Don’t Give Free Rent to Someone You Need to Evict from Your Head

Manage Your Influencers

I spent too much time four years ago obsessing over the state of the world. We were in Covid times, and I had lost all sense of control. None of us were in control.

I tried to absorb every piece of scientific, sociological, and political information about COVID-19. I had the time. Suddenly, most of us had time.

People took up residence in my head. People I saw on television spouting important information, or spouting what I thought was gibberish, pushed all the buttons and made me angry. External forces managed me. I had given myself over to external forces, much like a cult member.

It was a bit like being in love, being obsessed. But obsession is not pleasurable; it is mostly painful.

I gave up watching the news on television. Maybe it was after January 6. I still don’t watch the news. I don’t need analysts and broadcasters speculating for hours. I don’t need to feed the squatters.

If a piece of big news breaks, I get an alert on my phone and read the feed. Or I can watch a snippet, the core of the video.

I don’t have much agency, not over the Big Stuff. But I do what I can choose to do, in my small way, that may impact those I love, those I interact with, and those I cross paths with. I can be an influencer in those ways.

When I worked, I tried to have influence. Sometimes I was wrong, and I still tried to have influence. I didn’t figure out I was wrong immediately. It took a while.

Now, I belong to a group that includes seed savers, caretakers, food pantry stockers, and other people supporting each other and some small acts of compassion. I know many people who are doing the right thing.

I have doubts about many absolute positions, especially positions that occupy values I support. I support egalitarian treatment — but I also support consequences. I support justice — but I also support discretion. The world may offer either/or decisions, but most of us are somewhere other than either/or. I am more practical than idealistic. What works in this situation?

Nuance has no room. Contextualism has no place. Am I an enemy?

Some therapists advocate leaving toxic relationships. Maybe we should work on detoxifying the relationship. Maybe if not now, then later. When our toxic relationship is with the world at large, then what? But the individuals I know, that I spend time with, I care about them. They’re great. Not always, but most often.

I wrote a letter to a friend once, a long-time friend who had been negative and depressed for a long time. I said I knew the letter might be the end of our friendship, but I hoped that it would not. I found being with her wore me out. She needed therapy. She needed to do what she said she wanted to do, not be trapped by paralysis.

That letter did end our friendship. I had hoped it would fix her. I didn’t think I needed any fixing. Kindness? I’m not sure it was present.

The best workshop/training I attended taught us how to ask questions. We want to ask questions for real information, for answers we don’t know. We want to be curious. It is hard to be curious when questions can be right or wrong.

The workshop was on social construction, which was particularly relevant at that point in therapy. Social construction theorizes that what we believe is collaboratively built by our interactions with others. I do believe that.

When we are polarized it is difficult to reach understanding. We cannot collaboratively build stories with those we don’t talk to but only develop assumptions about. The stories they would tell are different than those we make up from our fabrications.

Therapists who recommend ending toxic relationships may be correct, but they may be right only in the current moment. Life is long. I am 70, and the relationships I had 60 years ago still influence me. I am not the same person over time, and I am. It is the contradiction we live with. You are different than you were, and yet you are the same person.

I live in a blue state. I grew up in what is now a red state. Childhood friends have many different points of view. This is not who he was, I think. Yet he was who he has become. They may think the same of me.

Mostly, I don’t want to accommodate bad influencers. I can hear them out, but if I can’t ask questions for understanding, then I put them in a small, contained space. But I know he is there, like a shooter on a rooftop, ready to be taken out.

And maybe we will never understand his motives, that person we call the enemy. Maybe he didn’t understand his motives, either.