January 18th, 2006

(I am typing this on a keyboard where the "Delete" key is twice as large as on a regular keyboard. Apart from being rather insulting—I guess I must have a lot of errors that require an easier-to-access Delete key—the second half of the Delete key stretches across where the "End" key normally is. So when I think I am pressing "End" I am actually deleting a character. It's taking a lot of time and frustration to get used to this new layout. And this is a Microsoft keyboard too! They should know better!)

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Have you ever noticed how we tend to keep our bad news and miserable feelings to ourselves ... at least for as long as we can before we explode? Since the first instinct is to not hoard this information, but we do it contrary to our instincts anyhow, misery turns out to be an even larger source of -er- misery in our lives.

So how does that work? Well, the answer has everything to do with what we have learned the hard way about what the reception to that bad news will be. Put simply: For whatever reason, people don't like hearing others tell of their sadness or negative feelings. See that? Even our language ("negative") is biased against certain feelings ... as though sadness were to be avoided at all costs ... as though anger, sorrow, fear were all poison and that a normal life consisted of beer and skittles (or farts and giggles). So when we start to express our negative feelings about something, we are treated to the avoidance of others. They tacitly or openly tell us to see only the good side of it, the proverbial silver lining. Or they tell us the negative is really a positive ... that we are wrong to see something negative as negative. Or they just plain don't want to hear about it. They avoid us or try to mind-fuck us into thinking we are somehow wrong or not justified in our feelings. They don't want us to have our negative feelings.

So we're stuck with more feelings. First we have the negative feelings, then we add the artificial societal inducement of shame for having them ("normal people don't act that way"). And to top it off, we get people actively trying to tell us how not to feel ... which is impossible (and we all know it) but they try anyway. The more sentient among us might bark out something like, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to ..." or, put more 21st-century: "Let me have my feelings."

And that is the key: Take some time to have those "bad" feelings. I mean, don't take the rest of your life, either, but take the time to feel those feelings. Savour them. Squish them around between your toes. Touch them lightly with your tongue to see what they taste like. And once you know, you can let them go. But if you don't give them their full due, you are damaging your own nervous system over time. You are making more problems than you think you are solving by trying to ignore (or bury) them.

You see, it's not true that normal people don't have moments of anger or misery or sorrow or regret or envy. It's not even true that these are "bad" feelings. Sure, we don't like them, and sure we want to giggle and feel joy instead ... but the fastest way to that path is through the emotional swamps we sometimes encounter. Sometimes we must wade through the sorrow to get to the joy. That is normal. That is the standard human experience.

So, looking at it in that light, it is possible to think of the so-called "negative" feelings as more positive than anything. We are all going to have varying flavours of unhappiness in our lives. The happier we get, the more important the little details get. That is:

See? If happiness is so damned important, then why do we invent so much unhappiness for ourselves? I'll tell you why: We need it. There is no such thing as happiness if you don't have a polar opposite to compare it to. Hockey players will try and tell you that they succeed by having "No highs, no lows" but that is complete crap—even for an athlete. You must love winning and hate losing. Because if you treated both as grey and dull and uninteresting ... well, now everything is unpleasant.

(Opposites are necessary, check out my 404 page for more information.)

So we can feel unhappy and beat ourselves up for feeling that way (and make ourselves more that way) or we can be unhappy and acknowledge it and let ourselves feel that way for a while (I really must stress that "for a while" bit—we don't need to dwell forever on it). And then we can use the catharsis to extract ourselves from the misery and eventually start to feel other things.

But that does nothing about the people who get impatient or uncomfortable with us when we openly and actively feel bad about something. I guess a certain amount of inner strength and a big dose of non-self-consciousness is needed to deal with those people who are just too much a product of our society and not enough their own selves. In short: They haven't got the strength to hear the unhappiness of others, so we will just have to carry their weight for them.

But let's not be doormats about it. As soon as it's their turn to feel bad, let's remind them of their own attitudes in the reverse situation. In fact, if we can, let's remind them of their own words. Here's an example that goes back to my teen years (you can see how easy this stuff is—teens have it mastered):

I told a woman (in the same church choir I was in) about how I was sick with a cold. She replied breezily, "Oh, you only get colds when you need them!" This was a nice little mind-fuck on me: I got the cold because it was my fault. I "needed" one after all. It was cheerful for her because she could make a happy spin on it. She didn't say, "Geez, that's too bad; I hope you are feeling better," or, "Make sure you stay warm and well-rested!" No, she had to tell me (rather smugly) that it was my fault and that I could have avoided such a fate if only I hadn't "needed" my cold.

Well, you can probably see this coming like a parade down Main Street: Days later she herself got sick, hopefully the same cold and from something we mutually touched. I repaid her with her own words, "Well, that's too bad, but, as you yourself say: 'We only get colds when we need them!'" And said with as much sincerity as I could muster. She replied, "Oh, I know ... I know ..." but I could see her brain melting with the mind-fuck of it being made into her own fault and her own problem.

I did some of my own learning that day, too. I learned that revenge never feels as good as you think it will. And, in fact, I felt bad smacking that woman back with her own words. The universal balancing books may have been brought back into order by me, but it was not very satisfying.

Anyhow, back to my original point. It is only the weak that insist that this world should be happy all the time. It is only the shallow and morally cowardly who shy away from negative feelings and try to pretend nothing is wrong ... and avoid you when you are feeling bad. These people are a product of an ever-increasingly-bizarre Western culture of feel-good frenzy, and because they aren't interested in carrying their own weight in responsibility and tolerance for others' feelings (whatever they may be) we have habitually learned to keep our negative feelings to ourselves—to our own detriment. And once we burst at the seams with all that negativity we are punished twice: Punished by the cowardly for having the negative feelings and punished in general through guilt for having feelings that our culture dictates as being not normal.

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