Therapy language: Boundaries & Agreements v Expectations & Demands

Many would assume this is a no brainer, but:

Boundaries and agreements are different than expectations and demands.

I wouldn’t really have anything to say about this, but now that it’s hip to use therapy lingo to talk about our relationship issues… it’s become a problem when specific terms are confidently misused. (this was discussed this in the Trauma Bonding post I made previously.) Sometimes people invoke therapy language in controlling or deceptive ways, but sometimes it goes far enough to constitute enabling abuse by or against other individuals.

For example after those leaked Jonah Hill texts, people realized that the man was misusing the term boundaries. But where a lot of people were mad at him for his expectations and demands they missed the forest for the trees.

Mr. Hill has the right not to be ok with anyone’s behavior… But he doesn’t have the right to control it. He has the ability to make agreements with other people, but they don’t have to honor those agreements. And it’s his responsibility to find appropriate consequences for the breaking of trust if an agreement is in place.

Wearing bikinis and having male friends has less to do with his boundaries and more to do with his expectations of his partner’s behavior. Those are not his boundaries, they are the demands he wants to make about how she dresses and acts. If you don’t want your hot surfer girlfriend to talk to men, that’s a you problem. That’s about the insecurity within yourself. If you both made agreements not to flirt with people or seduce them, and she does so anyway, that’s when it’s a “her problem.” That’s about failing to honor the trust that makes your bond secure and healthy.

He has every right to have boundaries. Boundaries can be about our behavior:

“I don’t drink”

or 

“If you start yelling, I won’t engage until you’ve regulated yourself. Of course you can be angry with me, but I won’t tolerate that kind of aggression.”

As well, boundaries can be about what kinds of things we allow into our lives:

“I want to have a satisfying, sexually exclusive relationship with my partner.” 

It’s about what you want and how you plan to engage with others. When you add others to the mix, you can create an agreement with them: “We agree to be sexually exclusive with each other, and to be open about how to make sure that each of us is fulfilled. If it seems like that’s not possible, we agree that we will find a mature way to de-escalate our physical relationship and figure out how we fit into each other’s lives.”

Boundaries and agreements allow us to create the relationship architecture that is correct for us with people who are willing participants. We can see who views a boundary as an obstacle to intimacy or their needs being met. We can see who views a boundary as a guide to loving us well. Agreements allow us to see how well we and others honor our word and how it feels when things don’t work out. Sometimes we find out we don’t want what the agreement offers, or that we don’t want to do our part. That’s ok. We just need to be willing to be mature about the changes that life requires since the agreement isn’t working out. Sometimes we discover that in certain contexts of dynamics, certain agreements are easy to keep and we thrive within the bounds of them. We can work together to solve the problems of our agreements so that they serve us well.

Expectations and demands on the other hand are ways we subconsciously absolve ourselves of responsibility. They can frequently create oppressive and repressive patterns in our relationships. If you have expectations and don’t discuss what they are or where tehy came from, you’re setting yourself up for conflict when those expectations don’t match the other party’s. If you have demands and you don’t make sure that other person can fulfill them or wants to, we set ourselves up for conflict when our desired outcomes are not achieved. Expectations and demands set us up to punish ourselves and others when we find ourselves disappointed or frustrated because much of life can’t really be controlled. If we expect people to behave in certain ways and they don’t, we give ourselves permission to project meaning onto their behavior. We make them responsible for conflicts we set them up to trigger when we opt for expectations and demands as the way we interface with actualizing our relationship fantasies, goals, and ideals.
—

Key Points:

1. Boundaries and Agreements vs. Expectations and Demands:

   • Boundaries are personal limits or guidelines regarding one's own behavior or what one allows into their life. They are about self-respect and self-care.

   • Agreements are mutually agreed-upon rules or guidelines that both parties in a relationship consent to. They help create the framework for the relationship.

   • Expectations are often implicit and can lead to conflict when they aren't communicated. They can create disappointment when they are unmet.

   • Demands are more forceful and may not take into account the other person's consent or willingness, potentially leading to control and conflict.

