Breaking the Cycle of Abuse; Humanism.
I spend an unfortunate amount of my time feeling frustrated and emotionally uncomfortable. Which is just a little ironic, considering how when i think of this, i feel frustrated and emotionally uncomfortable about how often i already feel that way. It's one of those difficult-to-break-free-from, self-perpetuating cycles. But here's where i believe the source is:
Today, i worked a regular morning shift at the coffee shop where i'm employed, and i was in a relatively good mood. I was engaging with each customer, asking "how are you?" to most everyone i spoke with, singing along to the songs i knew, running between the drive window and the espresso machine when it was busy. I've been pretty low for a while because my poor health had been pressing on me like a heavy yolk, but once i had my impacted wisdom teeth removed, i started to feel better, i have more energy again now.
And yet, the subjects of the conversation i shared with my coworkers in the duration of this shift were things we were frustrated about or uncomfortable with. I have a coworker who is, for lack of a better term, fatphobic, and she and i sometimes like to vent and agree with each other about other people's habits and how gross we find them. Later, too, my other coworker is dealing with someone else's problems because they share a living space, on top of her new situation of having to find a new living space due to that same person who has their own problems that they're projecting on my coworker. These are situations that trigger genuine and justified negative responses, and seeking solidarity in the form of venting and discussing the things that bother us are perfectly justified, valid, and normal ways of coping with these issues.
There's an old axiom i've had brought to my attention by a couple of different people recently that says, "Where attention goes, energy follows." Makes sense, right? Sort of like when you're learning to ride a bike, you have to be sure to look where you want to go, and not where you're afraid of something happening if you go there. But when you apply this to our feelings, we feel frustrated because of outside situations, and then we have to deal with our negative feelings by giving them attention, because if we neglect or deny them, they fester and settle in deep and end up coming out later in strange and often terrible ways. But when we pay our attention to our negative feelings, our energy also follows suit and our energy contributes to the negativity.
It's incredibly difficult not to emulate a reflection of your environment. Consider cultures and the individuals therein. Mountain people often look like mountain people, and act like mountain people, because they live in the mountains, and survival takes certain habits and different things are convenient or not based on the requirements of the surroundings. There's a culture suited to the environment that people participate in due to the demands. New Yorkers often appear to behave in a way that says they're not wasting time, because in New York, many things are considered a waste of time and everyone is trying to get as much done as possible. If you want to survive in New York, you have to know how to be assertive enough to get what you need without any excess. Here in Utah, more specifically Salt Lake, we sit in coffee shops to do our work, school related or otherwise, we make conversation and chat with each other, and we discuss whatever is on our minds. Salt Lakeians are well enough aware to understand that 'The World' is not the way we seem to want it to be, and we're rightfully upset about it.
However... this is a habit in the making, and it's going, so far i believe, unchecked. People are talking about how shitty we find things, but i'm not really seeing anyone address the fact that at least half the time, we talk about stuff that makes us mad, and if we talked about the same things with a different attitude, suddenly everything could easily be much less shitty. I wanna talk about human potential, i wanna talk about the quintessence of the joy we find in the little things, i wanna talk about how excited i am for whenever people finally end up in contact with non-human intelligence, and i do! I bring these things up with anyone who gives me more than a minute of their attention. But somehow i find that the conversation always ends up turning back towards how miserable we feel about one thing or another.
One more point of irony resides in the same point i made before, where attention goes, energy follows, and i'm typing an entire blog post about how i'm mad about how much of the time i feel mad. What a ridiculous human habit.
I have every intention of breaking it. I'm painfully aware of my discontent with the state of the world i perceive (which is ultimately so limited in that i am both young and an individual in the world), but i am equally aware of how easy it could be to make the world be the way i, and i hope We, want it to be. All it will take is everyone. Everyone is capable of contributing to one cause or another--everyone IS constantly contributing to one cause, one culture, one system or another. Every purchase you make, everything you talk about, every event you attend says something about you that's interpretable through statistics. Every single one of us is a drop in a bucket, and just one drop... but a drop nonetheless.
