DMB Digest: Weaning Oneself from the Idiot Spigot
or Not Being a Co-Culprit in a Loved-One's Life Script.
In the business world, we have the expression, “Garbage in, garbage out” or GIGO. In the parenting world, we have the expression, “You are what you eat.” (Which in my case would make me mostly red wine and popcorn.) For those of us who are fans of film and television adaptations of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett fiction, we have the quote from Good Omens, Season 2: “I didn’t mean to fall, I just hung around the wrong people.”
The point is, no matter who you are, you have an expression for the concept of being influenced, molded, and/or shaped by the things and/or people you choose to surround yourself with. There are so many expressions for this, because we all love to admonish others about it, while quietly ignoring the wisdom ourselves.
The harsh reality, is that we are drawn to all the people and things that feed into our personal flaws and blindspots. You know, “birds of a feather flock together.” So while it is nice for you to be mindful of the company you keep, I’m personally going to hang out with a bunch of people that enforce my idiosyncrasies and feed into my narcissism.
I mean, I could hang out with a bunch of really nice, patient, and loving people, but at some point I would stress even their tolerance of me. But when I hang with selfish jerks, we all ignore each other anyway. The only problem is some of the people I love are not selfish jerks (by some odd notion of the divine). And by embracing my selfish-jerkiness, I harm them.
Sure, on the surface this would seem like their own fault for being dumb enough to associate with me. I mean, the company you keep, right? Putting fault aside, they like me…and I like them. So how do I keep from being a bad influence and a malevolent factor in their lives? Could it be as simple as “garbage in, garbage out?” Could all those trite sayings contain some truth?
I’ve been giving it a go for the last few years, and I think there might be something to it. Like for many, The Pandemic served as a bit of a reset button for my hamster-wheel-life. During that season, I made a concerted effort to remove bitterness, anger, rage, cynicism, and spiteful judgement from my life. One of the rules I set for myself was that I would not read or listen to anything by anyone using hateful rhetoric, exaggerated polemic, pejorative spin, etc. (This excludes pretty much all the news outlets.) On the flip side, I would be willing to digest opinions and thoughts by anyone speaking respectfully and rationally about stuff, whether I agreed with them or not.
The crazy thing is that I feel like less of a selfish jerk these days. Amazingly, the less I pay attention to selfish jerks, the less like one I become. I find all sorts of people to be less repugnant. (Emphasis on less. I mean, I’m not an angel. Philadelphia Eagles’ fans still disgust me, but not as much as they used to. I even watched the movie Silver Linings Playbook and enjoyed it.) In addition, as I tune out all the shock jocks, talking heads, and screaming info-tainers, I find myself making new friends right here in my neighborhood. Me, making friends? Trust me, it freaks me out more than it freaks you out.
It turns out, none (not a one) of the streaming hotheads cares about me or has my best interest in mind, while some of the people they are hating on from afar do care about me and have my best interest in mind. I just had to turn off the idiot spigot to be able to engage with them as a friend and neighbor rather than engaging with them as an idiot.
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