposed behavioral phenomena in recent times. There seems to be a growing number of people who have no reign over their own emotions. Some of that might be performative cries either for help or for clicks and engagement. Some of it might be the growing mental health crisis. There seems to be less shame in having a public breakdown than there once was.

On the other hand though, I also notice the opposite. There also seems to be a growing number of people who seem almost like NPCs within the simulation everyone else lives in. I’m just inherently distrustful of someone who I’ve never seen or heard go on any kind of a rant. This isn’t stoicism, either. It’s palpable emptiness that feels from the outside like interacting with a hypnotized person. If you ask this type of person what they’re passionate about, you’re likely to be met with a confused response.

I don’t know what it all means. My working theory is that we are all born with a flame of some passion inside of us. Some people perhaps let their flame grow wild and it burns them up. Others perhaps snuff theirs out.

Careless kindness convinces stranger to live.

Not all acts of kindness are thoughtful. Sometimes you hold the door for someone, as much by habit as by intention. Yet… occasionally those careless actions matter to someone who has been living on the raggedy edge.

I haven’t ever really been on the raggedy edge, but I do remember some of the random gifts of kindness which have been thrown my way over the years. About eight years ago, at Sonic, the car hop told me that she liked my shirt. As it was one of the many fashion-questionable “bird shirts” I was wearing at the time, I appreciated the compliment immensely. For all I know, she was making fun of me, or she told everyone that about their shirts to boost her tip, but it meant a lot.

A love sparked suddenly ended inchmeal.

It is easier to start a large fire quickly than to put one out quickly. Much the same, I believe love generally surrenders only slowly.

Inchmeal is a fun word. I hope that someone or something popular brings it back into regular usage.

inchmeal (adv.)

“by inches, inch by inch,” 1580s, from inch (n.1) + Middle English meal “fixed time, period of time, occasion” (see meal (n.1), and compare piecemeal).

also from 1580s

meal (n.1)

late 12c., mēl, “an occasion of taking food, a feast, a supply of food taken at one time for relief of hunger,” also (c. 1200) “an appointed time for eating;” from Old English mæl, Anglian mēl, “fixed time, occasion; a meal,” from Proto-Germanic *mela- (source also of Old Frisian mel “time;” Middle Dutch mael, Dutch maal “time; meal;” Old Norse mal “measure, time, meal;” German Mal “time,” Mahl “meal;” Gothic mel “time, hour”), from PIE *me-lo-, from root *me- (2) “to measure.”

Original sense of “time” is preserved in English in piecemeal; compare Middle English poundmele “by pounds at a time; generously.” Meals-on-wheels for a social service offering home delivery of food to persons unable to purchase or prepare their own is attested by 1952 (from 1947 as a mobile food delivery service without reference to social services). Meal ticket first attested 1865 in literal sense of “ticket of admission to a dining hall;” figurative sense of “source of income or livelihood” is from 1899.

Despite their mightiness, pens were confiscated.

This is a response to the old saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

If someone with a sword can take your pen away, is the pen actually mightier than the sword? Or is it that the person with the sword was compelled to take the pen at the behest of someone with a mighty pen?

This all comes down to the nature of power and belief in power. The danger of a pen is that one pen might inspire others to rebel against a different pen. Can a sword do the same? Or is it that word of the sword does it – in which case it is once again the pen?

The same show discussed the same topic and made a powerful case (though I do not believe it actually refutes the one made above.)

Originally published June 5, 2021

Amputee: “I used to love sharks.”

Great White Sharks have the best PR, but I’ve always been partial to hammerhead sharks, as sharks go. I just don’t understand how or why that head shape happened, from an evolutionary standpoint. It freaks me out.

Occasionally I see people online interacting with sharks in the ocean. On purpose. Videos like this (see below) cause me to respect sharks less as an adversary.

Originally published June 2, 2021

Faked a smile; Genuine happiness arrived.

This is a phenomenon that is completely real. I’m not sure what it says about our brains, though. I mean… the part of your brain that was unhappy was at the meeting wherein the other part of your brain announced that everyone was going to not only ignore the unhappy part, but actively work against it. In short order, with no other changes, the unhappy part of the brain changes its mind and joins everyone in happiness.

It makes sense that the part of our brains wherein reason resides should govern the part wherein emotions dwell. That said, we live in a culture wherein nearly everyone makes their own feelings of paramount importance. What if doing that is exactly the wrong approach to living a happy life and maintaining a happy society?

via psychiatry.org

Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences. The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions.

When a person who is in a depressed mood ruminates, they are more likely to “remember more negative things that happened to them in the past, they interpret situations in their current lives more negatively, and they are more hopeless about the future.”¹ The preoccupation with problems also makes it difficult to move beyond to allow for a focus on problem solving. Even in people without depression or anxiety, rumination can contribute to negative emotions. This can become a cycle where the more a person ruminates, the worse they feel, which then contributes to more rumination.²

A study in the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom looked at the connections between a person’s circumstances and past experiences and development of depression and anxiety. Researchers, led by Peter Kinderman, Ph.D., found that the most important way that a person’s past experiences, such as traumatic life events, led to depression or anxiety was “by leading a person to ruminate and blame themselves for the problem.”³ “Depression and anxiety are not simple conditions and there is no single cause,” Kinderman noted in a statement. “Whilst we can’t change a person’s family history or their life experiences, it is possible to help a person to change the way they think and to teach them positive coping strategies that can mitigate and reduce stress levels.”