I choose to eat vegetarian food because i disagree with the cruelty so many animals suffer their entire lives, and my choice to abstain from contributing my tender, from my income, statistically calculates me into the part of the world that wants livestock industries to be different, or else gone. I'm making a difference. A fractional, arguably infinitesimal difference, but it's still a difference! I'm modeling my life after the ideas i think are best and that will allow me to thrive to the greatest possible degree.
Fortunately in my opinion, i'm not alone in my vegetarianism. Current research says about 3.2 percent of Americans are vegetarian, and while that's still a smaller number than i hoped it would be, i have every confidence that it will steadily increase as time goes on. People are waking up, opening their eyes, deciding what they want to know and how they feel about it for themselves. It's a slowly growing trend.
But for some reason, another existing trend i've noticed is just plain old being angry. I feel angry a lot, when i think about bigger issues outside myself. I also feel angry when i think about personal issues i have to endure because of my manifestation of the symptoms of those same bigger issues. I went to the doctor today and paid a $40 copay just for the visit. While i paid the copay without complaint, in the back of my mind, i'm still screaming about the fact that so so many people are against free healthcare, especially people who are in charge of whether or not healthcare becomes free. I know i'm not alone in this though too. I've seen the comments, discussions, shared and reshared posts about how messed up it is. Given, i do choose the media i'm surrounded by for at least some part. But i'd rather know than not, and that means being aware of the national conversation. Other people in other places are angry too. People of color, especially those in poverty, are angry about how many POC have been fatally shot by police. The people of Flint, Michigan are angry that they still don't have clean, safe water available. Women are angry that there's still a perceived wage gap, and that the patriarchy affects them in all these terrible negative ways.
I personally have experienced oppression in my life, and i know it's real. The hierarchy of demographics is inherently unjust, the patriarchy is alive and real and hurts everyone, even those many consider to be at the top of it. Yes, men suffer due to the patriarchy. White people suffer due to racism too (which is not at all to compare it to the suffering POC have endured). Everyone is contributing to these issues, and everyone suffers from them.
So it's going to take everyone to change it. Decide to be better. Choose where your attention goes. Become a vegetarian, or choose to purchase your meats from free range and cruelty-free sources. Give your attention to things you have control over, like your Self, and what you talk about and say to people. Choose to be aware of when you're dwelling on your negativity beyond it's fruitfulness and decide not to feed that wolf.
Vote. Please vote. If not for your local representatives, then when the next primary election rolls around. Abstaining from voting doesn't weaken the system, it silences your power as an individual with an opinion. Even when worst comes to worst and you're forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, choose the lesser of the two evils, lest your silence allows the worse to come to power. You get a say. All it takes is saying something. If you never speak, you'll never be heard. You miss all of the shots you don't take.
Be a source of positivity in the life of others, and your karma will grow positivity. This is not an easy thing to do. But you can. I can be more positive than those around me. I can redirect the conversation to a lighter, more joyful tone. I can make any and every interaction a neutral to positive one. It just takes me. And i already am.
Humans have so much power, and the source of this cycle of negativity we suffer... is ourselves. All of us are doing this to each other and to ourselves, and we don't have to.
A world in which we can all, universally agree we are happy is not some sci-fi myth, and it's not out of reach. It will take time and work, but if everyone does their best, then you end up with the very best humanity as a whole has to offer, which is incredible. I'm thinking of the renaissance era, when humanity thrived and technology flourished. We can have that again. Our history is only a story we tell ourselves, both the good and the bad are exactly as real as we believe they are, and i'm pretty sure we can all agree we believe history is entirely real, although gone and mostly dead. We get to pick and choose which stories we tell, and how we tell them. If you haven't seen Tomorrowland, i strongly recommend you do. Frankly i think it tells it better than i could, even in a post this long.
