There's no such thing as white privilege, there is however legacy privilege

'White' is short hand for 'had a better past'.

Racism by definition is to classify or negatively assign traits from the collective regardless of if it applies to the individual.

When you talk about any privilege, you're saying 'because of your race, class you are where you are' that's not correct, because of your past you are in part where you are. And statistically men, and white have occupied what the western world would call 'success'.
The problem with this game everyone seems to be playing looking and gender and skin is it's a game no one can win...
Women need more rights to make up for man's dominance... ok, but if that's the game, then black people need more rights against the white woman...
Then trans people need more rights against black women
Then a disabled trans black woman needs more rights

And we haven't even touched on income, home life, personal history... you just can't do this and win, it's a 'race' to see who has it worse...

What if you're a white man (image in your head) but is an eastern European person coming from communist torturer crimes where his whole family was killed verses say Serena Williams?
If the argument, it's the collective and collateral damage to individuals is the price of over equality... That is actually exactly what communism is built on!

So what do we do then? Let white men rule and everyone suffer? God no, treat everyone the individuals they are, and if it's in your nature to try the equality path, go for it, but don't attach it to gender or skin colour for goodness sake, there are so many more measurable things which matter so much... we can start with our childhood where we were all once at the mercy of people much more powerful and made choices we had no say over.

Read this... it's a start to a fairer, equal and happy society by empathising with each other's burdens.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/driven-distraction/201802/how-people-beat-the-odds-after-rough-childhood?

Regret a decision?

If you made a past choice which didn't work out - if you made the choice with all your knowledge at your disposal, it wasn't a foolish choice.

Suffering is optional!

I decided pain doesn't always equal harm, sometimes enduring pain can be for your good.

Quote by haruki murakami: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Life Balance

Take the good stuff in stride and enjoy it but not get too attached.
Take the bad stuff in stride as well. Develop serenity or peacefulness of mind that allows you to look at what happens in your life with a bit of detachment.

"American Smile"

"I'm a Russian native and we don't smile because back home it is considered fake to smile just for the sake of being polite / to please others / to look good etc. In our culture, you smile only when you truly are having a very happy moment. In Russia, "American smile" is another word to define a fake smile, the one you put on your face no matter how you truly feel at that moment. This is just one of those "cultural differences" that take time to get used to."

Accidental Relationship Sabotage

Why do people rush into marriage? Why do they rush into living together or rush to having a family?
Why do people hold off getting married, or moving in together,  why do people resist even being in a relationship in the first place?

The answer to both why we speed up and why we slow down is the same.  Fear.

The reason you avoid being close to someone is to avoid being hurt.
The reason you rush into commitments is because you're locking things down before that person can get away.

The same thing is going on in both situations,  we are trying to have power and control over over a situation to avoid possible pain.  The problem is "he who fears he shall suffer,  already suffers what he fears".
The problem is,  the more you focus on the fear and what you don't want to happen,  the more you feed the beast. It's like quicksand, the more you do to prevent the pain you're trying to avoid,  the faster it makes you sink into it.

I don't blame people for how they behave... If there was a countdown to putting your hand on a hot plate, in that time,  wouldn't you do actions to try and avoid that outcome?

The 'Biological Clock' Paradox

It's psychological, cyclical warfare: The older you get, the more pressure you feel to get married. The more pressure you feel, the more you lose focus on your relationship. The more focus you lose, the less likely it'll work out. Your relationship loses. Marriage loses. You lose. 

Regressive Feeling Revealing Progression

Instead of first,  wait last.
Instead of revealing feelings in the middle of them...  Process them and when their impact has died down reveal then,  even though we feel like blurting it out in the moment, we can still reveal and disclose things but not when they're going to cause more harm than good.

Sharing feels always helps with inner peace but can sometimes cause otter peace,  you can have both, just delay the sharing so the feelings become a story rather than a moment.

Scared of Failing?

"The fear of failure is emotional vanity"

So you failed... So what?... So what!

James Dyson had an idea inventing a bagless vacuum cleaner. He failed 5126 times.
5127 was not a failure, and that's the result we know.

No one really cares if you fail, fail to ultimately succeed!

Why don't you just leave the abusive relationship?

If you don't understand why someone doesn't leave an abusive or violent relationship, think about a workplace. Those company expected hours build up to the point of being illegal, poor conditions,  not appreciated,  blamed for things going wrong, it stresses you out, you try really hard,  you hope it gets better, when you get tried of being treated this way for a while you stand up for yourself but then get punished even more, it seems like they're out to get you,  they make life difficult trying to try and make you leave,  but you try even harder to win their favor OR you become a hollow shell just drifting - either way,  you haven't taken the hint, so they find reasons to build a case against you until either you take the hint or they kick you out on your arse.

So why didn't you just leave before it all started? It never started and it never stopped,  it not easy to walk away from something when you feel you reply on it so much,  when you feel like tomorrow will be different, when you feel like you can fix the problem or it will just fix itself over time.  Yes some people know their worth and walk at the sign of trouble,  but for the rest of us,  we stay in that crappy job,  sometimes we put up with it our whole lives or go from bad job to bad job letting history repeat. It's a paradoxical abusive relationship,  like fascism is to communism.

