Excessive apologies can feel disingenuous and perfunctory. That makes it difficult for me to know when an apology is genuine. That erodes my trust.
Excessive apologies can signal to me that the other person sees me as a threat, and I don’t want to feel like a threat, so I feel attacked.
But I could also choose to interpret excessive apologies as a sign of past trauma, so I could choose to have compassion and patiently ask the other person to talk to me about what’s going on. I can share how I feel and hope that they feel ready to discuss what’s happening for them. Patience would be key.
Now it depends whether you mean actual DEI or the nonsense that companies do in the name of DEI or the unfortunate overreaction that some people support related to DEI due to the resistance to actual, reasonable, sensible DEI.
“… regardless of all other factors…” sounds like the second of these.
The second vowel is an unstressed “i”. In most varieties of English, since it is unstressed, we pronounce it as a schwa, which sounds roughly like “uh”.
If you’d like to articulate that syllable, like you might do in French, then pronounce it like the “i” in “sit”. That’s completely optional.
The phrase “I’m wondering if… can…” needs a noun or pronoun between “if” and “can”. As soon as you try to remove that (by moving it out to “The monkey who…”), the phrase stops being grammatical. We’d understand you, but it would require significant effort to parse the sentence. That seems to be what makes this sound strange, no matter what we try to do with it.
I don’t know whether other languages can do this, but English can’t.
Your last paragraph contains the clue. What message do you genuinely believe your brother will understand from you refusing to attend his wedding? Will it do any good? Does it seem likely to change anyone’s behavior?
If yes, then don’t go. If no, then put that thought aside and reconsider whether you actually want to go, then decide based on that.
I often don’t hire an expert to do certain tasks. Here are three common reasons:
- I don’t trust any expert that I can hire
- I can do the job adequately and I consider the expert too expensive relative to the value of having the job done very well
- I want to learn how to do it and so I want to practise
I will take Working From Home, knowing that I can get the equivalent of a day off per week anyway and I can use it mostly as I need it through the week.
I’m assuming that my employer doesn’t monitor my machine to make sure my mouse pointer is moving. If that were the case, I’d have to fix that problem first.
Learn not to hate them. Learn compassion for them. What would have to be true for you to behave and believe as they do?
Recognize your bigotry for what it is. My guess is that it comes as a self defence mechanism. If they are a threat to you, then you need to recognize them in order to know when you’re in immediate danger. It is rational for you to err on the side of caution, which naturally results in some bigotry. This shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. Have some compassion for yourself in this.
Remember that acceptance does not mean giving up on influencing people to change. They are as they are and maybe you can help them change. Or someone can. Then there is less need to think of their beliefs as their whole identity. And then there is less need to have bigoted thoughts about them.
None of this is easy. Metta meditation has helped me, although the process moves slowly. I can remember doing Metta for 1 hour per day for four people who were a real threat to me, and on the 9th day something changed in me and I suddenly found it easy to not to hate them any more. I still wouldn’t go near them, but now I see them more as the pathetic creatures they behave like. And maybe one day they will change.
Good luck. Peace.
Aha. I see the confusion now. Oops.
I meant ask a question in response to someone saying “I make 50k”, when they mentioned that now they have to guess.
My point is that conventions are arbitrary, different people use different ones, and when someone uses a different one to you, then simply ask to clarify. Then I wondered why this presents a challenge.
That’s what I meant.
Where on earth did you get “dislike” or “hate” from StarkillerX42’s comments?! I read the following…
People are largely biased towards their own (genetic) offspring over other children.
People are largely indifferent to orphans.
Both of these seem self-evidently true and utterly uncontroversial to me.
Moreover, the bias towards one’s own genetic offspring is, by definition, narcissistic, although we can largely be forgiven for that, since it amounts to an involuntary imperative with clear evolutionary origins.
Gratitude is a revolutionary act in times like these. Since you’re going to die, anyway, you might as well enjoy the ride as much as you can and teach your child to do the same. If you manage to make the world a better place along the way, then so much the better.
Peace.