2. Responsibility and Control:

   • Setting boundaries and making agreements are proactive ways of taking responsibility for one's own needs and desires in a relationship.

   • Expectations and demands can lead to a sense of control over the other person, which may not be healthy or respectful.

3. Communication and Understanding:

   • Clear communication is essential in establishing boundaries and making agreements. It helps both parties understand each other's needs and limits.

   • Unspoken expectations can lead to misunderstandings and frustration.

4. Flexibility and Adaptability:

   • Boundaries and agreements are flexible and can evolve as the relationship grows and changes.

   • Expectations and demands can be rigid and may not allow for the natural shifts that occur in relationships over time.

5. Conflict Resolution:

   • When boundaries or agreements are violated, it can lead to discussions about trust and consequences.

   • Violated expectations and demands often lead to blame and conflict.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helped you. If we want to have more conscious relationships with the people we love, its important that we consume mindful content, but also share it, and if we are able, create it. If you’re looking for a jumping off point for creating more fulfilling dynamics with your friends, family, and community:

Sending you many blessings and all the love.

Like Action Like Thought

Another blog about trust. Eyy.

Today I want to dedicate my writing to Komal. I love you dearly friend. And when people learn to witness you correctly, we will all be better for it. This is also dedicated to Mikey. For you, there’s a part two.

-

Humans typically have much more in common than not in many ways. In healthy humans we have similar needs for staying alive. We typically have the same circuitry to allow emotional experience. We all must find our way in this world. As far as we know all of us live on the planet or in nearby space stations.

It’s a simple mistake.

We meet someone volunteering at the free farm stand and we assume that because we love giving back to our community, so do they. They must have a similar desire to engage generously with their time. And as we chat we discover that they love the same artists as we do, we start associating them with having a similar emotional or political sensibility. How can you love Serj Tankian and not care about his politics? But as we meet them for lunch one day and see how disgusted they are by the unhoused man on the corner… we notice something feels a little off. We go back to the farmstand and they’re not there. After a few questions we find out their presence had been court mandated. And it was “better than picking up someone else’s trash on the freeway.”

People frequently mistake “like action” with “like thought.”

And I find it feels like it’s not discussed enough, if ever, in the circles I move in. I find for many people, it is preferable to take like actions while never discussing their real opinions and perspectives in their personal and communal relationships. The unspoken rule seems to be “what should be done is what is socially agreed upon and what is suspected not to be agreed upon ought to be consciously or unconsciously avoided.” 

On the other hand it is incredibly common to watch conflict arise when opinions and perspectives are understood to be similar, but different courses of action are found preferable. As if the rejection of one’s actions are tantamount to a rejection of the individual. Of their reason or rightness or righteousness.

Even amongst intellectuals, there is safety in group think.

And what is not openly justified with a rational explanation, but intuition, whether a positive hunch or distrust, can be treated as foolish and chaotic. Even if if the hunch is a prediction based on evidence:

In 1994 Joycelyn Elders, surgeon general, was stripped of her position, disgraced and pilloried about her personal opinions on health and wellness, because she had outspoken, progressive(at the time) beliefs that were too radical. How dare she suggest masturbation was natural and might be a part of sex education, believing that it could lead to less teen pregnancy, economic empowerment for women, and slow the spread of STDs? Americans were not ready for that level of sex positivity. And we still suffer today because of it. As recently as 2020 I have watched a number of a confidant’s friendships end over their caution about the covid vaccine, even though the person in question was neither against vaccines nor ignoring covid regulations. Their faith in their fellow Americans was shaken by the zealous scientism of people hoping that their trust in modern technology would bring them back to a pre-covid world. And when it didn’t, blaming “those people” who “just couldn’t listen to reason” and “do what they were told” was treated as the problem. Acting as if the issue wasn’t much more complex and the reality was that vaccine or not, unless people were of the same mind, and willing to work together, zero covid wasn’t going to happen anyway. But even as partisan rhetoric, and conspiracy abounded in the US, communally the population of New Zealand in 2020 actually managed to be covid free for a time, while Americans were dying in droves and calling the disease a hoax. What happened in New Zealand was a reflection of what humanity is capable of when like action and like thought combine. Unity instead of division.

