Ups and downs

The other day I suggested to a friend that she was expending too much energy on being upset with George Bush. Unfortunately, I didn't make my point very well, so I tried again, at greater length. As is often the case when I write something fairly long in an email, I decided to get a blog post out of it. (Hey, it's easier than starting one from scratch.) So here's what I said, with a few edits:

My point about Bush is not to defend him. It's that it may be unhealthy to be so angry. I was very angry at Clinton a lot of the time in the '90s, and I was very angry at Reagan in the '80s (he wasn't libertarian enough for me back then). In retrospect, this anger was wasted energy that accomplished nothing except to make me feel bad.

I think we all tend to get caught up in spirals of negative thinking and negative emotion, and it reinforces itself and becomes self-perpetuating. It becomes part of our identity. The best way to let it go is to see it as something artificial - something manufactured by the ego for the purpose of maintaining the conflict and drama the ego thrives on. It's sort of a show that we put on for ourselves, and we get swept up in it. To pull back from it is to see that it's only a show.

The issues and problems of the world are real, but we can choose how to react to them. Unfortunately, for the most part, we don't choose. We react automatically, based on habitual, engrained patterns. Much of our thinking is reflexive and automatic - stimulus and response. In order to take control of our thinking, rather than letting it control us, we need to step back, distance ourselves from our own thoughts and see them as "just" thoughts, which may or may not be important, may or may not be worth paying attention to. Very often, they are not important, not really worth our time. 

I admit this is difficult to do and can feel alien and unnatural, but I think the rewards are worth it. The alternative is to ride a roller-coaster of highs and lows, which is exciting ("drama") but
exhausting.

Do you know which demographic group scores highest for happiness? Old people. The older they are, the happier they are (in general - of course there are exceptions). Why is this? It's because they have learned that every up is followed by a down, and vice versa; that things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they seem; that all the drama is self-created. But why should this wisdom be reserved for the elderly? We young(er) folks deserve a share of it, too!

Who are the unhappiest people in society? Teenagers. Why is that? After all, they're young, healthy, at their sexual peak. They don't have to earn a living yet; they can study and learn and choose what they want to become. They have their whole lives ahead of them. They should be happy. But (mostly) they're not - because for them, everything is drama. Every setback is a crisis, every disappointment is the end of the world. It's all ups and downs, all the time. Exciting? Yes. But in a good way? No. If it were good, there wouldn't be so many teen suicides.

Teens are hyper-reactive. They inflate everything out of proportion, whether good or bad. Seniors are closer to being nonreactive. They keep things in perspective and stay calm and content. "This too shall pass" is their motto.

It's not a bad one, really. Not bad at all. 

P.S. For more about the happiness quotients of different age groups, see Barbara Sher's excellent self-help book, It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now. 

Comments

[Art]

I was very angry at Clinton a lot of the time in the '90s, and I was very angry at Reagan in the '80s (he wasn't libertarian enough for me back then). In retrospect, this anger was wasted energy that accomplished nothing except to make me feel bad."
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Oh, it accomplished something. It caused you to experience duality and separation, which taught your soul what it means and how it feels to be a separate, unique, individual. The more emotional the experience, the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates. We have to experience enough separation to last for eternity. We have to experience enough separation while we are alive to make sure our souls can maintain their separateness in heaven, where the feelings of oneness and connectedness are overwhelming due to it's holographic nature.

"I was unique yet I was the tiniest part of the whole." - excerpt from Mark Horton's NDE, http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/markh.html

[aborkwood]

Until relatively recently, Tony Blair appearing as even a mere postage sized, badly printed image in a tabloid story, (even a story of little or no account)'d be sufficient to set me off violently wagging away my finger and looking for the first available ear I could find to funnel my many fulminations concerning him into; (and make no mistake, as I'm constantly reminded whenever he appears on the box, those reflexes remain fully intact); but what allowed me to ease up on ol' Tone in the end was when I found myself wondering one day just why it was he enraged me so.

After working my way through the various justifications I gave myself, though, (and where Tone's concerned the list is - righteously - very long indeed), I was forced to conclude what really riled me about him was he how much he reminded me, if I was in his situation, I'd be just as bad as him, if not far worse!

[Kirby]

Whenever I get angry at a person, such as Bush, I always remind myself that although a person may be doing a bad job and screwing a lot of things up, they are not doing it on purpose.

(I realize there are some people that do it on purpose, but they are a minority.)

Also, I'm a teenager (16) and I wouldn't call myself overjoyed. Call it blowing things out of proportion, but the impending crises of climate change and oil depletion make me extremely worried and afraid.