Must be something built into the human race, for people to test the patience of new parents and, thereby, strengthen it so that we have more patience for our children and our marital/relationship adventures, as we add “mother and “father” to our list of roles.  Maybe it keeps us a calm when our daughter pukes all over herself, highchair and floor or when she gets up when we’re going to bed and stays up until 2 a.m. (like last night!).

Empathy!  Parents gossip about one another, even new parents.  I’ve repeated the story about someone I know who loudly won’t give his/her kids candy or sweets but has given him/her both alcohol and caffeine in my presence.  I even thought some other people were crazy for bragging about their baby sleeping through the night at six weeks (holy shit!) when it was precisely because this kid was out with his/her parents until midnight regularly and that “sleeping through the night” to them meant that said baby would sleep from 1 a.m. when they got home until around 6 a.m. when they got up for work.

And this was before I was a parent!  I find myself empathizing with people whom I’ve judged and/or gossiped about because I know people are judging Mama and I, are analyzing our choices, etc.  I know because I can “tell” and because people people tell us and/or judge us to our freakin faces!  “You read too much,” is a nice one, complete with implied resentment over our massive [over] educations.  “That’s not what I did; I did X,” is another one, wherein you have to make people feel better because they made/make different choices than you did/do, even when your kids are close in age.  “You need a car,” is one I’m going to start peeing on people’s shoes over, along with, “What are you going to do when/if she wants to eat meat?”  “Sorry you feel guilty for the 7-passenger SUV; that’s your problem,” I feel like yelling.  And I want to shake people by the shoulders to force them to tell me the last time I forced vegetarianism on anyone who has a choice.

My point?  I find it easier to understand being on the receiving end of assholery these days.  And more patience.  But I wish people wouldn’t reiterate it all so damned much.

I’ve noticed that I’ve been kind of a Dee I See Kay lately, at least on my blog. I’ve been reacting strongly to strong stimuli, but I’ll not cop to over-reacting. I have grown exceedingly impatient with people’s dismissals of things they don’t agree with. Isn’t that what I do?

No, it is not. Thought-through reactions and gut reactions are not the same thing. While one may certainly disagree with someone and do it strongly, I don’t think one could claim that anyone can type fast enough for long blog posts that get thought about before being typed up, revised before and after being published and sometimes sit in the que while I make sure I still want to publish them count as gut reactions. The whole point of a gut reaction is that it comes from somewhere else than our rational brains.

Having a gut reaction like, “You’re wrong,” or, “I disagree with that,” or, “No!” to something that is actually thought-through is irrational and foolish.

And it’s insulting. Say that Julie tells Billy that she’s upset with the way that he, I don’t know, gives in to his controlling best friend too much. Julie thinks it through, formulates it and expresses it as clearly as she can. Billy gets mad at being told he’s wrong, and he reacts with a, “Fuck you! You’re a bitch!” Gut reactions to reason are something animals can do, you know.

Someone I know and see every single day (!) likes to tell me that “it’s hard to disagree with [me]“. I try to shut up if I haven’t thought yet. I try. I often fail. Reactions that pass from the outside world right back out without running through the filter of our rational faculties are unintelligent. Am I claiming to be smarter than my just-as-educated interlocutor? Certainly not. Am I claiming to put more….consideration into my “position” than gut reactions to the contrary? Yes.  They could, too, but they don’t.

And that’s what’s so fucking frustrating about semi-universal gut reactions. While I know some backward people (SHIT!), for the most part, the people that surround me personally are intelligent. So when we react stupidly, it’s frustrating precisely because we’re not stupid — we could and should do better! And I’m sure I do it, too, because I am a stupid ass and can fall into the same stupid patterns of behavior as everyone else, likely more so if you really wanna know. I’m not claiming to be perfect. Ask my wife; I can be a huge asshole and often. Seriously. As if you haven’t picked up on that already.

Thinking about one’s response/reaction, well, that’s not a gut reaction. When people disagree with us intelligently, we might see that we’re wrong and grow. Or, they might. Gut reactions don’t help anyone, not even the reactor. We just spread stupidity.