The Anti-Soapbox: Collected Essays Page 6

the logic of my decision and, through it, realize the options available to her. Perhaps she will remain antagonistic and condemning, seeing me as a coldhearted villain. Regardless, good has come from this ill-fated relationship, for I was helping myself as much as the needy, manipulative woman I cut off, little did I know it at the time. Through this experience, I’ve been armed to deal with subsequent dramas of this nature, including those of a more obviously dangerous bent. Doing so has earned me shouts and curses, and sincere questions of how I could do this—do I have no heart, am I so cold?—but I’ve gained a thick skin to such emotional attacks and the psychological distortions which lie behind them. And I have that original woman to thank, without whom I might have remained fair game for the world’s less-apparent predators.

  Is it “help” when it brings short-term approval but facilitates long-term entropy? Am I a “bad” person for acknowledging one’s self-destructive lifestyle and denying them my resources? Again, it depends on whom you ask and what I’ve done for them lately, but actual, objective reality is indifferent to our opinions, no matter how loudly they are shouted or how often they are repeated.

  It is said that to master life, one must balance compassion and wisdom. I believe I have begun that process, thanks to the unlikely allies who have forced me to make hard decisions. I have experienced many such people, those who want to be cared for rather than caring for themselves, often without knowing it (and not wanting to know). For these, I’ve learned that the only true help I can offer is to inform them of their contradictions in the most compassionate and respectful way I know how. If that doesn’t work, I do nothing at all, in hopes that they might learn and grow through my refusal.

  V. STAY CALM

  Would you decide to feel pain, had you the choice? What if this power was, indeed, in your hands?

  As it were, we make just such a decision daily, in how we react to life, for our reactions can cause us to hurt ourselves by way of mental pain and suffering. And when it comes to reactions, the most powerful we possess is that to remain calm.

  Nowadays, staying calm isn’t always easy. There are the obvious hindrances, chiefly the epidemic of chronic stress, which sours the leisure time awarded us by our conveniences. However, there exist other, subtler reasons for our collective uncalm, and these must be addressed if we are to react well and avoid self-inflicted pain.

  Know this: the biggest obstacle to good, calm reaction is ourselves. We can hinder ourselves in many ways, but the most prominent is through our social customs and their attendant psychology. Presently, our society rewards bad, stressful reactions. Think of someone who loses a relative in a tragic accident—isn’t the survivor expected to be upset (if not hysterical)? And, if these expectations are satisfied, what sort of rewards are bestowed on this person? Sympathy? Attention? Financial support? It brings to mind the term “secondary gain.”

  Likewise, our society often punishes good reaction. If the accident victim’s survivor doesn’t become expectantly upset upon hearing the news, what sort of quiet consequences might await such a response? Rumors? Judgments? Suspicions? The denial of the secondary gain listed above? Through such widespread expectation of a bad reaction, incentives are forged, both for a bad, upsetting reaction, and against a good, positive one. And, because society currently operates primarily on incentives (rather than what is truly beneficial, often times), this social system and its mentality will be acted upon by many people.

  Make no mistake: there is such a thing as a positive reaction to a difficult situation. What if the accident victim’s survivor had, simply, accepted accidents as a fact of life, and prepared for the possibility ahead of time? Then, might that person avoid becoming visibly upset? Indeed, that is a possible reaction to even the most disastrous of news, and a very healthy one, for by reacting well, further disasters can be spared. How many survivors later fall victim themselves, in the original event’s aftermath, due to bad reactions and self-destructive choices? Yet, “the cards are stacked” against such a good reaction, because the current social code requires a certain measure of bad reaction, bringing with it incentives and punishments to this end—sometimes fierce punishments, intense enough to grip the individual’s mind and compel conformity (often on a subconscious level). Worse, we have ways of punishing even the acknowledgement of this state of things. How often is a whistleblower singled out instead of heard out? Pointing out the brutal underbelly of the present social code is often met with mockery, finger-pointing, blame-shifting, or just plain dismissal.

