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Taking care...
Oct. 6th, 2001 05:09 amI was talking to someone about taking care of yourself. I was trying to find a reason to say "you have to take care of yourself", but couldn't come up with a good explanation for something that seems, to me, to be an elemental truth.
I think that the key is that only you really know your own needs. No one else has as good a chance to be able to guess what it is that will make you happy. This isn’t to say that someone else might not have the key to make you happy... it’s a statement that only you have the results of direct input into your condition. You can know if you’re hungry, or thirsty, or lonely.
In some cases, another person might see things that you haven’t. For example, another person might remember that you’ve been feeling unhappy about your job situation when you’ve more or less resigned yourself to it at this time. However, only you could say that you still do find your job frustrating. You might, no matter how unlikely it is, have decided that you actually enjoy your job.
(Er, just in case this becomes a journal entry, please understand that I’m not saying that it’s unlikely that anyone will enjoy their job. However, if you have a doctorate in high energy physics, and are cleaning toilets for a living, you might find that to be a constant frustration, and even if you’ve decided, right now, that you can live with it for a while, another person might remember it.)
The trouble is that people are adaptible. People who are in a bad situation can stop thinking about it, or can learn to handle things that would be intolerable under some circumstances. If you spend your time thinking about bad things, you can almost always depress yourself, so I’d guess that this is a sort of survival trait. So, it’s not really surprising that you can ‘unthink’ about something depressing. Plus, as I’ve noted before, I sometimes think that depression could be a survival mechanism gone wrong. By putting (You? Well, let’s say “Me” instead...) me into a disaffective state, it keeps me from noticing pleasant things, but it also keeps me from noticing unpleasant things. Everything becomes a sort of uniform grey.
I think that it is probably a good thing for survival... the emotional equivalent of endorphins, which can shut down pain. I’m not sure if endorphins cut down on pleasure long term, though. It doesn’t matter; it’s not supposed to be a precise metaphor.
Anyway... other people can sometimes have better memories, or even better ideas about what might make you happy, but only you have any real idea if they will, or won’t, make you happy. Only you can decide that the new career choice that someone suggested is something that you realy would enjoy.
So, in the end, the only person who can decide when it’s time to do something for yourself is you. Others can reality-check your assumptions or ideas, but they can’t decide what really is best for you. (At least, not if you’re a self-aware adult.)
So, really, the only person who can possibly take good care of you is yourself. If you accept it as a given that people should be taken care of, then it’s obvious that you have a responsibility to take care of yourself... not because you’re some wonderful person, but because you’re the only one who can do it.
I think that the key is that only you really know your own needs. No one else has as good a chance to be able to guess what it is that will make you happy. This isn’t to say that someone else might not have the key to make you happy... it’s a statement that only you have the results of direct input into your condition. You can know if you’re hungry, or thirsty, or lonely.
In some cases, another person might see things that you haven’t. For example, another person might remember that you’ve been feeling unhappy about your job situation when you’ve more or less resigned yourself to it at this time. However, only you could say that you still do find your job frustrating. You might, no matter how unlikely it is, have decided that you actually enjoy your job.
(Er, just in case this becomes a journal entry, please understand that I’m not saying that it’s unlikely that anyone will enjoy their job. However, if you have a doctorate in high energy physics, and are cleaning toilets for a living, you might find that to be a constant frustration, and even if you’ve decided, right now, that you can live with it for a while, another person might remember it.)
The trouble is that people are adaptible. People who are in a bad situation can stop thinking about it, or can learn to handle things that would be intolerable under some circumstances. If you spend your time thinking about bad things, you can almost always depress yourself, so I’d guess that this is a sort of survival trait. So, it’s not really surprising that you can ‘unthink’ about something depressing. Plus, as I’ve noted before, I sometimes think that depression could be a survival mechanism gone wrong. By putting (You? Well, let’s say “Me” instead...) me into a disaffective state, it keeps me from noticing pleasant things, but it also keeps me from noticing unpleasant things. Everything becomes a sort of uniform grey.
I think that it is probably a good thing for survival... the emotional equivalent of endorphins, which can shut down pain. I’m not sure if endorphins cut down on pleasure long term, though. It doesn’t matter; it’s not supposed to be a precise metaphor.
Anyway... other people can sometimes have better memories, or even better ideas about what might make you happy, but only you have any real idea if they will, or won’t, make you happy. Only you can decide that the new career choice that someone suggested is something that you realy would enjoy.
So, in the end, the only person who can decide when it’s time to do something for yourself is you. Others can reality-check your assumptions or ideas, but they can’t decide what really is best for you. (At least, not if you’re a self-aware adult.)
So, really, the only person who can possibly take good care of you is yourself. If you accept it as a given that people should be taken care of, then it’s obvious that you have a responsibility to take care of yourself... not because you’re some wonderful person, but because you’re the only one who can do it.
