It's been awhile since I've visited myself here. Myself meaning who I think I am and my perceptions of the environments I live in. There are things about these environments I have yet to fully understand. On some level I understand the need to vent frustration; the need to be (for lack of a better word) an asshole. What I don't understand is why humans do what we do to each other once we realize what we're doing is not the optimal way to handle things. Is it easier to rely on habit and pattern despite having the desire to try a different approach? Do we really, as some would suggest, punish others for what we believe are our own shortcomings? Can we only interpret others as we see ourselves? Maybe, but I'm still not sure.
For all that I've written on this blog, all that I've read, all I've reflected on in my mind, I still take things personally. I'm not sure there's a way around that. Things seep into me - a harsh tone, a slight hint of unhappiness, a hurried demand, a negative response based on little substance. At times I break down. I cry. I wipe away the tears and start over. Sometimes I hold on to that energy, I let it boil and steam, and eventually it seeps out into my own display of frustration and "assholeness." It's not my intention, but the fact I'm human takes over. At times I think I'm not really being an ass. I mean, after all, I tend to equate firmly stating the truth and what I need to being an ass. Is there something in my DNA or my learned predilections that prevent me from seeing this simple thing others seem to take for granted as "okay"? Maybe. Maybe that's an HSP thing or maybe it's a combination of environmental cues and nature. I don't know for sure, but I do know it's something I can't quite master.
Unhappiness. I guess that's what it boils down to. People can't contain the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the "whatever" boiling beneath the surface. So they let it out. Because it can't stay in anymore. It's got to leave. And the rest of us around them become sponges for the energy. It's transformed within us, carrying its anger, its upset damage, its torture, even its darkness. Then it becomes us. A part unseen until something else triggers its "too-muchness." What did I do to invite this?, we ask. Somewhere inside we know it's not us, it's something we can't control but want to grab and release into the unseen.
It's not the way to give a voice to our injury, our confusion, our inadequacy, our underlying fear we contain no significance. Being an asshole is the easy way out; an externalization; a tool of dismissal and relinquished responsibility. This past week it came in a few forms - some conventional, some straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster. When a 70s plus man wearing yellow shorts, tube socks, and a printed tucked in tee stands in your office yelling about how his circa 2004ish Verizon cell phone no longer works and his government account is preventing him from buying a new one, all you can do is imprint the laughable story. But it makes you wonder.
Have I acted this way? I probably have. Without reason. Without justification. Without thought as to who it was that was receiving this energy. This destructible energy that does nothing. It sits there, hanging like black heavy rain clouds that won't spill because they're too busy rumbling. It seeps, like a poisoned elixir that starts out with the promise of bloomed petals and ends in a dried up stem. And it doesn't end. It continues. Until we learn there's a better way. Until we realize humans can't treat each other as if someone else, something else is the reason.
Not until we realize this doesn't feel good. Not until we realize what we've done; what we do. Then it's a whispered I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know. I realize. I can't. I must. Do something else. Something different. Something called respect. A little something called kind-ness.
