eggshells - or assholes?

And this thing about my brother feeling like he's 'walking on eggshells' with me: I've googled many a phrase in my day, and it seems to me I've come up with any number of self-help books and websites touting the idea that you 'shouldn't have to walk on eggshells,' and that a person who 'requires' this of you is somehow dysfunctional, damaging and otherwise basically fucked up; and at the same time, there seem to be an *equal* number of websites that hold just the opposite: That insensitive, clueless people are mean and narcissistic and you should avoid them like the plague.

I guess it's just the same old 'dominator/dominated' paradigm that's been with us for millenia, only it's taken me a while to see it. And I think I *have* seen it, before, many times, and then I 'forget'. And then am reminded. Over and over and over. Some kind of amnesia? The flip side of the essential 3 D's that allow you to escape from the painful cognitive dissonance that makes up so much of life?

As to the title of this,'eggshells - or assholes?' I'd say it's neither. People are neither predictable nor consistent, much though we'd like them to be. We like to categorize *other* people while *hating* to be pigeonholed ourselves. We expect a kind of consistency from others that allows us to move around them as if they were furniture, instead of dynamic, moving, ever-changing, autonomous-to-whatever-degree-true-autonomy-is-possible-in-an-interconnected-world full of beings with MINDS OF THEIR OWN.

And it makes me realize, *I'm* this way. Not everyone is. My parents held me to higher standards than they held themselves to; but I think my youngest brother, for example, is actually pretty fluid and flexible when it comes to dealing with other people, or at least with *me* (maybe because I *demand* it?) But he also *must* have to be fairly flexible to be involved with my sister-in-law, because she's a force of nature (meaning unpredictable) if there ever was one. Which I sort of envy. That freedom, I mean, to be whatever you ARE, without apology, explanation, or even any kind of (apparent, anyway) self-recrimination or even self-reflection. (Though a friend of hers made some comments once that suggest that sister-in-law is at least *somewhat* aware of her own behavior. She just doesn't *admit* it, at least, not to *me*. Not surprising, really, given our - track record? - so far.)