Chaotic NO

Pretty dorky rule-of-thumb to adopt at the age of 50, but I've decided to stay far away from anything but purely cursory interactions with anyone whose moral alignment is or seems to be chaotic neutral or chaotic evil or (maybe) even chaotic good. 

I don't want to deal with people who don't have (or aren't working towards having) a solid good-hearted system for calibrating their instruments for going through life, making decisions, coping & relating to others.

Accept & appreciate & be able to laugh at the chaos inherent in life, sure. ACT chaotic? Intentionally? NO. Especially if you're the kind of asshole who *actually* switches to LAWFUL EVIL when you have a narcissistic resentment or sense of entitlement. 

Like if you go around maniacally cackling with glee at all the chaos until something happens that inconveniences YOU or threatens YOUR ego and suddenly you've got a watertight step-by-step game plan for revenge that you throw all your energy into ... you're a by-the-book shithole.

Deleted the above from Twitter and moved over here for more careful thought and development / less potential for misinterpretation or thoughtless harm.

It's weird how this blog/site has become my go-to for thoughtful quietly-public instrument-calibration. To observe that I don't want to bitch idly ... I actually want things to be better. *I* want to be better.

Making time and space for bitching and keeping it corralled here means I'm not committing to it. When I let it go it's not just for "catharsis" (doesn't work / is just practicing being angry/bitchy), but to be mindful and make time to carefully assess, get the right grip on, and pull out the problems at their roots. Because lots of these problems are rooted IN ME. In MY behavior.

I believe a lot of the world's biggest and most famous bitches (take good old Freddy Neitzsche, for example) were the most sensitive and biggest IDEALISTS whose stomachs were turned by other people not conforming to their ideals of how people "should" be, turning them to bitter, sad-ass cynicism.

I want to practice accepting how people just ARE, and focus on changing my*self* (without trying to change others who don't want to change or even recognize anything about themselves or their behavior might need a tune-up). Part of this means taking what I've learned and experienced over the past fifty years and recognizing I am no longer curious about certain kinds of people. I have had enough entanglements, enmeshments, relationships and exchanges with all kinds of people. I am not going to roll myself out hoping someone will walk over me when our grand adventures cross paths and in so doing stumble onto their path of personal growth while I indulge my curiosity (and other needs and desires I can satisfy in healthier ways). Those people? I am learning they will probably only grow when people pull the rug out from under them enough times that they start to notice other people aren't actually just on this planet to roll out the red carpet for them. 

I'm getting old. So is my wife. There is no longer a payoff to mistakenly investing trust, time, attention, money or energy in people who only have clear visions of chaos, self-service, resentment, and revenge. It is too costly to be loving and generous with people who take others for granted as mere cogs in a giant game where they believe themselves always deserving of the win and entitled to every cache of good fortune found, and someone else always to blame and targeted for put-downs and punishment when they lose.

I'm getting a better handle on my instrument panel and gauges, and what values I want to calibrate mine to. It is not safe to fly with or around people who have none of their own to navigate by and are so blinded by their own bullshit that they don't know when to ground themselves.