My oldest daughter used to wake us up every single night with her nightmares and anxiety. I didn’t even know what Skinnerism was, but I did know that if I rewarded this behavior it would continue, and probably get worse. The policy was to order her back to her bed.

One night she was so distraught I was moved to abandon good sense, and to try to comfort her. We sat in a rocking chair talking about her fears until the sun came up.

By some miracle she didn’t wake us up, anymore.

Huh.

*

We’re bloated with unexamined, self-torturing bullshit.

The worst assumptions are the ones we don’t even know we’ve made, and so we cannot know to question.

The more damaging assumptions are, the more they run us down, and the more run down we get the more pessimistic we become, and the more pessimistic we become the more we cling to our assumptions and shut out everything unfamiliar… because things could always be worse, couldn’t they?