zenda

To not appear an idiot, and to not make people mad.

Yup.

In some threads, I don't want to appear an idiot, nor clever, nor funny etc. I want to get a Message Across. Those threads typically involve problem solving on serious matters, therefore I don't want them to be 'about me' whatsoever, "Me Too"s are minimized and I take measures to avoid, posturing or platforming, since that would hamper my attempts to wrap my mind and feelings into what's going on in the OP's world. All else is distraction, and, so help me, I am full of distraction, and I do what I can at such times to hold it back.

I also seek to avoid making people mad. If I have an opinion I believe they will not like, then I will state it, however seek to deliver it in ways which offer them more responses than just 'getting mad.' If I don't like what someone's doing, I'm not interested in their feeling a slap but I am interested in offering them my judgement and reasoning in such a way that it becomes as compelling as their own when next they've got the opportunity to do the behaviour in question. I'm at a painful watershed, sometimes, for to hold back too much can be as limiting as holding back too little. I DO believe that transforms of 'Whup Upside the Head' can be crucial. Short Sharp Shock ... to Interrupt the Pattern of their complacency in their habit, and to make Uber Strong 'No Not That! Ever! Ring like the Bells of Notre Dame through the soul of the listener. But HOW to make that message come across as the Spirit of Urgency and Warning rather than of simple Wrath? Darn difficult, I find.

Expression of full on anger in posts? If someone's own harmony depends on sabotaging the harmony of others, and if they seem content in that behaviour, and if they show little or no balancing characteristics, those people are at risk of failing my 'citizenship of the Human Race' test. When I look at them, I mentally generalize the stories and faces of numerous victims of them and their kind, and for them, my cup of human kindness becomes empty. It is open season and there is no need to hold back for I am in a mood of assisting damage-limitation for the victims rather than redemption of the perp. Ah .. even there, I do hold back. I hold back glee and delight. For when I flood with ecstasy in the vanquishing of the Enemy who is a Very Very Bad Evil *&^%$*, my adult training in the arts of "Whoa there, Nemesis, things are NOT just Black and White" declare crisis of personal Ethic, and my memories of the more recent and sophisticated action heroes' wise statement "If I terminated this enemy, it would make me as Bad as Him," serve to hold me back in ways about which I am quite relieved. My young childhood training was that I was either TOTALLY 'held back' and a wimp OR an out of control psycho. A strong question in my development has been "When and to what extent does my holding back constitute a development beyond impulse, and when and to what extent is holding back merely burying that impulse?"


In other threads like 'What's your Oddest visit to surgery', where it's about us giving our own anecdotes, there's only my own sensitivity at stake, and I can kick back and have a good time.

Other threads I ... I Hold Back to the extent of not posting at all. For example, 'Would you suck your own dick' thread. Heavens to Betsy! I could not share at length, details of my construction of a pulley system made of silk scarf .... circling my neck, then behind my knees and back around my neck four times ... one end in my teeth and the other gently pulled to winch my head toward my groin in a vain attempt to suck my own penis in my early teens. Nor details of the screaming agony as I ricked my spine but had to maintain silence for fear my parents would have rushed into my bedroom and caught me, stuck, writhing on the bed, Lewdini-like, trussed and nekkid. Y'see, gentle, tilted reader, I am shy and couldn't share that any more than I could share some of my vanilla Disney Tinkerbell images in the 'Erotic pictures which make you go wow' thread. I'd judge myself as being a bit childish and stunted, and also as being disrespectful to the spirit of the thread, which includes a strong theme of sexuality within the Eros, whereas Tinkerbell is more about hold-hand crushes accompanied by fantasies of flying around the countryside and having picnics under trees.


Re reading what I've written, I can draw a kind of conclusion: Holding back while expressing feels like driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake, which calses waste of petrol, overheating, wear on brake shoes. Holding back, I take damage. My healthy outcome would be to NOT hold back ... but to develop my attitudes and their expressions in such a way that my NOT holding back would generate more stuff I can accept than stuff I wish I'd never said.

All the best

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ZENDA