An Experiment

An experiment

Give people small things to take care of

That you can afford to lose

Follow up. See what happens. Have data

Inspired by: watching birds. Remembering I once had 2 parakeets as a kid I liked a lot. We gave them away to family friends when I got a cat. The idea was they would be safer. Both were gone within 6 months

nobody really did anything wrong. one flew into a window and died. one flew out of a door and never came back

flying is what birds do

when i was not watching them, the birds did what birds do

it is obvious, that things do what they do even when we are not looking, but because we are not looking, how do we know?

A different example. I stayed in a friends room while she is away. To thank her I leave her 2 plants. I come back 6 months later. Plants are huge. She redecorated the entire room. From navy blue now everything is wood or cream fabrics. Now enormous plants are a key focal point framing the bed.

Probably if one ran these experiments intentionally or a lot it could be fascinating

It can be unexpected. For example this second character is a spiky sort of lady. But she was nice to the plants 🪴

I gave her gifts in fact because she could get pretty spiky if she does not receive gifts

there will be surprises

you can give a book. often if you loan somebody a book you should expect to never see this book ever again

sometimes if you give someone a book, they will write you notes in the book, and give it back

sometimes they will give you that book back, with notes, and another book, or two books

you can learn about what you yourself want to be more like, when you let people surprise you

you can let people surprise you by making yourself open to surprise by establishing low stakes situations in which you genuinely do not know what is going to happen

when you start making predictions about people’s character, you can start to trip yourself up here.

“I will give her a plant because I bet she will mess it up, and then I will have evidence that she messes this up and I shouldn’t give her more plants to take care of because she cannot take care of things” would not be in the spirit of the exercise I suggest

It is actually the opposite of the spirit!

the spirit is a spirit of generosity towards people’s capacities, and generally to have an appreciation for what happens to “things” when you are not looking

I have learned over the years, that even if a friend seems “responsible” to not store anything in their house for more than a few weeks, because what happens to objects in houses is that they get lost — especially large houses that have the kind of space that can store things.

This would end up being tagged not as a quality of any of my friends, but rather as a “quality of large houses and the objects inside them.”