There are two kinds of people:
People who make New Year's resolutions and those who don't.
My wife, Debra, doesn't make them. I make them but break them immediately.
I am already having a third cup of coffee. And pretty soon I will eat some carbs, probably the bread that is on the kitchen counter. I get resolution-breaking over with quickly so I don't fret about it.
Every family needs a keeper and a thrower, one each.
The "keeper" doesn't throw things away. The "thrower" discards unusable stuff. A keeper finds a place to store broken tools, stained clothes, and chipped dishware. A keeper can imagine a future use for unusable things. A thrower doesn't want clutter. The thrower realizes he or she will never be able to fix what is wrong with the item and would rather buy something new if by some remote chance a use for the item emerges. Debra is a keeper. I am a thrower. It works for us because I give in 100% to her, so long as she stores useless things in places that don't clutter places I go into.
Some people want to get to airports early. Some like to get there just in time.
This would be a deal-breaker if my wife and I disagreed, but we don't. Neither of us likes airplane-departure anxiety. Surprises happen and we like to build in buffer time. We know people who love to cut it close, indeed ideally being the very last person running to the airplane door a second before it closes. They like the adrenaline rush. When I want a rush, I have another cup of coffee sitting quietly waiting for my flight group to board.
Some people like to load the dishwasher carefully and methodically. Some don't.
Loading with care rather than haphazardly, one can get substantially more dishes into the dishwasher. The careful-loaders want a full load arranged perfectly. The quick-and-dirty loaders are perfectly OK putting through a load with wasted space. My wife is the former; I am the latter. This could be a marriage deal-killer, since she could easily interpret my lack of interest in a well-loaded dishwasher as a sign of disrespect of her wishes. And I could perceive her discontent with the way I nestle the bowls near the dishes as nitpicking. We resolve this by my doing it her way 100% -- at home in town. Remember, I don't care much, so it isn't worth a disagreement. I load carefully to her standards, and then she reviews what I do and adjusts everything anyway. But at our farmhouse, where I go often and she goes rarely, we do it my way. I run my coffee cups through with the dishwasher a quarter full. She doesn't see it, so she doesn't know to complain. I feel liberated and powerful, an alpha male in his domaine.
Debra and I have a two-state solution, and it works.
Some people go to bed late and get up late. Some are early-birds.
My wife stays up. I don't. I wake up early without an alarm and am at my desk writing blog posts by 4 a.m. There is no conflict. We each do it our way. She picked up our son at the airport this week when he arrived for a Christmas visit at 11 p.m., no problem. I took him to the airport at 4 a.m. when he departed a week later, no problem. A movie or theater performance beginning at 8 p.m. is a problem for me but wouldn't be for Debra. We deal with this by attending matinees. We can work things out.
Some people think that the world divides into two kinds of people. Others don't.
This blog post looked at poles on spectra, but neither my wife nor I think this is really how the world works. We are both comfortable with nuance and multi-dimensional thinking in a multicultural world. I see a great deal of white/black, good/evil, us/them thinkers in international affairs and in domestic politics, especially now. Bipartisanship is out of favor. It implies irresolution and lack of principle. Duality messaging elevates people into political power. We are right; they are wrong. We are the good guys; they are the bad guys. We are entitled; they are illegitimate. I don't like that reality, but I see that it gets people on TV and in front of cheering crowds.
That notion of essential duality is itself a Big Lie, a bigger and more pervasive one than Trump's lie about having won the 2020 election. There are more than two kinds of nearly everything.
Toilet seat up or down?
I deal with temptation by giving in early and avoiding stress.