At the end of the day, i know that i and probably everyone else who shares my concerns could use a reminder that we already have all the things we need: each other. Love. Joy. Convenient technology. Day and night, the skies land and sea, renewable resources, and most importantly, knowledge. We know things, and we are learning, and the world is getting better. Things do often get worse before they get better, but i believe progress happens in spirals, and relapse is a symptom of healing. Things not only will get better, but they already are getting better. Ignorance is until it is not, and once you know something, you can try your damnedest to forget, but the knowledge is always in there somewhere and you can't make it go away. We are already growing and learning together, and every tomorrow is better than yesterday. We have the privilege of living in a time after our parents, and they had the same privilege compared to their parents. There is still wartime, but it takes up much less space now than it used to. People are planting trees and fighting to save the existing ecosystems in the oceans. Every day, someone comes up with something even better than their last idea, and we and our children and their children will get to reap the benefits of living in a modern age.
So yeah, i spend a lot of time mad. But i don't have to. It would just be a lot easier if everyone else agreed, and decided to be more positive too. I know i'm not alone. Everyone starts somewhere, and from there, the connections grow and increase, and the understanding enlightens. Relationships matter. And i have them. We have them. Everyone has parents, or siblings, or if not those, friends, or coworkers, or service employees. No one is alone. (Not to be corny, but) We're all in this together. I'm so mad all the time because i care so much about literally all of you, and a lot of you aren't that okay, and a lot of you are mad too. I feel for you.
But maybe can we sing some songs together, or like make flower crowns, or cook a good meal and sit together to eat it and enjoy each other's company? Can we maybe try complaining a little less, and do a little more consoling and helping a healing of one another? I can promise you my best. I like to think i'm doing it already. And that same best is only gonna get better every day. Some days will be harder than others, but over all, it's getting better. We can do this. We can make the world into what we want it to be. We can be everything we dream of. But only if we do it together.
All it takes is you and me. And you wanna know a secret that's not so secret, but that i think is one of the very coolest things in this life? You and i are the same thing. We're already one.
We are Humans. Hear us roar.
Today, i worked a regular morning shift at the coffee shop where i'm employed, and i was in a relatively good mood. I was engaging with each customer, asking "how are you?" to most everyone i spoke with, singing along to the songs i knew, running between the drive window and the espresso machine when it was busy. I've been pretty low for a while because my poor health had been pressing on me like a heavy yolk, but once i had my impacted wisdom teeth removed, i started to feel better, i have more energy again now.
And yet, the subjects of the conversation i shared with my coworkers in the duration of this shift were things we were frustrated about or uncomfortable with. I have a coworker who is, for lack of a better term, fatphobic, and she and i sometimes like to vent and agree with each other about other people's habits and how gross we find them. Later, too, my other coworker is dealing with someone else's problems because they share a living space, on top of her new situation of having to find a new living space due to that same person who has their own problems that they're projecting on my coworker. These are situations that trigger genuine and justified negative responses, and seeking solidarity in the form of venting and discussing the things that bother us are perfectly justified, valid, and normal ways of coping with these issues.
There's an old axiom i've had brought to my attention by a couple of different people recently that says, "Where attention goes, energy follows." Makes sense, right? Sort of like when you're learning to ride a bike, you have to be sure to look where you want to go, and not where you're afraid of something happening if you go there. But when you apply this to our feelings, we feel frustrated because of outside situations, and then we have to deal with our negative feelings by giving them attention, because if we neglect or deny them, they fester and settle in deep and end up coming out later in strange and often terrible ways. But when we pay our attention to our negative feelings, our energy also follows suit and our energy contributes to the negativity.
