"monkey and woman at peace"

I stayed up very late reading a book by Dan Savage
(of Savage Love). Aside from the fact that my day is
starting equally "late", I enjoyed pondering and laughing out
loud at Dan Savage's advice about sex and relationships.
Even before looking at this book, I was thinking about the
topic

What do I want in my life?

And at this point, I suppose I'm a bit more informed
about all the different ways in which I've stopped short
in pursuing it, often in the form of a bitter compromise.
I think it's the bitterness that's the problem, more than
the compromise.

I also took a brief look at the book on Chrysippus. His
questions,

Is there really something bad or good going on?
Is it appropriate to react emotionally?

are perhaps useful to think about in the context of
"bitter compromise". Bitterness in any form seems
reminiscent of "taking poison and hoping
the other person dies". Recast in less overtly
interpersonal terms, it's like eating shit and calling
it Shinola. Gah, Dan Savage has colonized my
brain! But even before he got in there, my
friends were talking to me about "acceptance",
which is a more positive way of talking about
getting-rid-of-bitterness.

It seems even more "positive" to look at the
first question I mentioned above -- I mean, an
answer to that question would be positive. A
question by itself often seems like a gaping hole.
Presumably there are at least a few things I can
dump into that hole and set afire.

PS. Interesting to think about "krisis" (judgment)
and "crisis" (culturally constructed need for
things like expert intervention or the creation of
group identity). Are we not qualified to make
our on judgments? Well, in the case in which we
judge (a) emotional response to (b) bad things
to be appropriate, Chrysippus, I think, said "no".
We disqualify ourselves, at least temporarily,
from making rational judgments whenever we
make irrational ones.