I don’t want to post anymore rants. Some anger is useful. Some is just impotent rage at things that have little to nothing to do with me. Why poison my mind, and this medium, with emotions that I should not even be encouraging. Having emotions is useful only in as far as it spurs action. I’m not talking about riots and protests. I’m not even talking about creating awareness about our concerns via social media.
My concerns are more personal. Being resilient. Valuing the right things. Separating the wheat from the chaff of all the cacophony of information we are bombarded with in real-time, sometimes in direct contradiction, creating dissonance in our thoughts. Who are we supposed to be? What is it that an individual is meant to do about the things that stir us?
Think of it like this: What if you saw your best friend reacting to things in the way you feel compelled to do? What if they did these things right next to you? If they asked you to agree with them, even if you don’t? Would it make you uncomfortable? Do you feel like you need to try and reason with or help them, to at least make a comment on the quality of their behaviour? If yes, then what is it that makes you feel that this behaviour is okay for you, but not for someone you care about? If the knee jerk response you have is that it is somehow different in your case, like you are not responsible for how you react, then ask yourself very seriously: Why is everyone else responsible for their behaviour but me? It’s hard to truly admit we aren’t the exception to every moral rule, but it is the first step in behaving in a way that makes you not hate yourself. This is the simple act of viewing your own behaviour in an objective way.
Now, consider the idea that you’ve already flown far off the handle and have done things that you wouldn’t condone. Using a similar example as above, consider a loved one who has made this same mistake, and is now feeling ashamed at their behaviour. If your first impulse is to reinforce that shame, you might be an asshole, and you probably haven’t even read this far. Assuming you’re not actually a sociopath, and you don’t want to encourage their negative feelings, what would you say to them? Would you tell them that mistakes happen? That they’re only human? Do you understand how easy it is to act on your emotions? If you can give this person grace, then by the same reasoning as above, you can find forgiveness for your own transgressions while not reinforcing the emotions that motivated them.
You don’t have to be angry in the first place. And if you are, you don’t have to stay angry for long. Sit up straight. Relax your shoulders. Unfurrow your brow. Take long slow breaths. You’d be surprised at how much your physiology mirrors how you feel, and how simple it is to take back control of those things.
I don’t consider my opinion very important, and any reasonably well thought out opinion takes longer to flesh out than the average person has the patience to read or listen through. We can’t confidently express our viewpoint in the digestible formats of social media. We shouldn’t, because then we allow everyone else to apply their linguistic baggage to concepts that they take for granted, and assume are common knowledge, but are easily misunderstood (for example, freedom, oppression, tyranny). I’d rather express myself here, where I don’t feel compelled to create cliffs notes of thoughts that are not so easily explained.
Maybe it’s easiest to limit the doomscrolling, and keep our tranquility. Or learn to separate ourselves from the noise, and practice equanimity, rather than indulge in indignance.