Goals, Intention, and Emotional Attunement

I plan to get a little personal this time, but I do it in service of expounding on my projects and activism. The last month or so has woken me up into a combined flurry of rage (at the government), research and learning, and processing projects, life, my goals, and my relating with other people. All this reminds me and teaches me the reason for doing all this.

My focus and goal is to understand people’s need for emotional attunement and how society, cultures, communities, families, and other social institutions assist people to feel attuned. Studying and writing utopianism and dystopianism, especially with a focus on the reasons for people wanting to be in them or not, has an obvious connection to try to understand emotional attunement. The same goes for activism, the desire to increase emotional attunement in the world. I can’t say I have all the answers from these ventures, or that I have many answers, but maybe I’ll figure a few along the way with a couple questions to add to the world, too.

I’ve focused a bit on the personal level of emotional attunement over the last week. Without getting into details, I’ve run into a situation or two in which I’ve felt a little more excluded and isolated lately. I have had a little comfort that a fair share of married men around my age feel this way. It also makes a little more sense of why men have a higher mortality rate after the loss of a wife, usually from their death but maybe also from divorce. Suffice to say, I’ve gotten lazy about meeting new people and have gotten a little too dependent on my wife for meeting new people and making connections.

Probably the biggest issue I’ve had lately comes down to my mind going blank in social situations. I wouldn’t call myself shy or anything because I don’t get anxious in anticipation of social situations or while in them. My mind just goes blank because I can’t come up with anything to say, like I don’t have the knowledge available for a conversation or the data to break the ice. I’m probably dealing with a confidence issue, but it’s not because of emotion but because of lacking knowledge and practice.

When my social experiences don't make sense, I find myself scouring the Internet, typing all types of questions into handy dandy Google. Part of this scour session settled on tips for questions to ask and things to say about yourself when at networking events.

One of the suggestions really struck me as useful: After saying hello and/or exchanging names, say something like “I’m here to [state your intention], how about you?” Extrapolating on that for a social party, you can say something like “I know [host/relate connection to host] through [reason for connection], how about you?” I really like this approach for social situations because if you don’t share something about yourself, it could come off as gatekeeping. An old habit I used to have at parties was grilling people to find something in common, but I could see them getting the impression that they're being gatekeeped or interrogated, too.

Then it hit me: having and knowing your intention, what you want to do in the moment, what you want to do in your situation, what you want to do in the medium term, what your goals are in life goes a long way. I don’t mean in any spiritual way, but maybe in some profound psychological way, both in the way we think of ourselves and the way we project ourselves.

Honestly, I feel silly realizing this at age 39. Teachers, parents, attempted role models try telling us to figure this shit out, so we can pave a path for our careers and college paths. This evening, I witnessed on the 'L' an older man lecturing a couple of high schoolers about the importance of doing good in school, staying in school, staying out of the gangs, doing well in college, then getting a good career. His focus for them was to get the girl, which makes for a deficient goal to me. Sure, having a good relationship helps with happiness, but (thinking the kids want a girlfriend and settled down with a girl jumps to an assumption -- what if they're asexual or homosexual and) this kind of advice doesn't go far enough. Kids need enouragement to think about things more concretely and come up with more specific but grander goals and plans.

Through privilege, my focus on reacting to my environment rather than acting on it because I didn’t have perspective, and just having the right amount of mental stimulation without concrete inspiration or steady emotional attunement, I didn’t fully understand the consequences of mortality, the vastness of potential out there, and the limitations that come from human prejudice, lack of imagination, and ignorance. Without that kind of persective, I couldn't understand my potential to affect the world or become more attuned with it. Now I plan to have goals and intentions in mind, from why I'm walking from one side of the house to the other to what I plan to accomplish with my life.

And I believe this goal setting for discovering what does and does not work for emotional attunement will have twofold results. First, it will provide me concrete goals to aim for (even though I may need to work more on benchmarking). More importantly, though, I feel like it will help me attune to society and other people better. Seeing a goal and working toward it will provide focus and flow. It will also help to connect with people and institutions/organizations that connect with my goal (and who doesn't connect with wanting emotional attunement?), which I believe will load to more flow and attunement with other people and enjoyment from interacting with them. After all, what is more compelling and attractive than someone with a plan and the humbleness not to be boring about it?

I look forward to it.

If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!