What Edward De Bono Taught Me

Sanity Lost, Sanity Gained, Peace
Alpha-Beta Testing the New Self

Centering : "If I loiter in an environment governed by rules, ideals and morals customized to (what I think would) suit the accomplishment of my goals/priorities/happiness (based on my knowledge of myself), I'd get back on the right path with more experience, without much effort"

In people-centric scenarios, extremes generally occur in pairs. If you've seen one extreme with a person(s), you can experience the other extreme only with that person(s). You can't hate a person you haven't ever loved.

"I hate Trump". No, you don't. You hate his system of governance. Why can't you hate him unless Ivanka tells you to? (assuming she knows him on a personal level (#FamilialPerksFTW), better than you do and you believe her.) Because hate based on non-personal and solely external information is disagreement or disapproval. True hate needs figurative penetration. Unless you have your own definition of hate or you've planted cameras and microphones in Trump's den(s). 

I was living with false definitions of sanity and stability in my head until New Year's Eve, 2015.
2016 showed me what instability truly felt like, subsequently, convinced me that I wasn't a stable person. I wouldn't have known stability and sanity had I not known their extreme opposites.

 In that one dead year, I involuntarily attempted to tackle problems that were deep-rooted. More of a situational "I'm messed up, I need to get myself out of the gutter right now", than a, "the future will demand so and so personal changes, let me start working on them now" kind of issue. Life didn't need external changes, it needed mental restructuring. Funny, but that wasn't the most challenging bit. The need to change was prompted by the positive and negative gestures of a human agent (X), a very special friend, also, the only I'd had in a while. (Value, in inverse proportion with number (kept low, intentionally)) The side-effects of the transition process weren't going to be felt by just me but all parties involved, primarily, X. What was the most challenging part? Psychologically convincing X of the mutual long term benefits of my decisions that couldn't be directly communicated, to prevent predicted short-lived hate that I was most afraid of. X, at least visibly, wasn't on the same page as mine. Bringing him to it needed rashness on my part.

He was the stable one, I was paranoid (the result of being able to foresee events precisely, most times). X hid/lied, while I expressed. The gradient between the amount X hid/lied and the amount I expressed kept increasing. Contemplating the reasons behind X's compulsive lying made me blame myself to a point that wasn't harm-free. Academic stress coupled with emotional baggage kept reducing the effectiveness of all hope-keeping activities I'd gotten myself into for sanity's sake. My mind, quite naturally, started looking for shortcuts and backdoor solutions. Failed, horribly so. The troubled state and my urge to get out of it, forced me to do, what then felt like the dirty work. 

Deep emotions rob the most logical of their logic sometimes, and that's what happened, as predicted. I felt vicarious pain in addition to my own.

The best part about pain is that it follows a bell curve. It needs to reach a peak magnitude to be felt less eventually.

With time, unanswered questions receive answers. "Whys" turn into "Ahhs". The puzzle becomes less complicated.  You make peace, then some more. You change.
It's a beautiful process.
My recent experiences demonstrated the magic of Centering. Centering, in my book says that, if I loiter in an environment governed by rules, ideals and morals customized  to suit the accomplishment of my goals/priorities/happiness, I'd get back on the right path with more experience, without much effort. 
When things go wrong, remind yourself that a night is always followed by a day.

 P.S. :  I was lucky to have X intentionally or unintentionally show me my faults than cover them to protect the thinning stability of our equation then. I only wish the best for him.

Zaijian.