Bemused.

Setting: Two friends, Alex and Ben, are sitting in Alex’s living room late at night. Empty coffee mugs sit on the table between them amidst scattered papers and a laptop displaying lines of code.

Characters:

• Alex: A software engineer, values knowledge and creation, exploring the idea of mental compartmentalization.
• Ben: A friend with an interest in philosophy and psychology, perhaps a writer or teacher.

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The Dialogue:

(The room is quiet except for the soft hum of the laptop. Alex stares thoughtfully at the ceiling.)

Ben: You seem a million miles away tonight, Alex. Still wrestling with that idea we talked about last week? That Adwaita, non-duality thing?

Alex: Yeah, sort of. It’s interesting how it pops up. Remember I told you about that weird night, kinda high, kinda depressed? I had this crystal-clear thought: if everything is fundamentally connected, just ‘one thing,’ then getting mad at someone is literally like being mad at my own hand for bumping into something. Pointless. Unproductive. Like that old man yelling at a cloud meme.

Ben: That’s a powerful insight, man. Even stripped of the spiritual stuff, it makes psychological sense. Anger mostly corrodes the person feeling it, right? It’s not just about accepting things you can’t control…

Alex: No, it’s deeper. It’s that the idea of separate ‘things’ to be controlled is the illusion itself. There’s no ‘other’ out there, really.

Ben: Right, the illusion of separation. Rumi had that line, didn’t he? “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there… Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.” It’s about finding that space where the usual conflicts just dissolve.

Alex: (Sits up, leaning forward) I get that. Intellectually, it’s beautiful. But living like that? Letting everything flow together? I’m actually leaning the other way. Hard.

Ben: Other way how?

Alex: Like… intentionally separating things. Keeping my real thinking – the coding, the learning, the ‘me’ I actually value – in its own clean room, totally walled off from the day-to-day mess. Work, chores, dealing with people, just basic ‘keeping the lights on’ stuff… let that run on autopilot. Like a reflex.

Ben: Dissociating, basically? Putting up internal walls so the ‘real you’ doesn’t get hit by stray emotions or frustrations?

Alex: Exactly. If that part of me isn’t emotionally invested, then there’s no conflict, no anger, none of that draining crap. I can just be ‘normal Alex’ as needed, do the job, pay the bills, while the part of me that actually matters – the part that loves learning new things, building software just for the hell of it, even if no one sees it – is safe and sound, doing its thing undisturbed.

Ben: Hmm. I get wanting to protect your focus, especially for the kind of deep work you do. But… doesn’t that come at a cost? Walling yourself off like that? Don’t you lose out on, I don’t know, genuine connection? Or ideas that might spark from that messy reality? It sounds less like being resilient and more like… hiding. Building a fortress. Are you sure the ‘you’ inside the walls is the whole you?

Alex: (Shakes his head) See, that’s where I think the standard ‘connect with everything’ narrative goes wrong. It assumes one way is ‘better’. Who defines ‘genuine connection’ or ‘whole self’? I define my ‘true self’. And maybe my true self functions best with strong walls. Think about biology – prokaryotes are simple bags of stuff, all mixed together. Eukaryotes, like our cells, became complex because they built internal walls! A nucleus to protect the important stuff – the DNA. Organelles for specialized tasks. Compartmentalization enabled complexity. It’s a design principle.

Ben: Okay, the eukaryote analogy… that’s clever. You’re saying separation allows for specialization and protection of the core function.

Alex: And think about software! Why do we have abstraction layers, like the OSI model? Yeah, you could flatten some layers for tiny speed boosts, but it becomes a tangled mess. Layers make it robust, maintainable, scalable. My ‘genius’ layer stays clean, focused on knowledge and building, while the ‘physical/social interaction’ layer handles its business without crashing the core system. It’s just good architecture for the system I want to run.

Ben: (Leans back, considering) So it’s not avoidance, it’s deliberate internal architecture optimized for knowledge and creation. Protecting the ‘nucleus’. Fair enough. But what happens when the firewall inevitably gets breached? When some idiot cuts you off in traffic, or a project crashes spectacularly, and that jolt of pure frustration punches right through to the ‘control room’? Perfect separation isn’t possible, right?

Alex: (A slight smile) Right. Walls get breached. That’s where the other idea comes back in, but tactically. It’s my psychological hack. When there’s a short-circuit, when the outside world unexpectedly triggers the ‘core me,’ I just deploy the “one-is-all, all-is-one” mantra.

Ben: You use the oneness idea as an emergency shutdown?

Alex: Sort of. More like an emotional circuit breaker. I tell myself, “Okay, this idiot, this situation, it’s part of the same system, getting mad is pointless self-sabotage.” It doesn’t have to be my fundamental operating principle, I just use it because it works in that moment to cool things down, detach, and get the walls back up so I can get back to what I actually care about. It’s a tool to restore the preferred state.

Ben: (Nods slowly) So, compartmentalization as the main strategy for focus and stability, and the ‘oneness’ insight as a targeted tool for emotional regulation when the system gets overloaded. Pragmatic. Very… Alex.