Lately, as you can probably imagine, I've been receiving a lot of input from people both positive, and what I'll call "constructive". The latter of the comments have been almost solely centered around me needing to just breathe and calm down so I can focus on the good things in my life. Hmmmm.
It's hard for me to formulate a response that will bridge the obvious gap in how one person chooses to live and how another chooses. To me, statements about me needing to be calm and smell roses and the like are based primarily in two things. First, the speaker wanting me to have a better life filled with happiness. Awesome! I like this. I like that there are people out there concerned with my well-being for sure, and I'll do my best to keep these people around. The catch is that the second reason they say these things is because they are identifying my life through their own understanding. We all do this. We have very little other than our knowledge of own experiences to guide us through this place, so it follows that we would take those personal references and use them to form our understanding of other people too. This simple fact can cause all sorts of issues as every single one of you knows, whether you choose to "get it" or not.
To focus on my particular situation, I've come to learn that what appears as anger or stress and would be damaging to some other people is pretty much a cathartic medium for me. I use the energy I get equally from the good and bad (or at least try my damnedest to) to try to achieve some sort of progress in my life. It's why I'm constantly changing things around me. If I run into a situation where I feel uneasy or threatened, or whatever bad crap you want to put there, I do get angry. That's OK with me. That anger allows me to focus on the situation and sort through the BS to come up with a solution that works to avoid it later. I guess you could say, that for me, anger is tied to activism. I don't always mean activism like picketing the war or tossing molotovs at the police either. Things like changing jobs, locations, personal habits, and even your underwear can be considered activism too, as they can have profound effects on your life, and sometimes with very little effort. I choose to take my anger and turn it inward to use as fuel for that activism. Get it? Maybe not, but that's OK too. Doesn't always work. Sometimes, I simply get pissed and start shitting all over the world around me as a defensive mechanism until I can regroup and get some alone time to focus on what's really going on. It's been a long journey for me to get to this point, and it will be even longer, assuming the sun comes up again tomorrow.
So, how do we learn to look at people through their own eyes? How do we learn to stop placing our ideals and experiences into their actions? Sounds easy right? Well, I'll toss out a book that I believe everyone should read before they turn to dust, and preferably sooner than later. It's called the Five Love Languages and I can't say enough about it. Yes, that's a link to a sales site for the book. No, I don't get a kickback. No, I haven't gone gay and squishy either. I know, the site and the book sound like most people's version of hell, but I beg you to give it a look. Forget the whole premise of this being a vehicle of making your love life better (unless of course that's one of your big obstacles right now), and use it as the tool I believe it truly is. A few years back, this book opened my eyes to exactly what I've been rambling about here today - that each person literally speaks a different language that defines them. Trade the word "love" with "life" in the title and the book is spot on. Think about how many times you've run into someone and tried fervently to explain how awesome a movie you just saw was, only to have them say "Eh, I thought it sucked". Sound familiar? Now think of how many times you refuted them by saying "No way man, it ruled!" You're just not speaking the same language. Believe it or not, some folks just don't get the same kick out of 'Teenage Vampire Aliens Want Your Makeup' as you do. It has nothing to do with right and wrong, it simply shows the differences in the "languages" we speak.
You'll have to read the book to get the whole picture, but hopefully you're seeing some piece of it here. My life and my choices in it define my language. That language is what I speak in all my further experiences and choices. There are a million languages out there and not all of them can be understood by one another, so you have to start learning the languages of those you choose to keep company with. Sound daunting? It is. It means you need to step outside your own understanding and spend some time seeing it through others' eyes. Then you have to either commit to speaking their language when around them sometimes, or you deal with sucky movie comments forever.
Me? I'll just keep getting angry about what I view as wrong, and happy about what I view as good, and hope that someone out there learns to speak that language with me. So the next time you see me and I'm spewing garbage about the collapse of American financial institutions or about how cool a Panhead is versus a RoadkingGlideDeluxe-a-tron, just remember that I'm not from around these parts and you may have to listen a little harder before realizing I'm having a good time. I invite everyone to give it a try. I'll try harder to do it for you too. A million of us "getting it" wouldn't hurt, although I don't think I have enough popcorn for us all...
See ya out there!
1 comment:
I completely understand.
-Joe
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