Turq wrote: Treat that which is interesting with interest, and that which is uninteresting with disinterest.
My reply: Hmmm, seems straight forward enough. One could ask why this even needs to be stated. Perhaps something else is going on? As you note, people are claiming to be tired of same old, same old, but keep engaging in it anyway. See points about avoidance below. Pertinent aside: Ammachi once said that Love is never bored. The word interesting is well, interesting. I'm guessing that the wily old ego loves it. If it feels threatened by something read in FFL then ego decides that it's not interesting. Fair enough. But as we all probably know, what we avoid, etc. will keep amping up until we give it the attention it needs to come to resolution. Disinterest could be a very sneaky form of avoidance. It's my experience that until a person heals the internal dysfunctional family, EVERY group which one joins will reflect that. No wonder we start acting like children. And basically it's the personalities that trigger us and our old stuff. So getting caught up in personalities is actually part of the potential healing. About rewarding, etc. Even children learn how to reward and punish, don't they? And in their pain and discomfort, they can be pretty mean spirited about it. So again, our behavior could be coming from child/ego rather than a more developed aspect. It might be useful to be aware of this as we go about labeling posts. You suggest that we ignore the past, which is admirable but mostly impossible. But then at the end you say that we already know who is who. This seems to be based on the past and thus a contradiction. I didn't know about the posting limitation until Judy kindly pointed it out. I only have 4 posts left between now and Fri at 7 ish. Oy! Another diet! Anyway, will consequently be posting way less between now and then. BTW, I mostly enjoy this forum. I enjoy the variety of topics very much. I'm starting to "know" individuals but that's happening slowly because I tend to be lazy and don't wade through the longer posts. Unless they have lots of white space (-: Also replies are sometimes hard to find. There seems to be at least 2 and maybe 3 forms. And that posting limitation! Don't even get me started! Speaking as one who prefers to write short posts frequently, I think there should be, instead of post limit, a weekly word limit. Only kidding... Share ________________________________ From: turquoiseb <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 3:07 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] A Modest Proposal For The Coming FFL Posting Week It's very simple. I suggest it as an alternative to the same old same old, which many of us *claim* to be tired of: Treat that which is interesting with interest, and that which is uninteresting with disinterest. That is, ignore the personalities, and ignore the past. If someone posts something you feel is interesting, respond to it and engage that person in conversation about it. If someone posts something that is clearly an attempt to either start or restart an argument, whether it is based on "dueling egos" or "dueling philosophies" or old grudges or whatever, ignore it. Let the attempt to start a fight fall flat for lack of participants. I suspect that if most people did this for a week (let alone all the time), we'd find out very quickly who here actually has anything interesting to say, and who doesn't, and lives instead *only* to start fights and engage in arguments. My proposal is nothing more than classic child management (which I suggest is a more than appropriate approach to dealing with FFL). Reward that which deserves to be rewarded (saying something interesting), and ignore (and thus do NOT reward) that which is the same old same old, an attempt to turn the place into a war zone. Even if you choose not to participate in my modest proposal this coming week, WATCH WHAT HAPPENS based on it. Watch to see who actually finds something interesting to say and those who respond in kind to it. Watch those who cannot find anything interesting to say, and therefore fall back on bad habits and try to start or restart arguments, or who try to get others to engage or re-engage in old, tired personality battles. I think it'll be interesting to see "who is who." I further think that everyone here already *knows* "who is who," given this dynamic. My modest proposal is merely a way of demonstrating it.
