Positive psychology

Intention and Production

Ron Johnson communication, Personality, political, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

It is important to produce. It is equally important to intend to produce. But these two ways of engaging the world are profoundly different, a difference we might call spiritual. I conceive of these elements of psychological life on a spectrum with purpose in the center of the spectrum, something like this:

Intention…………..……….……Purpose…………………………..Production

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This might seem unduly abstract and theoretical, but all ow me to suggest how this paradigm might be helpful in understanding how you engage the world, and perhaps better understand how other people engage the world. In fact, unless you are one of the rare people who reside somewhere in the middle, you are probably largely on one side of this spectrum. Furthermore, you probably have some trouble with people who are on the other side of the spectrum. Roughly, people who favor intention need to have a direction to where they go compared to people who favor production who just go. Both “intenders” and “producers” have a purpose in what they are doing and where they are going, but their perspectives of how to get to this purpose are quite different.

Deb and I are on different sides of this spectrum, Deb being distinctly on the intention side whereas I am distinctly on the productive side of the spectrum. We share many elements of psychology and agree on most things that have to do with thinking and feeling, but where we differ is in the third element of life: how we go about engaging life with a purpose. I am sure this is yet too abstract for many of you, perhaps especially people who tend to be “producers.” Furthermore, even the terminology that I am using is less than distinct and less easily useful. Deb has brought this matter of “intention” to me recently as we look into this year and the days or years that we might have yet to live. We have found ourselves frequently musing, often talking, sometimes reading, and sometimes writing about what the future might bring. Talk about intension has intensified with Deb recently as she has made some changes in her work schedule and work place. Let me first discuss the nature of the American world in specific and the world at large in general in regards to the intention-production phenomenon. Then I will suggest ways in which you might understand how you go about life, and hopefully do a bit better engaging the other people in your life who might share your perspective or have a different perspective.

America is primarily productive

This is an important place to start because the very basic flavor of America is and has always been production, much more than intention, this despite the fact that the founders of the United States were actually people of intention. A careful look at the Constitution, but much more so, the Declaration of Independence, will show you that it was the intention of the founders to establish a democratic republic much more than their having an idea of how that intention would work out in producing a democratic republic. Washington, Jefferson, Adams (both of them), Hamilton, and Franklin were certainly intenders more than producers. Many later Presidents, particularly Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Grant were more producers. In between we find Lincoln, who most certainly was an intender but eventually became perhaps the most important producer President we have ever had. I will leave this thought for your reading and musing and turn to the functional nature of America as it unfolded.

Despite the fact that the founders were largely intenders, almost to the person, the country was young, incredibly capable of expansion with resources beyond comprehension, became a country dominated by production and all that goes with it. I will not belabor the point, but the very fabric of America is doing, producing, and having things.  It is not why we do, produce and have. It is not much about how we might effectively use such things. Look at what is said from most of our political leaders, and you will hear of doing, producing and having. You will not hear of intention except by inference. It seems to me that our current President is thoroughly a producer, not an intender. We will discuss the challenges that Trump has and other people like him have later.

Compare America to any other developed country in the world, particularly China and Japan in the East and most of Europe in the West. We could also look at native cultures in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but we must delay that discussion. It is likely that the relative youth of America and the relative longer life of China, Japan, and Europe might be part of the reason America is so production oriented compared to the philosophies of China, Japan, and Europe to say nothing of the philosophies of the Middle East (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism).

So, if you’re more of a producer, like I am, life has probably been easier for you in America than your spouse, friend, daughter, or father who might be intenders. In my own family my brother was very significantly an intender, as was my mother while my father was almost completely a producer with my sister somewhere in between. My brother struggled heartily in this family dominated by my father’s production-orientation, and truly never recovered from the debates he had with our father, nor did he succeed in the world of work that is heavily production-based. It was much easier for me. I just did things. Bill considered doing things. This made life more challenging for Bill than it was for me, but we producers also have our challenges

The challenges of intention and production

Part of the challenge of understanding this intention-production paradigm is in the very words that we use. Words, at least normally used words, tend to fall into the producing side of the spectrum of paradigm of purpose. In fact, a case could be made for suggesting that words themselves are more inclined to value production over intention. This is one of the challenges that intenders have when they engage the (American) world: there isn’t a (normal English) vocabulary for intenders Consider what you might hear from someone you talk to someone:

  • What’s happening?
  • What’s going on in your life?
  • What are you doing?
  • What’s new in your life?
  • How has the problem being solved?