  Not only will the passengers react badly when the boat starts to sink, but they’ll punish anyone who acknowledges the leak beforehand.

  So, this is the first hurdle to be cleared before one can react well and choose not to self-inflict pain: realizing the system of social incentives that encourages bad reaction and discourages the good. And, as important is the fact that this system hinges on the approval of one’s peers. Only by understanding this element of approval and disapproval, and letting it go, may this system be thwarted and the doorway to good reaction opened. Otherwise, this self-destructive system continues, to be handed down to our children.

  In my experience, successfully staying calm was not rewarded by those around me. Faced with overwhelming anxiety and other problems stemming from generalized bad reaction, I was forced to change, requiring years of inner work. However, upon mastering my reactions and then putting this knowledge into practice, I wasn’t met with accolade or congratulation, but subtle punishment and resentment by others (often just because I wasn’t falling into line and reacting badly with everyone else). I was also met with suspicion, and quiet accusation that there was something “wrong” with me—all because, in the face of a difficult situation, I chose to keep my cool instead of inflicting pain on myself by becoming upset. I don’t believe my experience is rare, or at all uncommon. Luckily for me, I was able to resist the pressure to conform to this self-destructive social code, thanks to having shed my need for approval; but how many would go the other way, being deterred from good reaction in the face of such reprimand? Is it any surprise, then, that we find ourselves with the unhealthy mental habits that are so common today?

  By and large, we would rather stay with the group and jump off the bridge than be singled out.

  There is another barrier to good reaction, also rooted in ourselves: believing that there is no option but to react badly, so there appears to be no choice. That is, we commonly believe that “bad” situations must make us feel bad, and that only in “good” situations can we feel good. Logical, yes, but untrue, and very unhealthy. These ideas, too, are promoted and reinforced by the social factors described above, including that where the approval of others grants “permission” to be happy, this occurring only after we’ve satisfied the complex rituals and charades demanded by our culture. Consequently, we not only experience much unnecessary pain and suffering, but deprive ourselves of as much happiness. Go ahead, folks: if you’re happy, be happy. You don’t have to depend on anyone else’s say-so.

  However, don’t think I’m scapegoating society in this area, for good reaction is, once again, largely the responsibility of the individual.

  The problem is, first, a matter of awareness: we are, on the whole, just unaware that we even have a choice in the matter of how we respond to life experience. As for why and how this occurs, it’s complicated, as well as different from person to person; but generally speaking, it arises from simple omission. Grow up knowing only bad reaction, surrounded by those who know only bad reaction, and a person is likely to conform to this quiet consensus (especially when impressed with the incentives and punishments mentioned earlier). Consider a fish and the ocean: being born in water, knowing only water, surrounded by other fish who know only water, the fish will be unaware of so much as the concept of water, as to be ignorant of its very existence. It’s the same with us: after being born and raised in an ocean of bad reaction, one is unlikely to be aware of any alternative, as to never know better. To them,
bad reaction is, instead, just reaction.

  The effects of this condition are enormous, especially on our psychology. Such an upbringing typically shapes the mind’s most fundamental, subconscious thoughts, those which determine how we perceive ourselves and the world. Then, a person’s moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings are dictated by social influence, so that the individual is honestly unmet with the bad, damaging reactions they choose daily. And, because their environment so reinforces that skewed reality, the illusion of validity is completed, to the point that the individual might be unmet with the very possibility of the scenario proposed in this essay. For such a person, immersed in a social “ocean” of bad reaction (and the fears and stresses which usually accompany it), the very idea of internal reaction would be foreign to them.

  To put the power of reaction in perspective, consider the effects of alcohol. When under its influence, one can experience great upheaval yet remain fully detached, impervious to what’s happening around them. Why? Because the drug has distorted their awareness of reality, so that their situation fails to register for the most