Learning to trust?

Or: Recognizing that people are *not* basically malicious.

What people basically *are*:

Stupid;
foolish.
Asleep at the wheel
Not paying attention.

And: Most people have *no clue* why they do what they do, or even that they’re doing it, whatever ‘it’ may be at a given moment.

Like the guy telling me he’d given up smoking, and two minutes later was so stressed that he lit a second cigarette while still waving the first one in his other hand.

The capacity of the human mind for self-delusion is PHENOMENAL.

As Lily Tomlin puts it, “Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it (italics mine, of course.)

In fact, it may be our single most valuable survival skill.

And those of us not naturally gifted with the knack for ‘spin’? Are *doomed* to suffer, out of all proportion to anything we may have ‘done’ to ‘deserve’ our suffering.

In other words? *Don’t* use your ‘intelligence’ – LOSE it. The better part of – what – not valor – sanity, maybe?

Is to not sweat the small stuff.

And it’s all small stuff.

***
All these years of trying to make sense of it, find the ‘rules’ that make this whole tangled mess ‘work’ have been exhausting.

I feel like I ‘know’ more than I used to; am more aware of why and how people do what they do, including myself; and am better able to ‘cope’ with it all, having a sort of tool kit to do the work with.

But it’s still *work*, it doesn’t come naturally to me, much like a second language that is never as comfortable as one’s native tongue.

Which makes me wonder, what *is* my ‘native tongue’?

My *first* answer is: Stories.

Books, movies, myths, fables.

Things that tell how life *ought* to be, instead of simply observing how it actually is.

Maybe that’s why I read and re-read Pratchett (and I’ve thought this before): As an *antidote* to all the BULLSHIT we’re fed from day one.