The operative words here are how and what. These are not particularly words of intention. They are words of doing or producing. You would rarely hear from your friend questions that are more of intention, like:

  • What have you been thinking lately?
  • What have you been feeling lately?
  • What have you been musing about lately?
  • What is your intention for the day?
  • Much less:
    • What is your intention for life?
    • What is your purpose in life?
    • What is important to you?
    • Why did you do this or that?

People just don’t talk this way for the most part. Note the difference between the “what” questions for intenders compared to the “what” questions for the producers. What questions for intenders are those of thought or feeling, not so much of actual doing.

Challenges are not so basic for producers living in America, but there are challenges nevertheless. Their challenges have to do with the result of being tired of all the things they do, doing something in a hurry to just get it done, doing something so perfectly that it never seems to get done, and other difficulties that come with a person who is always doing. The value system here is ultimately the same for intenders and producers, namely purpose, but the ways of getting there are substantially different. When I go about a purpose, like writing this blog, I “just start” with no particular intention other than to write something that might be of value to one or two people who might read this blog. I don’t sit back and see how I might go about writing, consider it more, write a bit, muse about it, correct it, and then perhaps set it aside until my passion builds to go back to writing. I just write. You might see the occasional unfortunate results of my “just writing,” namely in the spelling errors that I so often make. People who write from an intentional persuasion often think ten times more than they write, and many fine writers never finish anything because they get lost in the intention but fail to produce. I have a cousin who has been writing a screenplay for 10 or 15 years, and he seems quite satisfied with this way of going about writing, but his sister, much the producers of the family, can’t see the value of his intending to write the screenplay of the century. I think that it doesn’t matter to him whether he will every finish the screenplay because his intention is to write it, not to produce it.

I will leave you to consider that President Trump is very much the doer/producer. You simply don’t hear anything about intention. It bemuses me to read commentators trying to understand what his intention is in what he says or does. I would suggest that he has no intention. He just does things. Much different is President Obama who was clearly much more the intender than the doer. Admitting to the extreme nature of the following, I might say that Obama had great intention but didn’t really do much. Trump has done all kinds of things, most of them wrong. Choose your poison. I think, but I’m not sure, that Biden might be somewhere in between.

So, roughly, the challenge of the intenders of the world is to actually do something, produce something, create something, whereas the challenge for producers is to stand back and see what might be the intention of what they want to do and then move slowly towards accomplishing it. Doing is good, but not good enough; you need to do something of value, perhaps lasting value. Dreaming is good but also not good enough; you need to do something that might also have lasting value. Good luck intending and producing.

Wordiness, Wordlessness, and Wordness

Ron Johnson communication, Feelings, Personality, relationships

Many people have trouble with words. In fact, it is my belief that every human being has trouble with words despite the fact that words are so central in human functioning and seemingly essential in interpersonal relations of any kind. We might say that the (scientific) difference between animals and humans is that humans have speech, whereas animals don’t (while we might suggest that the existence of self, soul, or spirit might also differentiate us from animals.)

I had a conversation this morning with a man who speaks easily and freely, so much so that he sometimes stumbles and tumbles over his own words as he is desperately trying to communicate what he feels and thinks. Several times during this morning’s conversation, “Jim” (as I will call him) said, “I just don’t know how to say what I feel” or “I just don’t know how to say what I think” and then follow up with some kind of self-criticism because of his difficulty of finding the right words. Jim is by far not the only person who I see that has trouble with finding words for his thoughts or feelings. Many were the times when someone said, “I just don’t know what to say” when they heard of our daughter’s death a year ago. What could they say at such an event? No words would do justice to the feelings that people often had although the best words were always, “I am so sorry.” But there were people who said all kinds of things, people who said nothing, and people who just looked at us with faces full of feelings but no spoken words.

