🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
I always feel better when I have options instead of being locked into one course of action. Some people are more comfortable in a passive role and its attendant lack of responsibility. That feels to me like coercion, though, and it doesn’t sit well with me. I read a long time ago that in dealing with small children, especially in the “terrible twos” phase, that offering such a child a choice between two options will often take all of the aggression out of their obstinate objections. I have been wondering, lately, how different I really am from the child I once was.
Have I only found more complicated ways to explain that same basic psychology? How easy is it to manipulate me by simply giving me a choice of options, even when I didn’t want any of the preferred selections to begin with? This is one of the things that has been occurring because I was so engrossed in my immediate circumstances that I lacked the focus to analyze my decisions. I responded emotionally in that immersion in immediacy, and that definitely made it easier to manipulate me. That means it is time for a reset.
Well, that is what I did: Reset. For a long time I did not have a prison job assignment. I never really desired one but I became mindlessly trapped in the vying for such a position that it became all consuming. I was so trapped in the mindset of chasing the status attached to certain positions that I lost my sense of direction. If I do not understand my own motivations, I am off balance. Forget their money and their status. I will find my own way to either, if I decide it is important. I can no longer claim to reject their system while still abiding by their standards.
Fuck it all! Back into the jungle with a machete to find my own path. Perhaps as a refocusing point I will look at using this system to my advantage like it has used me for its ends for so long.