Hello My Love,
Sure, it helps to know that my behavior directly impacts outcomes for you, but at the end of the day, we're both individually responsible for our character; and our character drives our behavior. So whenever we've been frustrated in the past with how we've treated each other in the relationship, it's been less about coherence as a team and more about our character.
As I've thought about the patches of friction we've hit, along with my role in them, I've found that I'm very deliberate about my character but I haven't shared that thoughtfulness with you. Consequently, I've been missing the chance share one of my greatest strengths with you. I think that's my work now- to share the vulnerability behind my personal development. Not to imply that you need the same type of personal development as me, but I'd appreciate you indulging my effort.
Trying to explain the winding path that's been my personal evolution is the best way for me to crystallize the value behind my work. Work that all started with me wrestling with the idea of rigidity behind character. As I was originally trying to establish a character that I found was worth sticking to, I couldn't bring myself to face the feeling of permanence. It felt impossible to settle on traits that I would be bound to forever.
Under the imposition of permanence, I began to challenge the very idea of people even having traits. After all, people are exceedingly complex and I've found that trying to put labels on people seems to leave me with a two-dimensional, colorless image of a complex, three-dimension landscape. Alas, humans communicate with labels. Even when we communicate with ourselves, we need constructs to give structure to a durable version of our self image.
If we don't have durability and at least some rigidity behind who we are, then we're an ever-shifting abstraction that's hard to know. Not just hard to know, but also hard to love, as it's hard for anyone to direct love at someone that's incomprehensible. Unsurprisingly, people rely on repeatability to create trust and understanding. Actually, the two almost always go hand-in-hand. It's why people who are 'two-faced' are hard to trust- you just never know what you're getting.
Yet, we still have this lingering question of 'how do we avoid locking ourselves into permanence that we plan on evolving out of as we grow?'. In response, I've found that, in general- it's about agreeing to traits, and sticking to them, while looking forward to evolution, but then sticking to the changes from that evolution. Of course, there's a balance to changing and persisting. If you change too much, then it's much harder to trust you, but if you don't change enough, then your growth stagnates.
To achieve this balance, I've found that I've focused less on traits and more on principles. Principles are more general than traits, so they allow for some flexibility in the set of traits that make up your character. For instance, one of my core principles is to treat people how I think they want to be treated. And within that principle, I've focused on different traits at different times like being kind or empathetic. Regardless, staying true to the principle ends up leaning on an aggregate of different traits, hopefully all working in concert to help my character adhere to the principle.
At a point, I feel like I've settled on a set of principles that have been effective guides for my character. Generally, I've picked principles that feel good to stick to based on the outcomes. So while that certainly doesn't mean the principles are easy to stick to, it does mean they're worthwhile. Predictably, principles are worthwhile because they result in outcomes that are positive for ourselves and others. A relationship that's very close to causal, as we give to others what we have to give them from inside ourselves. In other words, if we consistently love and trust ourselves, then we consistently love and trust others.
Of course, deciding on worthy principles is just a part of the equation, where the other major part is actually having the Discipline to stick to them. To do so, we have to deeply believe that the principles persistently deliver the best outcomes. A belief that requires numerous iterations of experience and analysis to arrive at the requisite level of confidence. Anything but that high confidence will leave us sticking to the easiest behavior instead of the behavior that adheres to the principles that make up our character.
With consistent character,
Integrity