The matter of words is more than the phenomenon of not knowing what to say. There are many instances where words are insufficient to express one’s feelings or thoughts. The title of this blog, “wordiness, wordless, and word-ness” is a reflection of some of the problems with words, and they all have to do with inadequate communication:

  • Wordiness: People have too many words and fail adequately communicate
  • Wordlessness: people have too few words and fail to adequately communicate
  • Wordness: people make up words but fail to adequately communicate

Wordiness

The “Jim” noted above had too many words for what he was feeling. He spoke over and over again about how he was feeling but he was having but was never satisfied with his words. So, he did what wordy people tend to do: he spoke more, he spoke louder, and he repeated himself. Jim’s situation was quite simple: his wife said that she wanted a divorce, and “it came as a complete surprise” although he admitted that he knew that “something was wrong” in the marriage for some time. I tried my best to help him say what he really felt but with only a modicum of success because he was so inclined to repeat himself over and over again, usually with intermittent statements of “I just don’t know how to communicate.” I tried, largely in vain, to help him feel the real emotion that he felt, which was simple sadness, but he was so inclined to rattle on, mostly about his wife and her alleged “problems” that I didn’t succeed in this endeavor. Of course, complaining and diagnosing his wife wouldn’t help him, but he didn’t know any other way to express his feelings. This is so often the case with wordy people: they don’t know when to stop talking, when to start thinking, and when to speak again when they have found words that adequately communicate their feelings. Wordy people rarely feel, then think, and then speak. Rather, they speak furiously because they depend on a flurry of words to communicate their feelings. Sadly, they often fail in this endeavor, which makes life even harder for them because they have done all that they know to do. Jim was largely covering the feeling of sadness with his wordiness. The more he said, the worse he felt and found himself in this downward cycle.

Wordy people tend to be extraverted but wordiness is not entirely in the realm of extraversion as we might expect. In fact, Jim is quite introverted by nature. You may know some introverted people who, when they have a kept audience, tend to rattle on about something. I recall a good introverted friend who, when we entered her house, would immediately meet us with a flurry of words, so much so that we were quite overwhelmed by the words, if not entirely by the content. Yes, extraverts can also dominate a conversation, but they tend to need a larger audience. Introverts dominate the conversation when they have you alone. I recall an incident with my younger daughter, who is by nature quite introverted, a time that Deb and I were taking her to some church event. Deb and I both remember how Jenny seemed to rattle on about one thing or another, then at one time said, “Listen to me; I’m just rattling on, aren’t I?” and then just as quickly went back to rattling. We enjoyed the moment.

Wordy people also tend to be feeling-based, which is a reference to the Jungian concept of how people make judgments. “Feeling-based” people “feel through” things, including their thoughts, emotions, and actions. Feeling-based people tend to have good intuition, especially if their intuition is not dominated by emotion. Often, however, feeling-based people have many more feelings than they have words for, so they can be found to say words over and over again with the hope of communicating the feeling they have. But wordiness is not only in the realm of feeling-based people. The individual I just noted who would typically greet me at her door was also thinking-based. Thinking-based people are always looking for someone to talk to about what they have read, experienced, or thought.

Whether introverted, extraverted, feeling-based, or thinking-based, wordy people tend to push into the conversation as many words as possible. I suspect they know that they have but little time before the audience will lose interest so they cram as many words as possible into the space where there should actually be fewer words.

Wordlessness

Wordless people have fewer words. Sometimes they have no words at all. There is a great place to say nothing. We would all do well to consider that there are important times to say nothing because there are times when nothing needs to be said. These are times when simple presence with a friend is important and simple quietude alone is important. There is certainly nothing wrong with being silent as Desiderata begins with “go placidly among the noise and haste of the world and remember what peace there may be in silence.” But let’s look a bit deeper into the wordlessness that troubles so many people.

