Game, set, match.

wiki has this to say about game theory:
"Given two actors, oneself and someone else, there are four types of possible behavior; Selfishness, Altruism, Spite, and Cooperation. Selfishness is harming someone else in order to help oneself; Altruism is harming oneself in order to help someone else; Spite is harming oneself in order to harm someone else; Cooperation is helping oneself and helping someone else."

I often feel like I yo-yo between being selfish and feeling altruistic ... I'm not sure, regardless of all the Barney episodes in the world, that I actually understand how cooperation is achieved.  Sure, I can read the logical definition and comprehend the words used... but actually having both parties gain from an event or experience.... how does that work??  John Kramer (AKA Jigsaw) always set scenes where cooperation was the ultimate ruler -- if you cooperated, you could save each other with the least amount of pain to oneself and if you didn't, you'd likely both/all die..... when it has been set up to work that way, of course the mechanism of cooperation is obvious, but it is the real life scenarios that throw me for a loop. When two people want such very different things, when two people come from such very different background and experiences, when two people see and interpret the world in such very different ways, how is cooperation actualized such that both parties come out on top?

This is why D/s relationships make more sense to me -- if one is always the leader and the other the subservient follower, is this not, also a form of cooperation -- or does it fall more into altruism?

 Only, at some point, I always feel the selfish nature creeping in, over-taking my altruism and throwing all else to the wind, demanding that my needs in the moment out-weigh all other elements. And sometimes, I just can't stop myself, like this selfishness has been rolled into a ball, held at bay during other interactions and suddenly breaks free, rolling with its own momentum forcing it into the daylight and refusing to be halted................. (yeah, I think I just tripped over my own tongue, but I don't know how else to explain that feeling??)

Is it wrong to be selfish? To be altruistic? ... spite seems like an obvious one to avoid, but is it really so obvious? Why does cooperation trump all others? Is that really the most viable option???!

some days I am more confused than others :(

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it not even if i have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."  -- Buddha

you make this all go away

I just want something
I just want something I can never have

Munch much?

"In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours."

How can meeting one person change so much in one single evening? A conversation that rolls through hours and actions and loses no momentum... such that the eventual parting would otherwise be merely bitter with no sign of sweetness save the knowledge that there will some day soon be another rejoining.

Engaging .. intriguing .... arousing.... no, I think the right word is 'infectious' ... like an infectious disease ..... I feel tainted, corrupted ... changed somehow; stained. Between every motion I've made in the aftermath of our meeting, between every thought, he has somehow slipped into my consciousness and I find myself looking, waiting, wondering why he isn't here in my present reality.

I'm a sucker.

I fall so very hard so very fast.

Do I think there is any other way? ... no, maybe not. I've always known within the first five minutes or less of meeting someone.  I knew within the first three with this one, maybe less.

The biggest problem is, while I am fairly good with the first six of these good 'rules' for life:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
3. Don't Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best
5. Give credit where its due
6. Find people better than you to better yourself

it is the last that often seems to cause me the most trouble:

7. Don't let someone become a priority in your life,when you are just an option in theirs

How do I stop being so very intense and rushing head-long into something I don't understand? How do I hold myself back from holding my breath until I can be holding him again?

If only he wouldn't LOOK at me like that... ~/*swoon*/~

three.point.one.four.one.five.nine.two

"I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for"

I found it and let it fade away. Screw that, it didn't fade, I chased it with murder in my eyes and terror in my heart. I eradicated it from my life so fully that I can find no trace of the other side, even after more than a decade of searching.

I have no closure.

I crave him. Who is he? nothing but a memory. There is no part of me that believes he can still be who I once loved, nor that I can ever be anyone he could stomach to be in the same room with. And yet, the part of me that openly purports not to even believe in hope, holds on to a strange, sharp shard of light, turning it and twisting it between my fingers, slicing my flesh and leaking the sanguine essence of my existence hither and thither without concern that it has the very real potential to run dry.

Who was he? Everything. Everything that ever mattered to who I am. Everything that ever felt right. He was my balance; my spirit; the very smile of my soul.

I have been holding my breath since I left him. Even the most beautiful moments of my life -- the birth of my child, her first smile, her laughter...... they have been experienced through a haze of deprivation. My heart does not beat with the same rhythm. Constricted. Confined. Crippled.

the utter simplicity,
the sheer impossibility,
the lingering memory,
the deep-seated need,

...touch me!
            and I shall be born again

10:39p Oct 14, 2001