Epigraph: Deep Dream, 2017 — the “Boys of Summer” cover one, the one where she sings about seeing him everywhere, even behind the sunglasses.

Most of the time we’re not actually arguing about the thing in front of us.
Instead, we’re fighting the decoy — the safe, tidy stand-in we put there to avoid touching whatever’s underneath. You see it in houses, offices, relationships, etc. You see it in yourself most of all. The argument, the quirk, the habit, the “I’m fine,” the thing you pretend matters because the thing that really matters still feels radioactive.

Once you start noticing this pattern you can’t unsee it. You realize how many tiny skirmishes in your life were just rehearsals for a truth you didn’t want to say out loud. And how many times other people came at you sideways not because they were petty, but because they were protecting something tender and didn’t know another way.

This is where the essay begins.

I. The Decoy in Yourself

My own decoys have never been super dramatic.
They show up in the places no one would think to look: diet, routine, food rules I adjusted and re-adjusted until even I couldn’t remember what the point was. I’d get fussy about what I could or couldn’t eat, what was “safe,” which days were exceptions. It felt like control, but it wasn’t. It was a decoy — something tidy to fuss over when the real issue was elsewhere.

Surface-level arguments make excellent shields. They give you something to grip, something you can adjust without changing anything that matters. They let you believe you’re fixing the thing, when really you’re just polishing the handle of the locked door.

Everyone does this.
The trick is noticing it early enough to stop polishing.

II. The Decoy in Others

If you can spot it in yourself, you start spotting it in everyone else.

Someone blows up about dishes, or a missed message, or a tone you barely remember using. But it’s not about the dishes, or the message, or the tone. The decoy is standing in front wearing a name tag, and the truth is sitting in the back of the room with its shoes off.

You learn to listen for the emotional key change — that little drop in the voice where the deeper thing is trying to come through.

People don’t argue about the thing they’re arguing about. They argue about the thing they can name.

III. Decoys in the wild (Home)

Take playing music around the house.
Someone wants it louder, someone wants it quieter, someone keeps changing the song halfway through. The conversation is supposedly about volume or mood — but everyone knows it’s actually about space, attention, presence.
It’s rarely about what it seems to be about. It’s about how seen (or unseen) someone feels that day.

Decoys let people stay safe inside small arguments because the true ones feel too exposed.

IV. Decoys in the Wild (Office Edition)

Workplaces are full of decoys because no one wants to name what’s actually happening.

Take something as apparently boring as office seating. One person wants the window, another wants the corner, another complains about the AC blowing on their neck. It all looks like preferences — but the real story is proximity to power, avoiding someone who drains you, or trying to reclaim a little control your job doesn’t actually give you.

No one says that, of course.
They argue about airflow.

And by the time you see it clearly, it’s almost funny — how earnestly everyone insists the argument is about a chair.

V. When Someone Shows You Who They Are

Then there are the moments — the small, good ones — where someone cuts through all of it.

Like today: I emailed Kohei from my work to say I’d be five minutes late for supervising gym CAS (weightlifting), expecting the usual shuffle or ripple of inconvenience. But he just took it. No commentary, no guilt trip, not even a pause.

A gesture that clean tells you everything you need to know. Not about the schedule. About the man.

It hits you that for all the decoys you and everyone else keep arguing with, some people just solve the problem and move on. No storyline. No subtext. No self-importance.
Just a straight, humane act.

If you’re paying attention, you learn from people like that.

VI. The Bottom Line

If there’s a moral here — and I don’t always like pieces with morals — but nonetheless, it’s this:

Try to catch the decoy early. It saves everyone a little time and a little quiet pain.

Some days you’ll manage it.
Some days you won’t.
And that’s okay too.

For Kohei, simply.

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