Words of a dying man
So much energy and effort spent yet, there is nothing that can be done and even if there was, there is no longer the energy or the mental strength to go on. How could it have gotten to this point, where did it all go?
"More time please..."
Once upon a time I used to have a very difficult time controlling my emotions and when I was young, I lived in two worlds, the public one of school and the private one of home. Primary school for me was torturous, especially the early years but, I learned a lot and one of those things was to maintain composure, regardless of the storm inside. But, this required psychological balance and at that time, it meant that in private life, I was weak and emotional.
Showing emotion isn't what makes it weak, it is the lack of control and the neediness that was bundled with it. The inability to process my own internal conflicts without pouring it out onto others and then expecting them to bend to my whims. It is attention seeking behavior and what I wanted was sympathy and it becomes an addictive process demanding more.
If it was football it would be like taking a dive to get a free kick. A manipulation. And once a free kick is given, it is a reward and an incentive to dive again and again. This is how I see a lot of the behavior now as people are increasingly rewarded for showing their emotions, no matter if they are real or feigned and it is leading to a situation where the offence required to evoke an emotional response is weakening. Things that would have been common parts of life are causing deep depressions and violent outbursts.
People are fast to take offence and fast to react no matter if their view of circumstances are poor or, they have been very uncharitable in their evaluations of the case at hand. People love to be triggered. People love to let it out and direct it at the enemy. It makes them feel powerful, valuable and in control but, they do not see that it is this very act that demonstrates their loss of control, their powerlessness to pause and take another look, get a second opinion from an untriggered version of the self.
Those that feel want to claim it as passion but not see it for what it really is, more violence and those that take the same view like to see the violence enacted upon the position of their enemies, as long as they are not the ones that must inflict it themselves. Temperance isn't rewarded with the attention that anger is, rationality is not marketable. People make their decisions on emotions so it is there we are trained to manipulate and where the professionals target with scalpel precision.
But, it becomes a Boy who cried wolf cycle as the behavior to get reward has to continually ramp up as those listening become desensitized. Like the increasing atrocity needed by a terrorist organisation to continually make it to the front page of the global news shills. Sympathy runs dry eventually as to feel sympathetic, one must feel attached and in time, the attachment is not strong enough to act upon. The depressive's cycle for attention has taken them into a well they cannot climb from yet, no one is left to throw them a rope.
People are impatient, people want solutions now, they want quick fixes, magic diets and pills that remove their ailments. But what they don't want to do is take the responsibility for their own emotions, their own habits and processes. They don't want to invest into themselves to unlearn and retrain the destructive behaviors they have relied upon for years. So, they will turn to authority and plead their case, ask for favor and promises of support in this life, or the next, look for strength in the numbers of an an identifying group. Anything but take a look at their own failings and, take the time now to correct them.
We all have our areas of opportunity, we all have the same possibility to work to become our best, even though the results will vary greatly. To ever live freely is to have absolute control over the self and that requires more investment than just about any human is willing to put put into themselves. Instead, they take a dive, play the referee and the crowd and hope they will be granted a free kick by the very authority they seek freedom from.
Every movement is an act in space and that is measured by time. To go far, takes longer than to take a step. To react quickly on emotion is easier than to let the swell calm and think deeply. If there was one advice I would give is, before wishing and seeking support for violence upon another;
take more time please...
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Control of one's emotions is a must. It's part of the reason I began studying Stoicism and meditation. In my younger days, I could go eye to eye with the incredible hulk when it came to outbursts of anger. (ok maybe not that bad but you get the point.) and not just anger but depression and fear and all those miss guided emotions.
And for a while, I thought that controlling your emotions was a bad thing like it was going against human nature but controlling is not that same as not feeling- it only puts the emotion in a place where we can objectively express it in better ways or let it flow on by. I have a long way to go still, I'm no Mr. Myogi here. but them more I can control myself, the more I can pass that ability off to my son.
Very good point! Controlling your emotions is a learned process and not an easy one. Your son is lucky in that he has you as a role model.
I do my best, which is not perfect, but improving all the time. :-)
Exactly. Thank you for adding this.
Greetings, I agree with you, we all have the same opportunities but not all take advantage of it in the same way, so you should not blame others if they take advantage of the opportunities, if you have not been able to achieve good results. Respect and self-analysis have been lost because it is always easier to blame others for what happens to us.
I have learnt to control my emotions over time. It is not that I have no feelings but I take them out of decisions. I have seen people crying just to get their own way and I just see that as manipulative. In business if you take the emotions out of it then you are making the correct decisions.
At least, the best decision you can make on the information you have.
Proverbs 16:32 ESV
Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 25:28 ESV
A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls
There is a lot of wisdom in holy books, it is a pity there is also a lot of self-serving trash used to push agendas of groups. Thanks for adding these.
Well, i think this is the part temperaments come in. We have introvert and everything u mentioned here is an attribute of introverts. Asking them to keep their emotions in, means asking them not to be theirselves. Introverts are too emotional and very sensitive, so there is need to let the emotions out else they become depressed, and suicide is next. Thats y the write songs and poems. They are not being needy, clingy, or whatever...they re being themselves.
Under the same premise, you are condoning the behavior of a pedophile or a psychopath. It is an excuse to say that people have no ability to improve their behaviours.
You are right that no one gets recognition for controlling their own emotions. Sad but it's true. There are people who can't control their emotions and their are also people who are way worse. I know someone who fakes their emotions because they get so much recognition for not being able to control them that they must go one step further and put out fake ones when they need recognition. This gets really bad. This person seems to have deep rooted mental issues.
We all have deep rooted mental issues, that is why we need to learn about them and adjust for them. Left unchecked, we are all tyrants of one sort or another.
Very true.
that is a beautiful piece.
Perfect
It is very wise to take a moment before acting as how much unpleasantness can be avoided by staying pleasant a little longer. My father punished accordingly, but never in anger, there always had to be a lesson to learn and that lesson was never to act in anger.
It is wise under normal circumstance, but also not always possible unfortunately as sometimes you have stayed calm and given grace and when that is taken advantage of and you are pushed too far and given no reprieve retaliation will occur.