It's incredibly difficult not to emulate a reflection of your environment. Consider cultures and the individuals therein. Mountain people often look like mountain people, and act like mountain people, because they live in the mountains, and survival takes certain habits and different things are convenient or not based on the requirements of the surroundings. There's a culture suited to the environment that people participate in due to the demands. New Yorkers often appear to behave in a way that says they're not wasting time, because in New York, many things are considered a waste of time and everyone is trying to get as much done as possible. If you want to survive in New York, you have to know how to be assertive enough to get what you need without any excess. Here in Utah, more specifically Salt Lake, we sit in coffee shops to do our work, school related or otherwise, we make conversation and chat with each other, and we discuss whatever is on our minds. Salt Lakeians are well enough aware to understand that 'The World' is not the way we seem to want it to be, and we're rightfully upset about it.
However... this is a habit in the making, and it's going, so far i believe, unchecked. People are talking about how shitty we find things, but i'm not really seeing anyone address the fact that at least half the time, we talk about stuff that makes us mad, and if we talked about the same things with a different attitude, suddenly everything could easily be much less shitty. I wanna talk about human potential, i wanna talk about the quintessence of the joy we find in the little things, i wanna talk about how excited i am for whenever people finally end up in contact with non-human intelligence, and i do! I bring these things up with anyone who gives me more than a minute of their attention. But somehow i find that the conversation always ends up turning back towards how miserable we feel about one thing or another.
One more point of irony resides in the same point i made before, where attention goes, energy follows, and i'm typing an entire blog post about how i'm mad about how much of the time i feel mad. What a ridiculous human habit.
I have every intention of breaking it. I'm painfully aware of my discontent with the state of the world i perceive (which is ultimately so limited in that i am both young and an individual in the world), but i am equally aware of how easy it could be to make the world be the way i, and i hope We, want it to be. All it will take is everyone. Everyone is capable of contributing to one cause or another--everyone IS constantly contributing to one cause, one culture, one system or another. Every purchase you make, everything you talk about, every event you attend says something about you that's interpretable through statistics. Every single one of us is a drop in a bucket, and just one drop... but a drop nonetheless.
I choose to eat vegetarian food because i disagree with the cruelty so many animals suffer their entire lives, and my choice to abstain from contributing my tender, from my income, statistically calculates me into the part of the world that wants livestock industries to be different, or else gone. I'm making a difference. A fractional, arguably infinitesimal difference, but it's still a difference! I'm modeling my life after the ideas i think are best and that will allow me to thrive to the greatest possible degree.
Fortunately in my opinion, i'm not alone in my vegetarianism. Current research says about 3.2 percent of Americans are vegetarian, and while that's still a smaller number than i hoped it would be, i have every confidence that it will steadily increase as time goes on. People are waking up, opening their eyes, deciding what they want to know and how they feel about it for themselves. It's a slowly growing trend.
But for some reason, another existing trend i've noticed is just plain old being angry. I feel angry a lot, when i think about bigger issues outside myself. I also feel angry when i think about personal issues i have to endure because of my manifestation of the symptoms of those same bigger issues. I went to the doctor today and paid a $40 copay just for the visit. While i paid the copay without complaint, in the back of my mind, i'm still screaming about the fact that so so many people are against free healthcare, especially people who are in charge of whether or not healthcare becomes free. I know i'm not alone in this though too. I've seen the comments, discussions, shared and reshared posts about how messed up it is. Given, i do choose the media i'm surrounded by for at least some part. But i'd rather know than not, and that means being aware of the national conversation. Other people in other places are angry too. People of color, especially those in poverty, are angry about how many POC have been fatally shot by police. The people of Flint, Michigan are angry that they still don't have clean, safe water available. Women are angry that there's still a perceived wage gap, and that the patriarchy affects them in all these terrible negative ways.
I personally have experienced oppression in my life, and i know it's real. The hierarchy of demographics is inherently unjust, the patriarchy is alive and real and hurts everyone, even those many consider to be at the top of it. Yes, men suffer due to the patriarchy. White people suffer due to racism too (which is not at all to compare it to the suffering POC have endured). Everyone is contributing to these issues, and everyone suffers from them.
