Over the last week I’ve gotten really into Anok Kanojia.
Oh wait.
I had to look that up.
His name is actually Alok Kanojia.
Dr. Alok Kanojia.
He’s not a doctor doctor. He’s a psychiatrist doctor.
Not as bad as a doctor doctor but almost as bad.
But if I had know there were psychiatrists out there like Alok Kanojia I might’ve gone to one.
Instead of believing they were all apart of an evil plot to take a sane mind and make it insane.
This a second part to ambiguity.
Something that Dr. Alok Kanojia or, doctor K as he calls himself introduced me to.
The idea that flirting is meant to be ambiguous not obvious.
That fixed my brain.
Flirting is something I’ve always been very, very bad at.
Because I was intensely shy. I was so shy I got in trouble for it. All of my teachers and coaches would call up my mom and tell her I was ‘too timid’.
It was such a hindrance that at twelve years old I started auditioning for my local theater just trying to shock myself out of it.
Theater did help a bit. I became less offensive.
Most people find timidity very offensive.
You probably read that and thought oh that’s weird, I don’t find it offensive.
Yes you do.
Even I do.
When I meet a new person that is blank and quiet and totally unresponsive to me even if I can tell they are ‘just shy’ I have to remind myself they are ‘just shy’ to keep myself from being offended.
A very shy person is unresponsive and their smiles are aggressive or defensive. Never warm.
Even I who lived as the insanely shy person now understand why people have trouble tolerating an insanely shy person.
Auditioning for theater did not help me get over my shyness.
Getting a little part and rehearsing with people helped me immensely.
I did get over the intensity of it.
I was still awkward. But people don’t really mind a little awkward. I was able to talk and laugh and make people feel liked and welcomed. That’s all that really mattered.
But then.
Then I started to get interested in men. And I completely relapsed into being totally mute and immobile.
Men were something I really wanted. I wanted to get one very badly.
So I worked very, very hard to express myself.
To force myself to show interest in the men I was attracted to.
It was very exhausting.
And it did not get me anywhere.
I did not do well with dating.
Dr. Andrew Huberman (I think he is a doctor doctor, but a professor doctor doctor so it’s okay) was one of the first YouTube people I started watching.
He was the professor I never had. (Because I never went to college. And I did terrible with teachers in school) he made me start to like professors and opened me up a bit to subject matters I used to think were stupid.
So I’ve watched him pretty regularly for quite a few years.
His interview with Dr. Kanojia was one of the most mind altering episodes I’ve ever watched.
I felt a weight fall off my mind.
Like in Naruto when Rock Lee removes his ankle weights and suddenly he can move at his real speed.
That’s how I felt when Dr. K said flirting is meant to be ambiguous.
I don’t have to prostrate myself and risk complete rejection and annihilation every time I find a man attractive?
I don’t have to work so hard to be as obvious as possible and go against every one of my most inherent instincts that want to remain blank and reserved?
I can protect myself with a few layers of ambiguity? Actually test how interested a man is before I fully reveal how interested I am?
What??!
Ambivalence is another word I really like and it’s a state I am very familiar with.
My emotions move a lot. And they move very fast. They change their intensities and their associates so quickly that things become complex web of many mixed, conflicting and confusing emotions.
So basically I’m a lot like most women.
I can be very reactive and judgmental. But I’m just as quick to empathy as I am to judgement.
So often I judge people as much as I empathize with them and figuring out how to relate to them with such conflicting emotions can be very disorienting.
And it’s lead me to the realization that I really don’t like making decisions.
I kind of like having everything. Where nothing is the truth and everything is the truth.
I did have an actual point on ambivalence.
At least I think I did.
But I have lost it. I’m going to give up and maybe figure out what my point was later.
This blog is getting a wee bit addicting. So I have to stop posting for fun and go back to my writing challenges.
Just so my goals stay directed. It can be very easy to go too much with the moment and forget there’s a goal.
What’s the point in having a goal? Why not just follow the fun?
I’m not sure if what I’m about to say is the best way to think, but I think of goals the same way I think of men.
Like when a man is really hot and I’m completely overcome with just pure attraction, it’s very tempting to just go with the flow and fully indulge.
Which I have done.
But the straight up facts are that I am an emotional and dependent person. I’m going to direct myself towards the man. I’m going to put effort into him and focus and time.
I like putting in energy, focus and time. I like doing it at work. With hobbies and sports and friends. I like to go to 100.
Which means my energy, focus and time has to stay directed or it won’t get replenished. It’ll just get lost.
It’d be like working long hours and just spending all the money and saving none of it.
An entirely casual relationship with a man, even if it’s fun, is saving nothing. All my effort eventually goes to zero.
My writing is a similar thing. If I just do what I feel like doing for fun and I don’t have any goals to meet, then all my effort eventually goes to zero.
Writing should become a resource that I can use in my real life. Even if it’s a small resource. That’s still something.
I can’t let it go to zero is all.
If you want to think about it really deeply you can ask what zero is. Because is there a zero? Like, we really don’t know what will happen in life. Who’s to say what will lead to what?
And some people do live by the principals of just following the fun. I used to do that. And it lead me very good places. It made life pretty cool a lot of them time.
But I’m not a spiritual being. I am an anxious being. I want to feel stable.
I have an ego. I like to exchange my effort for reward. I like to learn and grow and contribute.
I need a degree of success.
I remembered what my point was.
That we forget ambivilance is an enjoyable state.
We rarely want something as badly as when we think we can’t ever have it.
I’m guilty of this when it comes to men. They slip through my fingers. I’ve never gotten to really get a hold of one.
So I don’t feel all that ambivalent about them. I just want one.
But when actually dating someone ambivalence is usually the predominant state.
And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a wonderful thing. It gives people and places and things complexity.
And dating especially I think is a place where ambivalence should be more savored.
Somehow I think dating culture in America has gotten to this place of total lack and longing and absolute deprivation and we think of that as love.
Like America seems to think starving is how we’re supposed to feel.
But really, when you’re not starving, you’re not going to be sure what you want to eat.
Jess lanai 