Many people have suffered in school because of their lack of words. Most of the men I see in my office have suffered because they were not “word people.” Their lack of words may have been a genuine dyslexia but more often than not they were not “auditory learners,” which is learning based on words shown in reading, writing, and speaking. There are even people who were good at reading and speaking but couldn’t seem to put two words together on paper or people who could read and write but were terrified of speaking in class. School does no service to people who are not word-based. I didn’t like reading until well into college but I was good at writing and speaking, so I got along pretty well. Furthermore, my “learning style” is predominantly “auditory” (word-based). Equally good, but substantially different, are people whose learning styles are kinesthetic or visual. These would be the musicians, artists, and athletes in school who “go to school for their friends and activities” but abhor the reading and writing that dominates school. School was good for me because I am primarily word-based but I see kids in my office all the time who are good with art, music, sports, dance, and social life but hate reading. Oops, school is reading (and writing and speaking).

Wordless people might also be introverted or thinking-based. These folks work diligently to find the right words so often that they have large gaps in what they say in a conversation. This gap-ness is not the sole domain of introverts and thinkers, but it is most common among them. My brother used to look at his wife, who was both introverted and thinking, and say, “I’m sorry, my dear, I didn’t hear what you said” when she had not actually “said” anything. She would say, “Oh, that’s right. You can’t read my mind.” This looking at someone intently, perhaps with mouth agape, arms swinging in the air, or grimacing is a time of wordlessness that usually fails to communicate. I recall many instances when someone has looked at me when we are in a conversation, opened his mouth as if to say something but not with any words, then came closer to me and was right in my face, yet without any words. Such a person is attempting furiously to communicate without using words. Rarely do they succeed in that endeavor. “There is a time to keep silent, and there is a time to speak” as Solomon said in the Jewish Scriptures’ book of Ecclesiastes.

Wordness

What I call “wordness” is the creating of words for the purpose of communicating something that standard dictionary-based words are insufficient. We have many words that are added to Webster every year, like “texting” a few years ago. While every language adds words to the usable vocabulary every year, there are also times when people create words that will never be a part of Webster, much less common use. I recently read an article that was based on Buber’s I and Thou book and the concept under the concepts of I and Thou. This author talked about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her discussion of Buber’s concept of I and Thou. (For what it’s worth, Buber’s simple, yet profound suggestion is that we need to understand how we relate to one another, and the way we need to do that is understand how we think and feel followed by understanding how other people think and feel. This theologian found it necessary to talk about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her dissertation. Yet I found it difficult to understand what she was talking about and sometimes found myself wondering if what she was saying was even important. Perhaps other readers have been fascinated by her use of these created words. Readers of theology, and somewhat in psychology, will be more familiar with these hyphenated words, like God-ness, Satan-ness, sin-ness, and creation-ness words.

Created words are not the sole property of theologians. Note that I used the word “gap-ness” above. I created this word. Many people will create words that have even less meaning than the likes of “I-ness” and “Thou-ness.” These are times when people may actually use some vocalism, like a grunt in an attempt to communicate. Or they may find some combination of words that seems to make no sense at all, something like babies do when they are trying to communicate their feelings but don’t yet have a vocabulary. Similarly, adults can yell, scream, grunt, murmur, or cry when they want to say something but can’t find the words to adequately communicate their feelings. While wordiness can be irritating or boring, and wordlessness can be frustrating, wordness can be awkward at the best and dangerous at the worst. Many physical fights have come about due to the wordness that has miscommunicated.

The danger that can come about due to wordiness, wordlessness, or wordness sometimes leads to undue cursing. Cursing has always been a part of this culture, and seemingly of every culture, the increase in the frequency of cursing, now beginning as early as age 5 or 6, seems to be a symptom of people increasingly unable to communicate themselves adequately. We know, for instance, that while speech is largely a “left-brain” phenomenon, cursing is a right-brain phenomenon, the right side of the brain being the housing for emotion as well as much of what we perceive in our five senses. Cursing can be conceived as wordness and created words. It is interesting that the “f word” can be almost any part of speech.

What’s it all about: wordiness, wordlessness, and wordness?

It’s about insecurity, namely feeling inadequate in expressing what I want to communicate. Thus, people talk too much, talk too little, or make up words in attempts to communicate. But what are they trying to communicate? Feelings. Deb and I finally published our most recent work, I Want to Tell You How I Feel, which should be back from the publisher in a week as well as being available for download soon. In this book we first admit that we will “never successfully communicate our feelings” while proposing that we can improve in communication if we realize that it is impossible to communicate perfectly. Nevertheless, this task of feeling something, trying to communicate it, and finding some modicum of success is something that few people master. I encourage you to continue to work at it.

