Last night when unable to sleep I watched some stupid TV on Hulu, and stopped at one point to think about how calm I was. Distracted, without responsibility? Complacent. Maybe the Matrix analogy applies here, but it was interesting.

Tonight after a while doing a few bits on the Internet, I read, and stopped at one point to think about how much I was thinking (meta-awareness?) about all of the interesting projects that made me excited.

Earlier today I talked to M about stopping. I was pondering distraction, and the things I do when I’m bothered to find peace. Is it short term? Is it merely distraction to keep me from feeling? Does that mean some other day I’ll still have to deal with how I’m feeling and I’m only prolonging the inevitable that eventually puts people in situations like my father, unable to cope with life and using a constant stream of sports broadcasts to keep from from engaging himself?

I’ve been reading about awareness, mostly the science of it, lately. I noticed a differentiation at one point between compassion and empathy that put the former as feeling for others and the latter as understanding how they feel. Oh, Internet?

Empathy is the ability to share another person’s feelings and emotions as if they were your own.

Compassion is a feeling of pity, sympathy, and understanding for someone who is suffering.

I’m distracted by talking to T about bringing up that M I and I hung out tonight to someone responding, “Oh, I know.” Many memories of talking about this attitude, how to cope with it and nurture healing. Fucking identity. Or scenes. I recently read something about the body barrier, the mental notion that develops as to where we end and the rest of reality begins and I found it odd as I’ve always had a difficult time feeling that. On the other hand, my feelings have often dominated a part of me in which I’ve been struggling to accept that they aren’t as real as the seem. Which is to say that they’re some kind of construct that I can acknowledge and accept better than I do. I’ve been struggling a little with the “what happens if you explain love” dilemma as it relates to this. If I remove myself from my feelings, what is left of me? Probably I’m thinking too extreme, and I need to accept that acknowledging your thoughts and feelings, being aware of them being simply part of your brain, doesn’t make them any less you, or any less yours. It is less, I think, about saying “this is not me, this is my brain” and less about saying “this is my brain, and it is all okay.”

Most of what I read tonight touched on the social brain. Like how relating to others, by way of the mirror neuron system, allows us to analyze how they feel. Which in turn helps us to identify how we feel. More evidence about why we need people in our lives.

I’ve been thinking, see earlier post too, about the bizarreness of attachment, or envy. Something in the middle of all of that, I lack a way to label so simply. I’ve always had a bit of a jealousy problem that I usually keep internal, but this is outside of that. Of someone being valuable to you. When I think of friends and family, I know I value them and would be disappointed to lose them. Thinking about someone being so afraid of losing someone that they won’t allow themselves the vulnerability of attachment, I wonder what one would do to support them. The best I’ve come up with is to consistently reiterate that you’re there, and you’re not going anywhere, and over time allow trust to build in that as it is proven to be true.