And even then, it’s still more complex.

Sometimes, when someone does what we do, it can be irritating. Especially when we assume that they’re not thinking for themselves or that they're trying to profit from our hard work. Perhaps it comes from hypocrisy or self hatred, which is a topic for another day. But when we assume imitation is because they like, admire, or agree with us, imitation becomes the highest form of flattery.

Imitation is primal. It’s how babies learn. And cooperation is cohesion. To be like, creates kinship. Kinship creates legacy, for better or for worse.

Similarly, when someone doesn’t do what we do… When they refuse our guidance or reject our ways, it can feel like an attack on our reasoning, identity, or even our validity. We can over identify with our actions and thoughts, surely. But we can also become dependent on agreement, requiring acceptance or validation, lest we face distress. But when we are secure in ourselves, the differences can be something to marvel at and in many cases benefit from.

Our relationship to these presumptions is that they shortcut needing to vet every individual directly. But this leads to its own problems. We don't just confuse like action for like thought. We mistake community with agreement.

I said earlier that a seemingly unspoken rule of social harmony is, “What should be done is what is socially agreed upon and what is suspected not to be agreed upon ought to be consciously or unconsciously avoided.”

And I have a theory as to why this happens.

Many of us have an unconscious competence in the space of submission and agreeability. Whether it came from an authoritarian guardian or the institutions to which we are beholden and subject, it can easily be internalized that hiding or ignoring differences potentially benefits the common good. If we don’t need to know each other’s politics to get our shelter built, it doesn’t really make sense to give ourselves reasons to distrust each other or to not cooperate. If we all love the same person, it does not make sense to focus on our differences and ruin the experience of togetherness on their birthday. It’s imprudent to talk about religion and politics not because people don’t want to know what others believe or care about their truths… but because when the conversation begins, questions of one’s identity are involved. The authorities to which they may submit their thinking to are called into question, and it is possible that even a casual interaction will end with an inadvertent, or intentional attack on the identity of a person. Sure people are people, and not their religion or political party(over-identify as they may) but the state of online discourse and news media couldn’t be what they are if it couldn’t FEEL that way. 

If a christian living in Ohio can feel persecuted because christianity is outlawed in foreign countries, an inability to sympathize or empathize can derail an otherwise productive interaction. Sure, a christian may be of a protected class, where you are, from your perspective. But that’s not their perspective, no matter how out of touch it is with your own perception of reality. Beneath their existential dread is the same humanity any person concerned for themselves and people like them is likely to express. Rejecting that they are persecuted because others who they identify with have been persecuted, is your choice. But if you make that the crux of your argument, you’re engaged in whataboutism. Regardless of your feelings about christianity, if you replace that identity in with some other demographic, it becomes pretty clear. People who identify with a demographic can feel that the capacity to deny the reality of their potential persecution somewhere in the world is indicative of a lack of concern with their safety and wellbeing. Replace christians with lgbtq, ukranians, jews, palestinians, uighurs, armenians, trans people.

The lines we draw about who deserves empathy create tribal lines of us and them, which derail our capacity for unity. There is one human race. (Even if there wasn’t, our mistreatment of life reflects poorly on our capacity to wield power, and illuminates our own potential for callous and abusive behavior. It does not reflect the potential or quality of the exploited beings.)  This practice of submitting to our tribes decrease of which people and things are deserving of platforms and aid is an example of the divisive nature of our shortcutting and submissiveness and agreeability. Activists, changemakers, and revolutionaries must answer to higher or deeper authorities than group think.

These positive and negative attributes that we give people based on our understandings of self and our like actions affect us at every level. I’m sure sociology has a sophisticated term for the positive prejudice of assuming likeness.

Love Fantasy

Forgive me. This one is MUCH longer than usual. The last post I wrote was dedicated to Sydney. I like this practice. This one is dedicated to Nella, because without her I probably wouldn’t have felt so compelled to finish and publish. I’d also like to thank Tiffany and Farnaz, for listening to the first few drafts of this.