Good for Me; Bad for Me VI: Complexities

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, morality, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

This is the sixth in a series of “good for me; bad for me,” namely things that are, quite simply good for me or bad for me. The pronoun “me” could be “you”, but the point is the many things are those that enhance one’s life while other things depreciate one’s life. Importantly, I have also suggested that the “things” that are good or bad can be people, places, physical things, or events in one’s life. I have further proposed that there is a spectrum that might reflect the intensity of something being good or bad, namely:

Something that is good for me                               /                             Something that is bad for me

Furthermore, I have suggested that we can quantify just how good something is by the following words:

  • Mildly or moderately good for me: interesting, pleasant, exciting
  • Profoundly good for me: enlivening, life-enhancing, life-sustaining

Likewise, we could quantify things that are bad for me with the following:

  • Mildly or moderately bad for me: uninteresting, unpleasant, aversive
  • Profoundly bad for me: dangerous, toxic, lethal

I have suggested that it might be profitable for you to quantify the things in your life that may be good, very good, bad, or very bad. You may wish to examine the origin of this discussion in the previous blogs.

My purpose in the present blog is to deal with the complexities of something being good or bad for you because life is not so simple as just good or just bad. We will discuss some of these complexities, e.g.:

  • Good for me at one time; bad for me at another time
  • Good for me but I don’t like it
  • Bad for me be I do like it
  • Seemingly neither good nor bad; just not very important

Good for me at one time; bad for me at another

As I just stated, “life is not so simple” as to suggest that something is universally bad for me or universally good for me. Times change. I change. Circumstances change. People change. Consider something (someone, some place, some thing, some situation) that was good for you but not is not good for you.

There was a time that it was very good for me to speak my thoughts and feelings freely. Having been brought up in a very outspoken and expressive family, I was subtly taught that a person should simply say whatever s/he felt or thought regardless of the environment or the consequences. Thus, my family’s philosophy was based on the unspoken belief that we all have the right to our thoughts, opinions, and feelings, and furthermore have the right to express ourselves at any time with anyone. As you might imagine, and as I certainly know, it is not always wise or kind to speak oneself openly. I slowly earned that I needed to add wisdom and kindness to my expressiveness in what I said, something that we might call discretion. I should add that I learned this lesson painfully. Part of the pain was the fact that I unnecessarily hurt other people, always without intention, but I also learned that they hurt me in return, as the book title Hurt People Hurt People so succinctly suggests. (Don’t buy the book; just remember the title and its meaning.) When I was so quickly outspoken, I was just as quickly judged, often negatively. People made judgments of me, probably largely out of their having been hurt by me. I slowly learned that while my heart and head might have been in the right place, namely to be “honest and forthright,” I was not cognizant of my audience, particularly their feelings. Whereas speaking my mind at all times and with all people was originally good for me, it is no longer so. It is also not good for other people, but we will discuss this matter in a future blog.

At the present time in my life I rarely speak my mind and heart. Now, having given this example of something that was good for me but not good for me now, I often feel sad that I most certainly should not express myself in many circumstances. Most pointedly, I have learned that I can say precious little of my thinking and feeling while I am doing psychotherapy although I am almost constantly both thinking and feeling. I have a kind of nostalgia for my younger days when I just said what I wanted to say, and sometimes think, “Wouldn’t we all be much better if we just did that?” But then I come to my senses and admit that it might not be so good after all. As Desiderata so poignantly says, one must “gracefully yield the things of youth.” The cost of giving up such things is first sadness, then contentment, and then wisdom. I am still learning.

There are many other examples of things that have been good for me at one time, and then later bad for me. Almost all of these things are in the arena of wanting the freedom that we can only have in childhood. I rarely do waterskiing, something that was very central to my life as a teenager, although I do have good memories. I almost never eat any fast food, and interestingly have little desire for such stuff. I used to work 12 hours a day and thoroughly enjoy it, but have found that 12-hour days are no longer good for me, and sometimes in need a 4-hour day, God forbid. During the current political squabble that we are in here in America, I can no longer read the newspaper with earnest interest because the Trump factor stares me in the face, as does the current Covid factor, and even the Black Lives Matter movement. I remain avidly interested in political and cultural matters but find it “bad for me” to see our country so inflamed.

