Switching back to the old format because I'm already a day late and the idea of this post has been bouncing around in my head in my voice for the past few days and I don't want to translate it into dialogue form.
This week is our first double portion and we read two chapters, "Three's Company" and "A Shortcut to Mushrooms." In it we follow Frodo and Sam - now joined by Pippin - as they begin the journey to Frodo's new home in Crickhollow, in the east of the Shire. We, as well as Frodo and Sam, know this is just a cover story.
The journey is a few days, and the three hobbits make it with packs on their back. As they begin, Frodo complains about the weight. He says,
"I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their back."
Usually when discussing ethics it's best to focus on treatment of other people. There's an argument that we, as autonomous human beings, can treat ourselves however we like. No one should force me to go on a 5 mile run, but if someone else wants to push themselves to do that then who are we to judge? Everyone should do what works for them.
On the other hand, just because someone does something doesn't mean it works for them; addiction is the most obvious example. When can we intervene, even to the detriment of their autonomy? When should we say "It is a greater good to stop you than it is to let you be free?" After all, for ourselves, we'd say the bar is extremely high. We wouldn't want to be stopped.
So while genereally these write-ups are meant as ethics for how we treat others, this one wll be about ourselves. I think it will branch out to how we treat others, but I'm not certain. Well, let's go!
I've been very busy the past few months. I've been wedding planning (along with my fiancee and our parents) and we've bought a condo. I've also been promoted to management at my job, a position which requires a lot more energy than my previous position. A lot of people depend on me and I don't want to let them down. As always, I worry I've Peter Principled myself, though that's not the point here.
All of the above involves a lot of work. At work I've been so busy that most of the condo/wedding stuff gets pushed out of my mind. At first that worried me - I wanted to be thinking about these things all the time. But my job is so busy that it was unavoidable and I accepted it. Eventually I began to see it as a good thing. At work I focus on work. Nothing about the condo or wedding is on fire - It can all wait until at least the afternoon. After work, I can work on those other things. I am fortunate in this regard that my job is quite strict about not working after hours. Wedding/condo doesn't creep into my work and work doesn't creep into wedding/condo time.
In this way I am not like a snail, carrying everything around with me all at once. I mean, I am, but I compartmentalize. Compartmentalizing allows me to focus on certain things at certain times, and that seems to work pretty well for me. It's certainly less overwhelming.
And when I am less overwhelmed I can both be more productive on each thing and will be more patient with others (and myself). If I think of all I have to do at once it will be hard to prioritize and difficult to keep my cool when someone asks something of me that I'm not already thinking about - who are they to add to my stress?! But if I keep work at work and these personal responsibilities at home - and even schedule separate time for wedding planning and condo stuff, to keep THOSE separate - then it's easier for people to know when to approach me about each thing. And it means when I make time to relax I'm able to focus on that.
So I think compartmentalizing is an important stress-reducing (or at least stress management) strategy, which helps us be kinder to ourself and others. Being kinder to others is obviously ethical, but being kinder to ourself should not be underestimated. If being ethical were easy we wouldn't need to write guides for it. There are few guides for breathing. And if we need a guide, you need attention and focus to read and remember it - which are difficult to come by if we're stressed. Kindness to ourselves is necessary if we are to be kind to others.
But also there are those who have a harder compartmentalizing. Rather than telling them how they should do things, we should try not to take what we may see as overreactions personally, or as failings on their part. Other people are always fighting a battle we know nothing about. We can and should advise them about whether they are on the right side, or whether they are fighting the right way, or whether they should be involved at all. But we don't need to tell them in that moment. If they are carrying it all on their back at once they may believe all of their responsibilities are tied together. They may not know how to separate them, or believe it impossible, or they may have forgotten they're carrying it at all and think whatever it is has become part of them, as if they themselves are snails, always destined to carry. In that moment, kindness and patience is the best we can offer them.
This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain. If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!
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