I’d like to introduce you to a concept I call the "Love Fantasy."

What is a love fantasy?

A love fantasy is an experience of love that we would enjoy but that is not happening in this current moment. Anything that is not present to the senses lives in our imagination. What is imagined is a fantasy. What is remembered is a fantasy. This is because it is an abstraction of the phenomenon as it occurred into human perception, which is then experienced as a recollection. Even discussing our interpretations of the present moment lives as an abstraction of that moment into speech.

According to our most modern understandings, time itself, and therefore the "present moment," are illusions.

Even as we comment on them, they are already slipping away or exist not as realities but predictions that may or may not come to fruition, no matter how seemingly inevitable.

We can only truly hold space for what is happening and what can happen when we detach from needing external realities to fit our personal perceptions. We can only get to know someone when we don’t project onto them. We can only discover how much healing and care someone is capable of bringing when we are not ruled by the fear of the pain our vulnerability might lead to.

And this openness is one of the greatest gifts we can give to others: true intimacy. To let them discover the beauty of honest connection with us. Of knowing us. But in other ways as well. To hear them not just as we experience them but as they would like to be experienced or need to be experienced. To hear not simply, “I want you to do what I want” when a lover makes a request of us, but to recognize that "you’re the person I want to share this with" is a message they may be failing to properly convey.

"I feel safe to share this part of me with you."

"I revel in our connection."

Sometimes they simply do not have the language, but the meaning could come alive in the actions they communicate to you with, when you learn the language they are speaking.

In mature relationships, it is not simply about getting what one wants but finding successful ways of communicating the beauty of what happens inside of ourselves when we witness the other.

Lovers hopefully create space for each other’s love fantasies to become rich lived experiences and a cultivation of mutual joy. Ideally, some might even have the ability to mutually create love fantasies together that blossom because of the connection they have with each other. Manifesting love fantasies that exist BECAUSE they choose to show up together, not just for the other.

How compatible our personal fantasies are with the reality of the other is important.

It determines the level of intention that must go into actualizing a fantasy. Whether that’s a massage after dinner while watching a film, time in the garden where one tends to flowers as the other paints, or an illicit, all-night, poolside lovemaking session staring at moonlight breaking on the surface of the water in Mykonos. The abilities and limitations of each individual and the environment determine what can and does happen when attempts to make the fantasies realities occur. Do I have working hands and a movie to watch after dinner? Do we have a garden to engage our hobbies in and the materials and time to do this together? Can I plot the course of the moon such that on vacation in Greece there is a sneaky spot to have sex while the moon is correctly positioned over water during the night?

—

"If they wanted to, they would."

I love this saying–... because it’s hilariously reductive. When you want to, do you? Do you wear your heart on your sleeve, or do you hide it in a box? Have you been conditioned to take appropriate actions at appropriate times? And what’s appropriate when you’re not sure what the rules are?

As an adult, the most mature answer is probably "discuss our boundaries and establish some agreements, making sure we have space to adapt as life changes." But based on the grievances of so many, this isn’t the case for them.

Not when it matters.

And certainly not frequently enough to make this a waste of time to write.

Beyond that, social media and pop culture tend to err on the side of avoiding vulnerability and "simping." But if you take the risk, vulnerability shows you what this person does when you give them an opportunity for intimacy. If you have the maturity to move as gradually as allows you confidence in your assessments, even if it doesn’t work out, you have so much more capacity for clarity.

And speaking of clarity:

It seems to be part of the current zeitgeist, but we’re starting to recognize and discuss how people often don’t mean the same thing when they use the word “love.”

Some people are saying, "I would do anything for you," and of course, they mean "within reason." Others are literally expressing that they might commit murder or plead guilty to protect you if you were the one to do it. They would literally do anything for you, regardless of the ethics. Perhaps misguided sometimes, but powerful in its own way. Some mean that they will do whatever they believe is right for you. Some of them mean that they couldn’t imagine what is right for you is not right for them. Perhaps codependently. Perhaps because they have faith that the only way to love you is to absolutely accept you as you are, even if that means letting you go.