Formerly bad for me, now good for me

It used to be bad for me to keep my mouth shut. I have learned otherwise partly because I have learned that introverted people are naturally inclined to keep their feelings to themselves. It was bad for me to keep quiet but it is no longer bad for me. Certainly, this change is a matter of personal growth, but I now value keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself, sometimes writing them as I am presently doing, and sometimes simply enjoying “going placidly among the noise and haste of the world knowing what peace there is in silence” (also Desiderata). In my psychotherapy work I probably say about 10% of what I think and 1% of what I feel although my thoughts and feelings can occasionally be quite helpful. More often in the past I have caused more harm by expression than by silence. If you had asked me some 40 years ago what I thought about being outspoken, I probably would have said something like, “everyone should just say what they think all the time.” By the way, my coming into psychology through the “back door” of existential therapy, there were many very good masters of existential therapy who did, indeed, suggest that you should just say anything to anyone at any time. While the hearts of these people were in the right place, their heads were not, and they were reacting against psychoanalysis, which suggested that the analyst said little or nothing, hence abstain from any expression of his/her own thoughts and feelings as well as Carl Rogers’ unconditional positive regard.

By the way, I could turn this story around and suggest that it was formerly bad for me to be so outspoken, but that begs the question. Yes, it was not exactly good for me to say everything I thought and felt, but it was something I needed to do because that is who I was, namely an outgoing, expressive person. I do not look at those years of being outspoken as being wrong, just lacking in wisdom and understanding. But there is the real opposite:

Formerly good for me, now bad for me

All “good for me; bad for me” categories can be of people, places, property, or experience. Allow me to briefly say that you can have a friend who is good for you and later bad for you even if s/he doesn’t change. Perhaps you just outgrow the person, or the person finds someone else who is better for him than you are. While painful, it is important to allow friendships…and family relationships…to be good at one time and then not be good at another time. The discovery that a person, even a very good person, someone who might have been a good friend or a valued family member, is no longer good for you…is hard to feel, hard to accept, and hard to know how to handle. I see many such situations in my office, two today where people moved family members into their homes and now resent these family members. At other times, a marriage has been very good but is not very bad, or perhaps somewhere in between.

Aside from people being good…and then being “bad for you” there can also be places, property, or experiences. Maybe the house you live in is no longer good for you, maybe the car you have loved for many years is no longer good for you, or the books you treasure. Experiences that used to be good but no longer are might simply be those of youth that no longer profit you as an adult, or that some experience in life has superseded one that used to be top on the list.

If you  find something that was good but no longer is good, you need to admit to that fact, then accept that fact, feel through the possible change in your life, and then feel the sadness of loss that always occurs when you choose to give something up that has nostalgic value, whether people, places, property, or experiences. Allow yourself to feel, accept your feelings, feel your feelings, and then take action. Most people fail in one of these elements. Frequently, people fail to take action because they don’t want to lose somethings (person, place, thing, or experience) that used to be good for them. Just as frequently, people can take action too quickly not having truly thought through and felt through the change of “good for me” to “bad for me.”

Maybe getting drunk was good for you, or being promiscuous, or even lying. Yes, all seem bad, but that is not the case. I could make a good case that all of these experiences could actually be good for people at one time, but I will defer that discussion while noting that many people have found such things to no longer be good for them. You might note, however, that I am subtly suggesting that there is very little that is intrinsically bad, but again, this is beyond the scope of the present discussion.

Formerly bad for me, now good for me

Let’s talk onions: used to hate them; now I love them. Used to love the Gophers when I lived in MN as a kid; now I live in WI and love the Badgers. Used to be bad for me to keep my mouth shut; now I find it a pleasant experience. There are lots of things, many of them childhood dislikes, that now are things that we like. But all of these are in the relatively mild/moderate “bad for me” that are now in the mild/moderate “good for me” category. It’s not terribly important for me to eat onions and enjoy the Badgers. The dial on the spectrum of good for me/bad for me has just shifted from one side to the other. You might think of things, often trivial, that used to be bad for you that are now good for you.