So it's going to take everyone to change it. Decide to be better. Choose where your attention goes. Become a vegetarian, or choose to purchase your meats from free range and cruelty-free sources. Give your attention to things you have control over, like your Self, and what you talk about and say to people. Choose to be aware of when you're dwelling on your negativity beyond it's fruitfulness and decide not to feed that wolf.
Vote. Please vote. If not for your local representatives, then when the next primary election rolls around. Abstaining from voting doesn't weaken the system, it silences your power as an individual with an opinion. Even when worst comes to worst and you're forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, choose the lesser of the two evils, lest your silence allows the worse to come to power. You get a say. All it takes is saying something. If you never speak, you'll never be heard. You miss all of the shots you don't take.
Be a source of positivity in the life of others, and your karma will grow positivity. This is not an easy thing to do. But you can. I can be more positive than those around me. I can redirect the conversation to a lighter, more joyful tone. I can make any and every interaction a neutral to positive one. It just takes me. And i already am.
Humans have so much power, and the source of this cycle of negativity we suffer... is ourselves. All of us are doing this to each other and to ourselves, and we don't have to.
A world in which we can all, universally agree we are happy is not some sci-fi myth, and it's not out of reach. It will take time and work, but if everyone does their best, then you end up with the very best humanity as a whole has to offer, which is incredible. I'm thinking of the renaissance era, when humanity thrived and technology flourished. We can have that again. Our history is only a story we tell ourselves, both the good and the bad are exactly as real as we believe they are, and i'm pretty sure we can all agree we believe history is entirely real, although gone and mostly dead. We get to pick and choose which stories we tell, and how we tell them. If you haven't seen Tomorrowland, i strongly recommend you do. Frankly i think it tells it better than i could, even in a post this long.
At the end of the day, i know that i and probably everyone else who shares my concerns could use a reminder that we already have all the things we need: each other. Love. Joy. Convenient technology. Day and night, the skies land and sea, renewable resources, and most importantly, knowledge. We know things, and we are learning, and the world is getting better. Things do often get worse before they get better, but i believe progress happens in spirals, and relapse is a symptom of healing. Things not only will get better, but they already are getting better. Ignorance is until it is not, and once you know something, you can try your damnedest to forget, but the knowledge is always in there somewhere and you can't make it go away. We are already growing and learning together, and every tomorrow is better than yesterday. We have the privilege of living in a time after our parents, and they had the same privilege compared to their parents. There is still wartime, but it takes up much less space now than it used to. People are planting trees and fighting to save the existing ecosystems in the oceans. Every day, someone comes up with something even better than their last idea, and we and our children and their children will get to reap the benefits of living in a modern age.
So yeah, i spend a lot of time mad. But i don't have to. It would just be a lot easier if everyone else agreed, and decided to be more positive too. I know i'm not alone. Everyone starts somewhere, and from there, the connections grow and increase, and the understanding enlightens. Relationships matter. And i have them. We have them. Everyone has parents, or siblings, or if not those, friends, or coworkers, or service employees. No one is alone. (Not to be corny, but) We're all in this together. I'm so mad all the time because i care so much about literally all of you, and a lot of you aren't that okay, and a lot of you are mad too. I feel for you.
But maybe can we sing some songs together, or like make flower crowns, or cook a good meal and sit together to eat it and enjoy each other's company? Can we maybe try complaining a little less, and do a little more consoling and helping a healing of one another? I can promise you my best. I like to think i'm doing it already. And that same best is only gonna get better every day. Some days will be harder than others, but over all, it's getting better. We can do this. We can make the world into what we want it to be. We can be everything we dream of. But only if we do it together.
All it takes is you and me. And you wanna know a secret that's not so secret, but that i think is one of the very coolest things in this life? You and i are the same thing. We're already one.
We are Humans. Hear us roar.
Comments
Post a Comment