The Dark Emotions

It has come to my attention recently that I am a really neurotic motherfucker. I'm in Woody Allen territory. It is usually a passing phase when bad shit happens to me, but I have noticed that I am predisposed to a certain level of negative thinking. Now, I'm not going to go Tony Robbins on you because that guy is full of shit. But I do want to deal with some common negative emotions and their antidotes.

FEAR
John Maynard Keynes once famously quipped that in the long run, we're all dead. I disagree with Keynes on a lot of stuff, but he got that one absolutely right.

The certainty of death makes fear very illogical. Worrying about things will not change them. In addition, if you're wondering if shit will happen, it will. Sooner or later, your luck runs out. It is unavoidable. So, live with it.

Death does not scare me. The pain preceding death causes me a certain amount of concern. But death itself is painless. It will be like the void before we were born. You have to exist to experience something, and death is non-existence.

My great fear is being unemployed, but I've already been through that enough to know a few things. Save your money and have faith in the market. There is no end to work, so there is always a job out there. If you don't have a job, then you're not looking hard enough to get one.

My other great fear is being incarcerated. I don't go around breaking laws, but I have read enough to know that you don't have to break the law to get locked up. Sometimes, all it takes is being the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood or not knowing every jot and tittle in the reams of government regulations that exist. But that's why I work against tyranny in my life and keep a clean conscience. I know right from wrong. I don't steal or hurt other people. If they take my freedom, all I can do is be free within myself. They can lock me up, but they can never shut me up. That's why this blog exists so that I can say the things I want to say.

I have a minor fear, and that is the fear of being cheated on by a girlfriend. Odds are it will happen and probably has happened. What can I say? All you can do is be faithful and dump the unfaithful. The fact is that there are always going to be people who you love and trust who will turn around and betray you. The bottom line is that you can't find happiness in other people. You have to find happiness inside of yourself.

HATRED
We hate those who have betrayed us, but there isn't much point in it. I think anger is a proper response when people fuck us over. But to dwell on it beyond a certain point is to give in to hatred which causes more harm than the initial transgression. The best thing to do is let that shit go. I've gotten pretty good at this thing. I never enact revenge upon those who have transgressed against me. Of course, that doesn't mean they'll be getting Christmas cards from me either. Most of the time, I simply forget about it and move on.

Another form of hatred I have never understood is collective hatred. I am thinking of racism or homophobia or what have you. Of course, I must admit to hating women as a class of beings. But this collective hatred is nonsensical. The fact is that there are scumbags and saints in any group you care to name. That is because people are individuals. Ignorant people can't deal with people on an individual basis because it requires more computational power than their feeble minds can muster. So, they simply decide to hate all black people or all Mexicans or what have you because it simplifies things.

For me, the big issue is sexism. The reality is that I want to class women as a group to better understand them and perhaps have sex with them as a result. Naturally, I am frustrated which leads to anger which leads to hatred. This is not good. The bottom line is that all women are different. This is what makes them so hard to figure out.

DEPRESSION
We all get sad from time to time. I get sad when someone I love dies or when a relationship ends or what have you. We wouldn't be human if we never experienced sadness from time to time. But depression is another story altogether.

I have struggled to try and define depression. Someone once said that depression was anger without enthusiasm. There may be some truth to that, but I think depression is a belief that happiness is impossible. But if you know one happy person, then you realize that depression makes no sense. And if you've ever been happy, then you know you can be happy again.

It gets tough to hang on sometime, but so far, I have seen the dawn cut through the gloom every single time. The best advice I can give for someone going through some dark times is to stay busy. As Bear Grylls pointed out on Man Vs. Wild, it is better to make wrong decisions than to make no decisions. Keep moving. It is when you give over to despondency that you die.

There you have it for the dark emotions. I don't know if it makes you feel better reading this shit, but it definitely makes me feel better to write it.

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