So before you judge someone for not walking away from an abusive relationship, why didn't you walk away from your abusive relationship?

Anything which involves giving up a piece of your identity is one of the hardest things to do,  and when we have the ability to rationalize almost anything we want to, we'll always find a reason why it's worth living in hell so we don't have to say goodbye to a piece of ourselves.

"People can't give you what they don't have"

A couple of interesting quotes that got me thinking...

"People can't give you what they don't have"

How many times do we want something and want someone to give it to us when deep down we know they can't - like someone admitting they are wrong but they will never have the ability to see that,  or a mother wanting their child to be super grateful for the sacrifices she made,  but they'll never reach that realisation to the degree the mother wants, or the daughter wanting a close relationship to the astranged father when he's never had a healthy relationship in his life, or a woman who has been abused by a man and wants her partner to give back what she's lost...  Or maybe a husband wants his wife to understand him more, but she is who she is and would have to change who she is to understand or 'get him' more... Which leads me to an interesting second quote...
Antero Alli, an obscure author, wrote, “communication is only possible between equals"
Do you agree? I try to learn how to think dumber so I can communicate with 'dumb' people...This quote sums up what I am trying to do,  I was trying to be like the person I wanted to communicate with... Maybe that's why so few can communicate in a relationship, many seem unbalanced,  which we jokingly describe as 'who wears the pants' with that quote alone you are saying you are not equal,  one has power while the other follows... Maybe it's time to be equal,  and if you can't, try to be equal in the moment...

Bad Day, Just Because

Some days aren't very good, and sometimes there's no reason why they should be worse than any other day...  Why? Why do we need quantifiable events to make ourselves feel better about feeling bad? If there were no events to justify having a bad day,  then couldn't you argue that also events can't get you out of your bad day too? So what should you do? Ride it out? Talk about it? Avoid it? Or just abandon the day and start again tomorrow? Is there a chance something quantifiable has happened to make you have a bad day,  but it didn't register,  you didn't notice,  or it's a bigger deal to you than you give it credit for? I guess we need these days to help us not be complacent, keep us humble and reflective, to remind ourselves how good it feels to feel good.

"I'll take what you give me."

"I'll take what you give me."

What do we 'give' people?  Do we realise it?  Would it explain why you have the same problems with people?  Would it explain why your relationships have the same patterns? Would it explain things you've never been able to explain?

Your childhood determines your love life later on.

From an article 'do opposites attract?' for me this direct question isn't as relevant as the other info it provides...  Here's some exerts I thought most relevant and eye opening to ourselves and our romantic choices...

Hudson and Fraley took their investigation an intriguing step further. Given that attachment fundamentally shapes how people function in romantic relationships, they wanted to test whether adult attachment style influences the association between partner similarity and relationship satisfaction. (The participants also completed an attachment questionnaire.)

Attachment develops from the relationship between infants and their caregiver, with particular respect to responsiveness and availability. The effects of early attachment are far-reaching, establishing how we perceive ourselves and others as we grow into adults. In broad terms, individuals who experience loving and consistent early caregiving developsecure attachment, while those who receive harsh and/or inconsistent treatment from their early caregivers develop insecure attachment.

****Insecure attachment breaks down into two types:

Those who are high on attachmentavoidance believe that others will not respond to their needs, and correspondingly have a negative view of others. They tend to avoid intimacy, and are ill at ease when they feel their partner is too close.Those who are high on attachment anxietyare preoccupied with how available others are, and have a negative view of themselves. They seek out intimacy and contact with others, and can often be cloying or “needy” in their relationships.

(Securely attached people are low on attachment avoidance and anxiety, and demonstrate higher levels of adjustment in their relationships.)

The results were striking. Highly avoidantpeople seemed to be most satisfied with their relationships when the personalities of the partners were moderately similar. The researchers interpret this finding as possibly reflecting a level of “counter-dependence” with which avoidant people are comfortable. Put another way, an optimal balance of similarities and differences may help avoidant people keep intimacy at bay.

But for highly anxious people, it was a different story. They experience greater levels of relationship satisfaction with partners who are either highly similar or dissimilar to them. Hudson and Fraley speculate that similarity offers anxious people the feeling of “oneness” that they crave with their significant others, while dissimilarity may encourage “reliant dependence” on their partners. For the anxiously attached, having a dissimilar partner may be a way to compensate for one's own shortcoming, say the researchers.

Read full article
http://psychologytoday.com/blog/head-games/201412/do-opposites-really-attract-its-complicated?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost

I Understand That I Don't Understand

If there is something you don't get,  you don't understand,  then you don't get it and don't understand.

http://mobile.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/dramatic-moment-miracle-baby-was-pulled-from-storm-drain-after-surviving-five-days/story-fnii5s3x-1227132456229

I'm reading this article and I'm not understanding why the mother did what she did...  Then I realised,  I don't understand because I don't understand...  Anything that happens obviously happened and everything happens for a reason regardless of if we understand or not... We will never be inside the minds of these people and few have the ability to explain why,  and even if they do,  that doesn't mean we will accept what they have to say... But once again that doesn't change that it happened and it happened for a reason regardless if we understand why,  or we don't.