The more room you give to things outside your control (God, fate, spirits, the universe), the more there is to respond to. Spiritual people are always being tested because “surrender” increases the surface area through which reality can reach you. Coincidence becomes difficult to isolate, and what happens today changes the meaning of what happened six months ago, which changes a decision made tomorrow. You’re now in a feedback loop with the unseen. The control freak ends up there too, monitoring every variable, adjusting, correcting. They look like opposites but they’re running the same process in reverse. One is constantly trying to anticipate life, while the other is constantly interpreting it.

I think being hard to offend online has a lot to do with having a strong sense of what you meant in the first place, even when you’re being deeply unserious or know it could be interpreted in different ways. When someone responds to a version of your argument that exists entirely in their own head, even if what they say is awful, it doesn’t really feel directed at you. They’re reacting to something you didn’t say and don’t believe, so there’s not much to take personally. Being easily offended requires, at least a little, being willing to let someone else tell you what you meant.