kiya

I'm watching an argument, mostly.

It's an argument that ten years ago I would have come in on, vehemently, passionately, in the belief that cites and rhetoric could win. In the intervening decade, I've learned that that doesn't actually work so well. Or I've learned that arguing that way means investing too much of myself in a place where I risk losing a handle on it. Or something.

And there's a part of me that misses the ... optimism of the hotheadedness, I guess it is. The sense that I could, in fact, if I just pushed hard enough, cared hard enough, it would be a good enough place to stand to go with this here lever. I regret its passing, even while I recognise what remains is more effective.

And I'm reminded of the thing I posted to rasseff back an age ago, about the feeling that treating things as if they matter is one of those things that doesn't fit in well, that makes people wary and hard to get along with. So there's that sort of weird edgy space in which things matter, but expressing how much they matter ... doesn't help.

I don't have the words for why this all makes me oddly melancholy.