Forget not meaning the same thing for a moment and consider: Some may not even really understand what they’re saying when they suggest that they love someone.

Do they love how that person makes them feel?

Do they find some heretofore unfelt peace that they did not know they could feel before they met the focus of their affections?

Or maybe it’s excitement and passion they haven’t felt in years or have never felt before?

Perhaps it’s something that can’t even be articulated.

Maybe for  now obvious reasons, I like to suggest that before people run around looking for others to fulfill our need and desire for love, it’s important to be open to realizing we don’t and maybe cannot know everything we need to know about love. And maybe that infinite potential for discovery of ourselves, our lovers, and our relationships as they grow and change is beautiful. That maybe this problem of not having or getting what we want is not a punishment for some failing… but an invitation to a new kind of greatness only courageously loving ourselves and others can bring.

I’m blessed to be at a point in my life where more often than not, I do not feel bereft of love or connection. I’m at a point where I truly know I have beautiful love in my life, for myself and from others, even if on rare occasions I do not feel it. When I have found myself feeling disconnected from that, I ask myself questions. I want to offer them to you if there’s even a remote chance that you experience deeper or more fulfilling love for even just their consideration:

What am I actually looking for, and can I confidently articulate it for another or recognize it in them? Do my actions contribute to preserving the relationships my needs are met in, or are my habits and actions self-destructive?

Am I looking to give love, or am I looking to receive love? Am I comfortable with the realities that come with actually getting what I think I want?

Do I know how to experience love in solitude or with distance? Am I at risk of acting/operating from a place of desperation?

Do I know what I want for myself (is it even a question of love)? Will I take steps to experience it, or am I resigned to helplessness?

Considering the love landscape of my life, am I ok with my realities and my limitations?

Do I trust and understand how my partner (if I have one) perceives themselves through these same questions?

Of course, one doesn’t need to have answers to any of those questions.

Life doesn’t force us to be considerate of ourselves or others. And some people will be rewarded or punished for that on communal or cosmic levels, and we have to be ok with that for them, or torment ourselves over the concept of fairness–... which is a topic for another time…

But what are we committing to, or asking others to commit to, if we don’t have the capacity to communicate clearly with the people we are intimate with, whether it’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually? Whether this is a friend, lover, or relative? Trying to get a father to be the dad one needed and not simply the provider they were obligated to be(some failing this as well) has led to many broken hearts.

It’s helpful to stop and evaluate the relationships we have and the way we are going about making sure that we are capable of experiencing mutual fulfillment, that we are engaging with affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and compassion. Do we understand our own internal experiences? Do we have unresolved trauma? Do we have mental or emotional conditions that cause us not to act in our own best interest? Are we reaping the fruits of spiritual or therapeutic practices and unsure how to embrace that change? Are we trying to protect our inner peace from others or to force them to have that experience? Are we willing to wait for the ones who share our values, or are we engaging in snobbery because we’re “better” than those people?

I know I ask a lot of questions. And I’m not sorry about it. The deep motivation of my inner child is curiosity. I refuse to disconnect from that, and it serves me well. I do it for every child whose parents, school, or community is in the process of dissuading them from cultivating it. We don’t have an obligation to “know” who we are. In many ways, we can’t. But it’s a beautiful gift to discover who we might be. And if you take time to sit with your own questions, you’ll probably live a life full of serendipitous discoveries. So if you’re out of practice, I offer you mine.

Some of mine are clearly not for you, but for some of them, I can’t help but believe life put me through something just so you might have the chance to see it or share it with the person who needs it.

So, quite unapologetically, here are still more questions.

This next set of questions helps me personally when I am trying to figure out if I’m loving "unconditionally," by which I mean I feel entitled to figure out what a loving action honestly looks like from my perspective, but I’m not unduly attached to the outcome. I am entitled to my actions, but not their fruits. I remind myself of this whenever I slip into being tempted to allow myself attachment to outcomes that might rob me of joy or peace if things don’t go how I’d hope:

Am I looking to give love, or to receive it?

