Pork II

I heard through a sec­ondary source that some­one once explained me as some­one who “nev­er assumes anything.” I’m not sure if this is cor­rect, but I will assume it is and try to watch it play out.

If I had said that myself I think I would have put it more like: I am not sur­prised when my expec­ta­tions or assump­tions are incor­rect. Maybe my mind is a sort of blend between Bud­dhism and Epicte­tus. Instead of being utter­ly pas­sive and sus­tained by my mere exis­tence in the world, like a jel­ly­fish is sus­tained by the ocean [to steal a metaphor from Ursu­la K. LeGuin] or like how I per­ceive Bud­dhism [I am going to leave this as a sen­tence frag­ment]. In my case, Epictet­ian behav­ior is my fun­da­men­tal, con­trol­ling what I can con­trol, using con­trol of myself to con­trol the world.

At the same time, my con­trol has lim­its, and my knowl­edge is only sub­jec­tive. Recog­ni­tion of this often leads me to the con­clu­sion that inac­tion is the safest route, one that dis­turbs the equi­lib­ri­um the least. So often I do not act, do not speak, do not assume because the results might be unfa­vor­able. I am not a risky per­son. When I do make assump­tions and have expec­ta­tions, I almost always keep them qui­et because I might be wrong. I try not to let them influ­ence my per­cep­tions to the point where I might treat them as fact and not sup­po­si­tion.

Per­haps this is pride­ful of me, to not state my assump­tions or act on my expec­ta­tions because I fear I might appear a fool when I am proven wrong. I appear a fool often enough with­out this how­ev­er, so it might as well not mat­ter.