“Control your emotions, penismith.”
Someone recently yelled that at me while we were arguing about something petty. Of course, he addressed me with my birth name.
I know that he was really addressing himself or projecting but the phrase kept repeating itself in the background of my mind like an alarm that you become increasingly aware of as you awaken from sleep.
I have spent a great deal of time lately trying to understand this this world around me. I have asked my self, what is wisdom. Or more precisely, how can I make wise decisions. To me, this question is seemingly un-answerable because I operate quite differently in different emotional states. Under moderate stress levels, my differences in perception are relatively minor. When highly stressed, I seem to alternate between very different modes of threat assessment and degree of optimism. My emotions are pushed to extremes when stressed and I am unable to maintain a consistency in my goals and aspirations and like many of those who think too much, I am loosing my ability to distinguish that which is real from that which isn’t. IOW, I don’t know when I am being paranoid, like most, and I am un able to re-evaluate past conflicts and decide if I acted appropriately. I suppose that this is, in part, a by-product of my lack of clear cut goals.
I think that I have learned something about my nature and maybe human nature in general. What I will say next is trivial, yet, as I come to see and understand it on a personal level, it seems quite profound.
We are incapable of knowing truths when it comes to things that are not easily measured. We all know how tall we are and how much we weigh. We can compare these measurements to various averages. We are also usually aware of various facts such as where and when we were born and the identity of our parents and we know who we dated and where we went to school. With the exception of some facts, we don’t know anything. We don’t know why we do the things we do and we don’t know why others behave in certain ways. We don’t know anything about the world we live in with the exception of some facts. We fabricate the rest. We write the story of our lives and in doing so, we use facts to explain the things we do and the things that happen to us and to others.
One of the greatest problem facing America, in my story, is the cultural divide. At times, it seems that America is tearing itself apart. We can’t seem to agree on which events are happening, how to interpret the events upon which we agree and the direction in which to move our nation.
The same thing is happening in my head. My emotional states are like the various factions within America. In a given day, my emotions fluctuate by a great degree and this seems to be leading to a competition between multiple internal stories which are incompatible. These stories differ as much as happiness and sadness and rage and tranquility. I no longer know what is real, or I now understand that nothing is real. The biggest problem with this, by my accounting, is that I am having a hard time making decisions and sticking to them. If I make a decision at breakfast, I will change it or break it by lunch, even if nothing traumatic happens. I can no longer pinpoint the factors that are modulating my mood and therefore my story. Without being able to identify the causes, I can’t fight the process and I don’t know what to do. I think that this has resulted from prolonged stress. I can’t remove the stress from my life so I think that I need to remove the effects. I have been exercising a lot but that is not enough. I am going to meditate more and I will see a therapist. I may also go on a SSRI. This particularly severe depression is teaching me a lot but I also think that it might be motivating me to respond in appropriately during inter-personal conflicts.
I am reading, “The Happiness Hypothesis.” It was written by Jonathan Haidt who is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. Many of my thoughts here were influenced by the writings in this incredible book.