Am I looking to give AS they wish to receive? Do I expect gratitude and why? Were their wishes/preferences/needs considered?

Am I looking to receive their truth? Is their truth capable of being received as a kind of gift (from them or life), or do I expect/demand deceptions that fulfill my desires/needs without respect to their own other’s truths or reality?

This is about to get a little woo... but bear with me.

Some of us think our love language is words of affirmation, but actually, it’s quality time with conversation. In a relationship fraught with struggles, we sometimes discover that honest communication becomes difficult... And then even the idea of trying to communicate becomes exhausting.

Communicating costs energy. Deception costs even more. And maintaining deceptions creates perpetual stress. It activates the sympathetic nervous system and causes us to produce more cortisol. We do not owe anyone communication, truthful or deceptive. We really don’t owe anyone anything. Not truly. But if we want to have healthful experiences of ourselves and others, we must choose truthfulness. People naturally do what makes sense to them, and lying and deception are what make sense when it’s believed the value of the lie is worth the cost and the risk. When we delude ourselves and buy into falsities, we don’t just erode our integrity, but our quality of life. And to make it less taxing, we likely subconsciously prime ourselves to create and maintain connections that contribute to making that easier.

The reason this is going to sound a little woo is that I don’t have irrefutable evidence for it. It’s intuitive. But in the way that I realized that if I want to be an honest person, I have to make sure I don’t deceive myself… I noticed that if I am honest with life, life is honest with me. When I tell myself that I want to be joyful, I become aware of the things in my life that don’t bring me joy... And then I have to take responsibility for dealing with them. And so when we are in relationships where we feel like we can’t tell the truth or are being deceived, not addressing it directly is corrosive to the foundation if that foundation has anything to do with trust.

If you have ever witnessed or been party to a codependent relationship, with a parent perhaps, you likely understand. Walking on eggshells can be exhausting because of how much extra processing one has to do. This can become incredibly toxic to our nervous system and bleed into other areas of life. The erosion of boundaries in one place can cause us subconsciously to prime ourselves to accept it in other places... or even to build elements of our existence around maintaining the connection at unreasonable costs... becoming what they want and need from you, to survive. We may, on a conscious level, not realize we’re doing this because fear is fear. And fear originated to keep living beings alive. It is primal and base. But it is necessary and beautiful. When shameful behavior could lead to exile, which could be a death sentence, it was of deathly importance to know the rules and be accepted. Now we might focus on acceptance at all costs as if our life depends on it, even when it most certainly doesn’t. This is the experience of having unconditional relationships with conditional love (where love might be care or provision). An example would be a thought like, “she’s always going to be my mother, so she has to be part of my life whether or not it’s healthy for either of us.”

But

Consider that love is unconditional.

That all “relationship” in and of itself is conditional. Even being strangers is a conditional relationship. Consider that if love could exist unconditionally for any one thing in your heart, then in order for that to be true, all things must be loved unconditionally.

If this isn’t immediately clear, or even something you can accept, that’s ok. It’s a thing that some people seem to have been born knowing, some believe after a visit to a shaman, and honestly– some find on drugs, which are sometimes bad, m’kay? Some find it between the sheets or in the eyes of a child. Some find it meditating or in a therapist’s chair.

And some never find it. And that’s ok. 

But it follows a logic that requires opting into certain beliefs about the nature of reality, namely those that support that all things are unified as part of a greater thing. As all-encompassing as you can fathom. And once you get there, you likely recognize, sometimes immediately, sometimes not... that if they are, all your hatred is on some level a form of self-rejection.

And this is why discernment is key:

Recognizing that sometimes love is closeness and intimacy... and sometimes love is space for the other to grow, make their own mistakes, and learn their own lessons...

Recognizing that sometimes love is even making peace with the need for violence. Embracing, appreciating, and honoring every single thing that dies so that you can persist. That suffered at your hands so that you could learn. And trying to do better on behalf of the sacrifices they may not have willingly made. To respect what you take by being generous to everything else. And perhaps in this way life has woven into us a need for humility and grace.

I know this started with the concept of the "love fantasy,"

But the gift I hope you’ve walked away with is a fuller connection to your capacity for love as a reality.

