Of Time and Parrots

It's been a while, huh?

Lots of stuff going on. As usual. Life is sort of like that you know. Good stuff, bad stuff, mundane stuff. All being lost to the relentless pressing of time. It's okay though. I have a wealth of things now that I could talk about and record. But as it stands, what I really want to talk about is parrots.

This weekend I had a revelation, which was not entirely new to me, but refreshed rather, that I am in many ways a parrot towards people I interact with.

I relate this to the golden rule. I don't know why but the golden rule is the foundation of my interactions. I use someone else's behavior as a method of judging my own response or reaction towards that person. If you show up late to my house without a good reason or excuse? Then I feel validated in showing up late to your house without a good reason or excuse. If you bring wine or a gift to my house, then I will bring wine or a gift to your house. If you show up to my stuff, I'll show up to your stuff. You get the idea.

The thing is, and was pointed out to me over the weekend, this way of interacting has a tendency to predetermine my actions without me perhaps considering what I want my actions to be instead. In fact, what I want is very hard to pinpoint. My actions frequently seem to me to be already decided based on what someone else did first.

And maybe this isn't so great.

It all makes sense really. I remember talking to the therapist about how it's hard for me to verbalize or acknowledge sometimes things that I want. Things I want seem to end up being consequences of other actions, not generated from my own place of independence.

I feel like this is something I need to work on, though I'm not one hundred percent sure about how to go about it. It's really second nature to me, this parroting thing. It's not like I think about it, it's not something present in my mind. It's more like, when I sit down to actually describe my rationale for behaving a certain way, it often comes down to parroting and not grounded in what I desire or want. Not that what I want or desire is necessarily anything different, but I'm not even sure I can discern the difference at this point.

Weird.