Suspicious Minds

The trouble with highly developed minds is that they sometimes can’t help manipulating others.

Just yesterday my daughter was playing the ‘I’m just a child’ card. And for no potential gain other than a few extra credits in the cookie jar of future leniency.

If she’s this good at it now, how good will she be as an adult? Fortunately her behavior was pointed out to me by an highly qualified expert.

I wouldn’t say that it’s painful to be on the receiving end, but it’s annoying if you sense it and then have to work through all the possible scenarios on behalf of your often blissfully unaware adversary.

Unaware because it’s subconscious behavior. Or sometimes not; sometimes it’s habitual. Or even addictive. And sometimes just completely self-centered and greedy.

The only course of action that works to defuse this behavior is to out it. There no good that comes out of chasing a scenario around a mobius strip.

Call it. And then the discussion can go back to what everyone is thinking and feeling about a subject rather than being shanghaied by the desires of one party.

Which is exactly what I’m doing right now.