If this helped you at all, I’d be honored if you shared it. And if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. I hope the questions offered find you as a timeless gift. They have sweetened, deepened, and healed the love in my life, and I hope they will forever do that for you.

How Can I Trust You?

49 “She is good to people who are good. She is also good to people who aren’t good. This is true goodness. She trusts people who are trustworthy. She trusts people who aren’t trustworthy. This is true trust.”

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

How can I trust you?

Trust is a funny thing.

Trust is inextricably linked to personal truths.

Some of us don’t recognize that truths are personal. Even if we believe we know the "objective" truth with deep conviction, the reality is that this truth is a personal interpretation of a personal perspective on a concept or phenomenon.

And that perspective might change.

If you think you’re a relatively consistent person and that your views on things likely won’t change, consider this:

Have you ever met someone who used to be a devout believer but is now full of doubts? (Gnostic Theist - Pure Agnostic) Or who started as an atheist and then became a devout believer? (Gnostic Atheist - Gnostic Theist)

If we were to ask them at either point why they believe what they believe, they would have a distinctly different answer than they would have at the other point in their journey. You might even be that person if you ever believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

Somehow, more or different information changed their sense of what may have been an absolute truth and fundamental to their understanding of the structure of reality.

They are arguably the same person, but from moment to moment, their truth shifts.

They may not be tomorrow the person that made you that promise today. And perhaps their vow to harm you will go unfulfilled... Or the promise to help you. And you may or may not carry the effects of this broken promise with you. Whether it gave you grace or grief.

Instead of fooling myself into believing that I am not capable of anything another human is capable of, in terms of actions or belief, I made peace very early in life with the fact that I simply have not encountered the circumstances that would lead to me taking an action or adopting a belief. I discover what would make violence and dishonesty tempting. I make peace with the reality that the kind of patterns I cultivate are responsible for what I do or don’t do. I’m not a murderer or martyr today, but do I know what I would kill or die for?

When I tell myself what my convictions are, do I live into them? Appreciating the chance life has given me to honor the values I claim I wish to uphold. Or do I wither in the face of challenge, much less difficulty or inconvenience?

If I allow myself to perpetually make my choices based on convenience, who will I become when the immoral action is convenient? If I do not practice discipline, where will it come from when I need it?

If I am unwilling to answer these kinds of questions, what am I really telling myself? Is it that I don’t want or cannot handle the responsibility of self-actualization? That I don’t actually want to feel culpable, if I get caught up in the role of the abuser or oppressor? That I don’t want to take responsibility for my agency in avoiding/overcoming/accepting helplessness or victimhood? That I am somehow better than others, when I find myself in the circumstance of being the hero... not because I faced my weaknesses or ignorance, but because I am a noble soul destined for greatness?

If I reflect on who I’ve been, what does it say about who I’m taking responsibility for becoming?

So in light of that:

What does it mean to trust?

Where does my faith come from when I trust? The strength of my convictions? Hope? Fear? Whose integrity galvanizes mine? Corrodes it?

If you “trust” someone, have you considered what you’re actually saying about your relationship to them, your own perspectives, and reality?

• You might actually be expressing that you believe they are afraid of the consequences of breaking trust with you. (a punitive incentive)

• You might actually be expressing that you believe they want to honor whatever leads them to build trust with you. (an equanimous/reciprocal experience)

• You might also be actually expressing that you are fully accepting of whatever actions they take, regardless of if they are going to break trust with you, because you “trust the process.” (transcendent trust in reality itself)

People can flow through these experiences of trust and trustworthiness. Experiencing different versions in different aspects of relationships or even just different circumstances at different times of day. Are we cultivating transcendent trust, or do we stumble into it when high on divinity or drugs? Of course this is general and non-comprehensive, as anything that I write will be.

No model is ever the thing itself.

I started by asking how can I trust you? But I suppose we’ve arrived somewhere else:

How do I trust myself? Is my trust a shackle, a gift, or even divinity honored?

When I am afraid to trust, what am I really afraid of?