[experience report] Letter to Kariina Altosaar c/o Altosaar Family

[tobyshorin]

Kariina

I had some more thoughts tonight about your project that I want to share with you

Imagine if back when we met and talked at the library we already had this idea of “successful” and “unsuccessful” interactions. I could have obstructed or made communication between us frustrating and challenging in any number of ways, can you imagine? Conversely there are a lot of things I also might do to make conversation flow more easily. Now imagine how you would have perceived any of these scenarios if you already had this idea of “successful” in mind.

I think the real value of this kind of work is that it wakes people up to the ways in which they’re being satisfied or dissatisfied by their interactions all the time. Do people feel nourished, enriched? Or do they feel blocked, stultified or dominated in some way?

And when people become sensitive to these kinds of interactions, eventually they realize — I have a role in how they play out! Whether or not I have a successful interaction is partly in my control! And really there are all these habitual ways of being I have that impede successful, satisfying interactions all the time!

Once you start thinking in this way, ideas like control, instructions, commands, choices, agency stop making as much sense. Because it becomes clear that there is this other criterion of success that supersedes all other criteria. It’s more like a dance, and the criterion is “are we dancing well?”

What I like about you Altosaars, now with one Li, is that you are all very attuned to the truth, to what’s really going on. It’s very natural for you to sense if something feels off or blocked. You’re all naturally suited to do this kind of work and even to teach it.

This really is a spiritual idea here.

Now if you look at an interaction that feels successful, that meets this criterion, and you examine it deeply, at the phenomenological core you will find an “i love you” there.

And I love you Altosaars and you Kariina because you have this trait of perceiving the truth and sensitivity to interactions. This sensitivity makes you very safe people to be around and I know I’m not the only one to feel this. So please have many children and continue this great family tradition of yours because it is very hard to come by such people.

[jaanli]

cc @Kariina for viz

[charlottemeng]

Dropping Uses of the Erotic into this discussion because it has been my north star for navigating my life towards the most enriching and nourishing pathways