Character
​ The first drawer in the Light Troll’s toolbox is the smallest, and fits their Character. Your character is the stuff you are responsible for, which in consequence is just about everything, but in fact is really just the quality of your expectations, and your intentions. Once you know your general intentions (like “to do good in the world”) and you’ve refined an at least somewhat realistic set of expectations for how you can expect the world to behave, EVERYTHING else you feel, think, and do follows naturally from there.
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This is where we see another major distinction between Light and Dark Trolls. We already know that Dark Trolls take SOMETHING too seriously, and that equates to them being jarred by some particular expectation, and so they train all of their intention towards correcting the reality that produced the expectation. Of course trying to change reality, reality being that which changes, is an impossibly futile task that is going to happen anyway, and since the Dark Troll doesn’t see this, they try in vain thinking that if they make their persona just a little bit more elaborate, it will finally be the perfect mouth piece to speak “Truth” to reality.
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Light Trolls on the other hand don’t take ANYTHING seriously, they know it’s bad for their health. To speak seriously is to speak with the potential for tragedy, or it's to say the subject matter is “solemn” or “grave”. A major point of Light Trolling is if you are ALWAYS sincere, saying what you mean, keeping good intentions, and trying your best, then there is no need to worry about the gravity of the situation. You only need to worry about how important the stakes are if you AREN’T always trying your best, and you need to figure out when to put in sincere effort, and when you don’t need to bother. For these reasons, the Light Troll goes in the exact opposite direction with their character, and they seek to keep their character as simple as possible. The Light Troll knows that when trying to have I to I interactions, the fewer of our little attachments and character embellishments we bring to the meeting, the easier making the connection will be.
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If you only need to remember that you’re a fool, then ALL the rest of your mental capacities are available to learn and adapt to the situation at hand... and if you know you’re a fool, then asking questions to do so will also be your top priority. And since every answer leads to 10 more questions, in this way, a true Fool will acquire a LARGE body of knowledge... and anyone who acquires a large body of knowledge will inevitably realize they’re a Fool... that is to say, they too will find they have MANY more questions than answers.
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Perhaps this is a good spot to clear up another important distinction that is crucial for character building, and that is the difference between Style and Quality...
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One piece of advice that seems to be far more popular than it deserves to be is “just be yourself”. It’s not that I disagree with the sentiment, more simply that it’s advice that is only useful to people who already understand it and hence don’t need to be told... and just sounds glib to the people who don’t understand it and DO need to be told. After all, this advice is usually uttered to a person who is already aware that they are in fact stuck being themselves, they cannot be anyone else if they tried, and they are trying to figure out who they are.
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Advice that is also popular, though to a slightly lesser extent, and seems to stem for the same sort of sentiment is “find your own style”. Now this is a little better, this at least gets us to the notion of ourselves as dynamic entities best understood through our patterns of change relative to others, instead of trying to identify with only a single snapshot of ourselves in a given moment. While in that sense this piece of advice seems a little more helpful right out of the gate, if we keep trying to dig deeper, we find a contradiction in the terms. The trouble is that “style” implies a manner of doing something in relation to something else, so if you went out searching for a style, ANY style that you see out in the world CANNOT be your OWN style.
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To bring us back around to character building and the difference between Style and Quality, let’s start with quality and imagine a fire. What qualities does a fire have? Well they are hot, they are bright, they smell like ash, and they are dynamic in shape and always changing. Now while those ARE my subjective impression of all the fires I have come across, those are in no way arbitrary distinctions, and I could not choose to perceive them otherwise if I wanted to, I couldn’t touch it and decide not to get burned for example. It is also important to note that the fire doesn’t intend to have these qualities, it doesn’t need to “keep up appearances”, Now let’s use a painter looking at that fire to get a better understanding of Style. When the painter sits down, they want to produce a similar effect the fire had on you with their paint, paint brushes, and a canvas... but how can they do this?? Paint is not hot, it is not bright, it is not dynamic, and it smells, but not like ash. Because the painter and their tools lacks the qualities of the thing to be represented, they must develop discipline and skill in the art of painting, and if one is committed and diligent while honing the skill, they will learn a series of paint mixtures and brush strokes that allows them to paint with all the style of a fire, even while neither the artist nor the canvas or paint contain any of the qualities of the fire. However even in this description which is supposed to draw a clear distinction between quality and style, the fact that quality is the deeper aspect is made evident by the fact the painter needs to focus ALL their attention on the fire’s qualities, while the fire pays no heed whatsoever to the style of the painter.
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Once one knows how to get with their intrinsic qualities in this way, they can simply follow them through life, and it is everyone ELSE that will notice their style.... So don’t “be yourself” and don’t worry about “finding your own style”... just be true to your qualities, and when you’re doing it right, people will like your style.
