DailyJim: Fighting for each other, fighting against each other, and giving up on each other

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode actually from Monday, August 26th, but I'm technically recording it on Wednesday, August 28th, 2024. I missed the day I was going to do two on Tuesday, but I'll do two tonight. I guess today's still kind of Tuesday. Do two today and then get back on schedule. What I want to talk about right now is fighting for each other, fighting against each other, or giving up on each other. And maybe i've mentioned this before but i was talking um talking with a friend earlier today and it reminded me of what john and i believe julie gotman talked about and how when we have bids for connection we often turn towards each other we turn away from each or turn against each other or we turn away from each other and i thought about how does that work in the context of getting into conflict and fighting with each other. And I think sometimes we either fight for each other, we fight against each other, or we give up on each other. So what does fighting for each other mean? It means fighting for myself and fighting for the other person, willing to endure and fight hard for the goodness or the well-being of myself and the other person.

When I think about fighting against, uh, fighting against myself or fighting against the other person and vice versa, I think fighting against is often seeing ourselves as bad, seeing the other person as bad, trying to hurt ourselves or hurt the other person, um, as zero sum game. And I think giving up on ourselves or giving up on the other person is more like apathy and an indifference. Often we get overwhelmed and we just say, ah, I can't do this anymore. So it could be walking away, it could be running away. It's this idea of stepping away, you know, turning away is part of it. But I think in the more extreme version, it's just kind of giving up, beginning to give up, slowly starting to give up, etc.

And when I said this to my friend earlier, I saw his face change. This whole idea about fighting for each other. And how a lot of times in conflict, whether it's in romantic or personal relationships, or whether it's at the political level, we often are fighting against each other or we give up. How many of us have learned how to fight for each other? How to fight for ourselves, but also to fight for the other person. To fight for the people in our community but also to fight for the people in other communities to fight for our friends but also to fight for our foes, or another way to put it to fight for our enemies as well as those that we love, and I think a lot of us just haven't learned those skills that we get into a fight and we start fighting against each other or we give up.

We give up by ghosting them or blocking them or ignoring them or avoiding them, and pretending that we don't care about them anymore.

Sometimes, frankly, drifting into this depression or, I would say, emotional suppression, just pushing things down, numbing ourselves off. We just kind of give up, again, on other people, but often ourselves too. We just give up on life. life. And then sometimes I think we fight against it. We fight against ourselves. We fight against others. We fight against life. We feel certain things we don't want to feel. We attack people and shout at people and accuse them and blame them and ridicule them and seek vengeance on them to really intentionally or kind of maybe not even consciously intentionally to cause harm to them.

And I think those tend to be the two default approaches that we think of when we think of fighting and we think of conflict. Fighting against each other or we're kind of just giving up and being at peace with each other. But I think there's another way, and I think the other way is to fight for each other and to continue to fight for each other. And I think this one can be really hard. I was talking with a friend the other day about how sometimes here in Kenya people don't show up on time and how to continue to fight for the relationship and fight for and how sometimes you have to tell the person 10 times like no I really mean show up on time like for me it's really important and that over time that person can start to learn like this person is saying this because they're actually caring about me and they're trying to build this relationship together and can recalibrate themselves and so I think a lot of it is just that endurance to continue to fight for each other. It's easy to flip and say, like, fight against each other, and it's sometimes maybe even easier to flip and say, I'm just going to give up. Why? Why should I try anymore? Let me just give up. It doesn't look like they're trying. At what point do we give up on other people just because they've given up on us or they've given up on themselves? themselves.

At what point do we fight against somebody just because they're fighting against us or they're fighting against themselves?

And really, at what point do we fight for someone, even if they're not fighting for themselves or they're not fighting for us? When do we stop fighting for each other and start fighting against each other or giving up on each other? What's the threshold? What's the point where we say, we're done, we give up, or screw it, this person doesn't care about me? How many of us have the endurance and the strength to continue to fight for each other despite what happens, despite how the other person responds.

Despite how culture is telling us to respond. There's so much stuff on TikTok and Twitter and a lot of these memes that are spread through the internet and radio shows and podcasts and TV shows and drama and movies and books and all this stuff that tell us to give up. Just give up. Just give up.

How many of us tell how many of it tells us to keep fighting for each other i met a guy the other day and he really told me he says you know if this person is really opening up to you if you have people who are opening up to you in your life that means they trust you don't give up on these people, don't give up on these people don't give up so yeah keep fighting keep fighting for yourself Keep fighting for the other person. Keep fighting for each other. What would it look like if we lived on a planet where we humans were fighting for, not only fighting for each other human beings, but fighting for each other in terms of other living beings on this planet and fighting for, just fighting for life instead of fighting against life or giving up on life. What if we fought for life? Life. So yeah, that'll be the end of this one for now. And then I think I'll do another one if I have enough voice left. All right. Talk to you soon.