The Fault in our Everything

he asked everyone who thought that a thousand pounds of rocks to raise their hands

then he asked everyone who thought that a thousand pounds of feathers raised more to raise their hands

there was this kid, kyle, who didn’t raise his hand for either. i remember looking at kyle in confusion, because he always participated during math, and the teacher asked him, “why didn’t you raise your hand?” 

and he answered, “neither is heavier. they weigh they same - they’re both a thousand pounds.” 

kyle was a smart kid

the teacher goes “exactly! the rest of you weren’t actively thinking about the question.” 

when i was in the second year of my first adult job after college, we did a series team building exercise with my whole department and they were conducted by this outside consultant that did this for a living. 

she put us into two groups and gave each group a different colored bag of puzzle pieces and put us on opposite sides of the room and started the timer. we were racing to complete the puzzle first, but we realized we were missing several pieces and had pieces we couldn’t make fit. the other group realized the same and it turns out we had to swap pieces to complete our puzzles, or work together, as she put it. 

“i never told you that you couldn’t work together,” she said smugly. “you decided that because you were in different groups, that meant you were competing.” 

and i was seven years old again, being tricked 

i understand what these people were trying to do. but. 

my teacher asks me a question giving me two options. why would i assume there’s a third? shouldn’t i trust my teacher if he tells me that there are two options, that one of them is correct? in any other situation, going “neither” to a question would be considered backtalk, and get you in trouble

we did not naturally come from two different groups and refuse to work together - we were put there, artificially, and then given a task that we had no reason to believe we needed to do together. and then when we saw there was a need, we did! what was proven here, exactly?

if you set someone up to fail, and then they do, considering that failure a commentary on the human condition is just self serving

these instances teach important lessons, but not necessarily the ones i think they wanted to

question authority

make sure you’re not being set up for failure by people who have a vested interest in that failure 

“active reading” and “working together” are fine enough lessons, i guess, but the most important one is this:

yeah I found the lessons themselves a little manipulative/eye roll inducing, and mostly ineffective, and there’s probably some nuanced conversation to be had there, but the point of this post is actually me having the same reaction to this at twenty three as I did as seven which is:

and the second that clever seven year old kid notices the teacher make a mistake and decides to exercise the lesson she so oh-helpfully taught him, and tries to correct her on her mistake, what are the chances he’ll get scolded for interrupting, or being a smart alec, or get told he’s wrong?

when an employee figures out a more efficient or less physically taxing way of executing a task that doesn’t break rules but isn’t how they were taught by their manager/boss, what are the chances they’ll get scolded for not doing their job properly?

Ya know what was trending for days at number 1 right before Goncharov? Warrior Nun. A show where two young women who are polar opposites meet and are forced to spend time together due to external circumstances (demons + the church) and who become very close friends and whose relationship is showered with more than some hints of romantic tension, and who eventually confess their love for one another.

So if you’re following the trajectory of this site, the priorities of its users goes:

WLW Ship -> group daydream about homoeroticism in fictional film -> WLW Ship

For context here is a picture

I lived in Alaska for two years and I will never get over the sheer overwhelming bigness of it. 

Nights where the sky is clear you can see clusters of stars or the Northern Lights dancing. When the lights are rippling especially strong and fast you can hear a static crackle in the air. When the moon is out after it’s snowed, you don’t need flashlights to see. Everything glows and glimmers like polished quartz.  

But when the sky is clouded over so you can’t see the stars, you can kind of almost sense the mountains towering over you and helping to block out the light, these giant monoliths acting like this void darker than your soul. I’ve never experience night like Alaska night. 

Everything is big, the mountains, the sky, the valleys. 

you've put so much effort into this life, and that deserves praise. even though many of the things you had to work through should have never happened to you. you did it. you're here. you're right here. and you don't have to go anywhere.