Kimberly Steele

When I was younger, I often fantasized about being completely alone despite the fact I hated being alone with my own thoughts. I was never clear in my fantasies of being alone; like Thoreau when he wrote Walden, I was nowhere near ready to cut myself off from civilization completely. The desire to be alone in the wilderness is a natural byproduct of the filthy state of the collective astral plane. Thoreau had no idea just how bad this would get. I am convinced we are living in the worst collective astral conditions ever experienced in human history. Our era was foreseen and feared by a laundry list of seers, prophets, and visionaries. Nostradamus burned all of his magical insights in a single great torching of his own living quarters for fear the people of our era would get their hands on them. The Mayans and the Incans did elaborate magical rituals in attempts to avoid reincarnation during our civilization’s reign over the planet. Frustrated, would-be Thoreaus and Tolstoys should take comfort that their wanderlust is an understandable urge more easily cured by a daily banishing ritual and/or discursive meditation than a long sojourn in the wilderness.

People Suck... So What?

If you allow other people to drive you crazy with their awfulness, they will do so in short order. If you take the more difficult route of focusing intently on the positive aspects of other people and going around/trying to gently improve the bad, you will face a longer but much more prosperous journey.

I have said this before and I will say it again: we humans are biologically wired to remember the negative. We evolved this way so we could remember that eating the pretty blue flower that wasn't borage gave us intestinal cramps and nearly killed us; the kitty who bit us when we tried to pet him, and the pain of tripping over a root and face-planting into a tree. We remember the negative so that we may survive; it's not personal. Nevertheless, the logical result is that we hold on to the sting of rejection. When we get food poisoning, we might direct genuine hate at the restaurant staff where the poisoned food came from. If we have a certain temperament, we could be prone to hang on to the memory of the mistakes others have made so that we can savor the fury over them.

If you think I don't have such a temperament that lies in wait, wishing I would engage/indulge it, clearly you haven't known me for very long. Perhaps I was wired to survive. Dealing with a dark inner self that holds on to grudges is hard because hatred leaks. All that animosity directed towards other people (perhaps born in fear, who knows?) spills over and eventually shoves you in front of a mirror. The reflected image is not at all flattering.

The most effective way I have found of combating my own darkness towards other people is to summon up three positives for every denigrating thought I have about them. For instance, if I am angry about being left a pile of dishes in the sink by my husband, it may not be easy at the time, but I think of three positive things he has done, such as when he built the garden I designed in my head, when he gave care and love to cats he did not originally want, and the many times he has comforted me when I have had a life setback.

This strategy works when directed at myself. When I am beating myself up about double-booking an appointment, forgetting my phone (I would forget my head if it wasn't attached), or skewering myself for some ugly thing I did in the past, I counter it with three times I did someone a solid, made them laugh when they needed to laugh, or generally gave the best part of myself without thought of recompense.

How Not to "Care"

I have met several adult daughters of elderly women who became so upset with their mother’s eating habits, they resorted to ultimatums and withdrawal of their presence in order to get their mothers to change. Though the instinct to improve Mom’s diet comes from a benevolent and caring place, the methodology of ghosting Mom in order to show how much you "care" is transparently disingenuous bullcrap. If you are concerned about mom’s eating habits, then visit her frequently and cook her a few healthy, homemade meals or snacks and keep her refrigerator and countertop stocked. Help her to find ways to do mild, moderate exercise.

Adult children often run away from their parents because rejecting their parents becomes their way of strengthening their own resolve to live the lives they believe they want. Their parents’ values become repugnant to them as young adults. One classic scenario is the young adult departing the family home and making a life in another country and then finding it nearly impossible to return home in any meaningful sense when the elderly parents go through the process of dying. It is only after the elderly parent is gone that the child understands what has been squandered and taken for granted. We all have a high risk of becoming our parents whether we live in their house or on the other side of the planet.

In high school, I convinced myself that other people (especially other girls) were out to get me and hated me for no good reason. Though I suspect this was true of one or two terribly mean teachers and bully peers, my presumption was patently untrue for the majority of my classmates who faced similar challenges as they navigated getting an education and surviving young adulthood.

The key to getting along with other people is not to give up and run away unless it is absolutely apparent they are toxic and wish you harm. Sadly, I have had many former friends who became septic and wished me harm whether they knew they were doing it or not. I do not regret cutting ties with them; I am simply glad I never had to cut ties with a sibling or a parent for the same reasons. There are rare cases where another human ought to be cut and cleared (I will do a TikTok video on this someday, I swear) but most times, there is at least some good that can be built upon.