swiftdrifter4 said:I wasn't sure if this belongs under spirituality or psychology—if it needs to be moved to psychology, feel free to relocate it.
It hit me recently just how narrow most people's perspectives are when they face life events. They tend to view everything through this incredibly tiny lens, immediately labeling situations as strictly "good" or "bad." Take infidelity, for example. Most people see being cheated on as an absolute disaster—a total negative. They spend their time cursing their partner and feeling like they wasted years of their life on someone who didn't value them. It becomes this constant, looping thought in their head. It’s usually only much later, after some time has passed, that their perspective actually widens. They might eventually see that betrayal as the opening they needed to find someone actually worth their time. Or maybe they realize it’s a chance to finally focus on themselves—picking up a new hobby or developing a skill they ignored for years. You could apply this to pretty much any situation, whether it seems major or minor (though "major" is always a matter of opinion). You never truly know where certain turns or decisions will lead you... yet people act like they "know" exactly what a situation means for them right from the start.
What do you all think is the reason for this?
For someone who looks at the world through a lens similar to "mom"—basically seeing everything through a constructive filter (like picking a specific shade from a palette of vibes we've all seen before)—that opening statement really plants some seeds in the mind.
It's a constant, pretty steady battle—honestly, a fight against oneself that's been going on since the dawn of reason.
I can picture it (from experience): spending time with someone, falling in love, getting to know them, then truly loving them. You trust. You let go. And then comes the breakup (though I haven't hit that part yet).
Why not see the "silver lining" in a breakup?
My guess? It would feel like betraying yourself. In that clash between logic, emotion, morals, desires, and society, maybe even a dark word—a concept like "psychopathy"—would echo when trying to see the "big picture" outside the whirlwind of messy feelings.
Only a psychopath could just casually spot the bright side of a bad situation, right?
Personally, I don't agree, but look—society has these quiet little taboos that are hard to talk about. Like love. We talk a lot about "😍 love," but real love? Not so much.
Wrapped up in guilt, shame, anger, and pride—and reflected back by society during those interactions—it's incredibly hard for an individual to actually see themselves, even though they're the center of this whole emotional drama. They feel they *have* to suffer, they *have* to show they loved, they *have* to be the victim—and the whole world needs to witness it (regardless of whether anyone actually cares).
The real struggle is with yourself—letting go of that person, letting go of the time spent together. It's admitting that idealism doesn't exist in a permanent state. Logic. Acceptance. Seeing yourself outside of that black-and-white idealism. Moving on.
Whenever I enter any kind of relationship—doesn't have to be romantic—humanity (including my own) is automatically "factored in," which means the potential for "wasting time" is always there. I accept that the second I start talking to another living being. No illusions, and I choose how I spend my time.
Not every breakup or betrayal is the same, and people don't feel them all equally. A betrayal in a one or two-year relationship would be "nothing" to me emotionally compared to being cheated on after, say, 11 years. After 11 years of deep connection in a relationship that broke down gender stereotypes from day one, a betrayal would carry such weight that I wouldn't be able to call my partner an "idiot" or someone I just "wasted time on" while trying to shovel off the tiny bit of responsibility left on my shoulders.
But then again, maybe only psychopaths have that kind of steady logic and calm reason during life's storms. Right?
Maybe not.
I see a thousand different options "constantly and always." In my head, there isn't really a "good vs. bad" when it comes to labeling things. Sure, there's good and bad. (Good = constructive/quality; bad... I haven't figured that one out yet.)
Realizing "how things actually are" has slapped me pretty hard in the past; it was tough to swallow, and it totally shook my world.
It's complicated to separate yourself from your current mood, which you need to do if you want to see things from different angles. Once I've "processed" the emotional part, I move on to the rational part. That's why I don't make
important decisions while I'm still riding an emotional wave. There's a time for everything, and for me, the emotional component acts more like a scent that rounds out the picture once the logic is set. I don't always have the same amount of time to process emotions, so sometimes I just "vent" it out, or if I can't, I push it aside for a moment just so I can think straight. I come back to it later—you shouldn't suppress things long-term. Besides, in any rational setup, you have to include the emotion, and to truly account for it, you have to actually feel it. Even though many people "successfully" breeze through that process by guessing while running at full speed, for me and the way I'm wired, that just doesn't work.
Eventually, you learn how to tell yourself "enough" and just ruthlessly start mapping out your future. Honestly, it’s not like we have endless options anyway.
I actually used to wonder if I was a total sociopath because of how I operate. While other, "tougher" people around me are falling apart in real-time, my brain is just cruising along at sixty miles per hour. I deal with the breakdown later—on my own terms.
Sure, there are a thousand paths, but that just means there are three times as many questions. The more answers you hunt down, the fewer unknowns you have, which narrows the field. Once I’ve trimmed the list down to a few contenders, I decide based on "harmony." To me, harmony is like wine tasting. It’s about blending logic, emotion, and gut feeling into one smooth, full-bodied experience—that final sensation. Not every option has the same flavor.
Luckily for me and everyone else, I'm better at making decisions than I am at tasting fine wine.
I cap the whole process at two days max. Though, most of the time, I wrap it up in a few hours. During that window, from a purely rational standpoint—not an emotional one—I connect the "good" and the "bad." This applies to any process, really, not just decision-making. Morals, responsibility, right vs. wrong... those things have been tuned to my specific frequency in the background for a long time now. Their "offspring" are reason and emotion (which, by the way, are just reflections of how mature the whole system is—they work together, they aren't in a hierarchy).
Do I know exactly where a choice will lead? Of course not. But I can make an educated guess where it’ll take me (those kinds of assumptions are just sub-options within the main options 🤣 ). As far as I'm concerned, that’s plenty of control (and responsibility) to have in my hands.
Control—aka suppressing fear—is one of the big reasons why people think they "know" exactly what a situation means for them.
DecemberFlower, given all your thoughts here and on psychology, you could have definitely expanded on this a bit more. The brevity and compactness of the mix definitely makes you want to search for... another perspective to help flesh things out.
So, what actually interests you?
Lately, I've been getting into cooking. In that sense, cooking has its own process that you can't really shortcut (drastically) or "turn off"—you can only delay it.
Humans are the same way. Unless you're a sociopath, in which case certain steps are just skipped entirely.
For anyone else, trying to fake that kind of skipping without actually doing the work would be (long-term) fatal for psychological growth.
Same here, same there.
Basically, I have a lot of thoughts on why people avoid looking at multiple perspectives of the same situation all at once.
