I exist, and I have questions

[drwex]

I have been putting more of my thoughts and questions onto Twitter. For all that it's a nazi-hosting shit show, it's also a place where I feel a community of thought and belief. People chuckle when I say "favorite Twitter rabbi" but that's actually a thing I have, now. She's awesome, and through her I've found other really interesting spiritual leaders.

Question 1: where is your community?

I have been having a hard time for the past couple months with the "how are you"/"how are things" question-conversation opener. It's really about how average is a bad measure you see, because there are a bunch of things that are good and I like and am happy about, and another bunch of things that are bad and stressful and I'm upset about. If I average those out, I get "OK" and sometimes I say that but it's probably the least accurate, least descriptive word I could use for this state.

Question 2: does this happen to you? What do you say when it does?

I had this... thing happen to me again recently where the proverbial light bulb went on inside my head and I thought, "Oh! So _that's_ a thing, and probably true." When you're on this side of that moment the thing in retrospect is blindingly obvious and like why couldn't you see that 1+1=2 before? It's not like I acquired new knowledge or a higher level of understanding. It's more like "these two jigsaw pieces always fit together in this way but I just never put them next to each other before."

This happens to me from time to time and while I'm glad for the universe delivering clarity to me it's also frustrating because I often don't know what to do with it and I really don't believe, much, in blinding flashes of insight. I'm more the "slow methodical building up to an answer" kind of person. Or, I think I am. Maybe I'm not.

Question 3: Does this happen to you, too? If it does, how does it fit with your world/self-view?

Comments

[reedrover]

I have three communities, all of which are in real life, and one very loose community that is a closed group on FaceBook. The real life communities are based on shared interests for all three, and shared values for two of them. I know that I disagree strongly with some members of the goat group (thanks to FaceBook) and my presidency just ended so I can go back to being more picky about the people inside of that group with whom I spend my time. The closed FB group is based around my high school, which is self-selecting to start and then the group is even more so as we self-segregate into areas of interest as well as participate in the daily conversations. I am a member in the specific sub-groups for bibliophiles, cartiophiles, snakes/creepy-crawlies, elder care challenges, home improvement, buy/sell/trade, and travel.

I try to give the highlight/lowlight in my answer and they can decide how to proceed if it's going to be a real conversation. Examples: "Decent. Had a great holiday with the family but my cat died suddenly." "Eh, fair to middling. I'm getting over a cold that I caught on a fantastic trip to Orlando last week."

I often trip over answers that should have been obvious. I try to be grateful that I've learned and no resentful that I am so bad at noticing the signs that pointed at the answer in the first place.

[drwex]

Yeah that third one sounds a lot like my experiences.