intentions and (karmic?) investment

A while back I asked a friend of mine a strange question (surprise surprise). But it was one of those questions that I meant honestly (exactly as I phrased it) that was taken as criticism. He had all these obligations that looked to me like opportunities. But they were clearly weighing him down (in all kinds of ways, each one distinct). And as he told me about them (in a way that, I guess, might have sounded like complaining) I couldn't help but wonder how that worked, internally. I guess if I'd meant it as criticism, I would have phrased the question more carefully, but since I already felt like I was on his side (like, somehow, we were part of the same mystery) I just asked, "How is it that these things—these wonderful things that you're, far as I can tell, fortunate to get to do—get you down? Don't you like doing all that neat stuff? Shouldn't it be exciting and invigorating, not burdensome and exhausting?"

I meant it with an implicit "I'm on your side; I believe you; I really do want to understand(; I'm not suggesting that you don't, somehow, deserve to react exactly as you do)".

I asked because I felt myself completely capable of—and scared to death of—that kind of reaction.

I guess I'm nervous about prioritizing. I'm nervous about making the wrong decision about anything. And I guess that I've avoided this conundrum so far in my life by limiting myself to only the maximum number of commitments—personal, professional, or otherwise—that I could conceivably handle, were they to hit me all at once (though, admittedly, only by overextending myself from time to time).

You could do the same thing, I suppose, by refusing to make specific time commitments, to allow room for reshuffling right up to the last minute, but at some point it became clear to me that doing that conferred the same kind of lack of respect that I was trying to avoid by limiting my commitments in the first place.

But this seems an awful lot like my solution to teenage lack of self-esteem: I decided not to care. (And, obviously, everyone cares (from time to time, at least).)

So I guess the problem is, I avoided the question this time around by deciding that no one /else/ cared. And I still can't quite believe that they do (though, of course, I understand it intellectually). So now, suddenly (as another friend of mine put it this afternoon), I seem to have put enough out into the universe that some of it is coming back around. And it's coming back around in amazing ways. And it's coming back around in all kinds of different forms, each one distinct. And it's coming back around in the form of passive commitments, and necessary prioritization, and a desperate need to explain, explicitly, everything I thought I knew or had implied, and (suddenly!) an understanding that the synchronicity of values systems that only seem to be in lockstep because they've never quite competed is actually really important.

But I think the point is, when I say "I love you" it basically means—you're at the top of my list. You have the trump card, whenever you want to use it. And also, it's high time I figured out what /my/ trump card is.