More important than onions and football teams could be people, places, and experiences. Consider someone in your past, perhaps a family member, maybe even an extended family member, a classmate or a workmate whom you really didn’t like. It might not matter why you didn’t like this person, but it is important that such a person was not good for you, or even was quite bad for you. You might think that your previous feelings about this person were “wrong” or that you were immature or something. I suggest that you simply admit that somebody in your past life was “just not good for you” and leave it at that while sequentially seeing that you now value this person and see that s/he is largely good for you.

In addition to things like onions and sports teams on the one hand, and people on the other, you might see that certain places or experiences might have moved from the “bad for me” side of the spectrum to the “good for me” side. I have replaced my three-times a week basketball playing, now eliminated due to the Covid phenomenon, with running. There was a time that running was mildly good for me, and then basketball replaced it to such a degree that I never ran. Even when I tried to run, I didn’t like it: it was mildly bad for me. Now, I run two or three times a week and find that running has barely crossed over to the “good for me” side of the spectrum. Our grandson lived with us recently for three months and pretty much hated the hiking and walking that Deb and I do pretty regularly. The needle moved quite a bit towards “good for me” evidenced by his walking on his own several times during his last few weeks with us.

Liking and not liking

I want to make a subtle distinction between “liking” and things that are good for me or bad for me. Such “things” could be person, place, experience, or something physical. There are roughly two categories in this discussion:

  • Things that I don’t like that are actually good for me
  • Things that I do like that are actually bad for me.

You probably immediately see the similarity to something that was once good for me but now bad for me, or something that was once bad for me but now good for me. I choose to distinguish the “liking” from “good for me” in order to make sense of many things in life that cannot wholly be described as good or bad.

There are, most importantly, some people that I don’t particularly like but see that they are actually good for me. Consider someone who you really don’t like, perhaps a political figure, a family member, or a friend who also is a good person in some way. Such a person might even be helpful to you in some way. But you just don’t like her. I think it is important to admit to you feelings of not liking this person while paradoxically seeing that this person is good for you in some way. Dentists come to mind. Who in their right mind “likes” a guy who digs into your mouth with nasty tools? The dentist chair could also be a “place” that you don’t like, and certainly don’t like the experience of a root canal while also seeing that the dentist, the chair, the tools, and the experience is good for you.

Consider the people in your life whom you respect, even love, but don’t like. They might be good for you, but you just don’t like them. Likewise, there may be experiences, places, or physical objects that you don’t like but see as essentially good for you. Who likes taxes? But they are eventually good for us, right? At least for the most part.

The other side of this discussion is something (person, place, experience, or thing) that you like but is bad for you. Certainly, all addictions fall into this category, whether addictions that are chemical or behavioral. It is hard for me to understand why people like sitting in front of a slot machine putting pennies or dollars into the machine for hours at a time while simultaneously knowing that they will most certainly lose more than they win. Gamblers just like gambling. I like sugar, God forgive me. I eat some kind of really-bad-for-you sugar just about every day despite knowing that sugar, at least refined sugar is bad for me. Additionally, I know that if I am ever to give up my sugar addiction, I have to start by admitting that I like sugar.

Not important

Certainly, you have wondered if there are things (people, places, experiences, or physical things) that don’t exactly fit on either side of the spectrum. I call these things “not important.” Consider things that are not important in your life. I hear from most people that the current political disaster in our country causes them much grief, and consequently, these people find that politics are very important. I also find people who simply don’t care about politics for some reason. I care deeply. There is nothing wrong with someone not caring. I care about psychology, theology, history, and culture, but many people don’t care about such things. A mother who is caring for a challenging child doesn’t even have the time to read, much less care about politics, nor does the nuclear scientist who works 12 hours a day looking for a way to control fusion.

In your regular life, there are many things that fall into the “don’t care” category. Certainly, this is true. I would simply caution you to know that if you are with a person, in a situation, in a place, or otherwise with something that is not important, you might stay too long there and find that the “don’t care” moved into the “not good for me” category.

Next week (?): Good for Me; Bad for You. And Bad for Me; Good for You.” These are real challenges and the heart of successful (and unsuccessful) relationships.