Traviesa's blog: "Black Swans and Boll Weevils"

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Everybody seems to have an opinion on this matter.

People do it. Pretty much all the time. All of life is a stage, blah blah, some other dumb cliche about how external personalities do not accurately reflect the consciousness that contains them. Consider your reaction to a train wreck. Or some other horrible scene with several disemboweled bodies laying around. You experience the stupid human drama and it inspires some feeling (mortification). The feeling inspires some action (freeze for a minute and then run for help). The action sets off a chain reaction of more events (the paramedics arrive and treat the survivors, the lifeless bodies are zipped up in black bags, you refuse to leave after giving a statement to the police because seeing as though you've discovered it, you are just too important to disappear, ect, ect, the train wreck party disbands and the tracks are ready for the next train to roll through). The cycle repeats. It is a never-ending cascade effect until people are so up in one another's faces that they will not deal with each other anymore (you go on to spend the next stretch of time telling everyone you encounter about being traumatized by witnessing such an event, and for the most part, nobody but you cares).

Consider your experience of stupid human drama to be merely a shifting of your general disposition into a mode of reaction. The shit is going down, and you must react. The surge of chemicals in your brain does not bother to tell you that this is what is happening. A change-over. Nobody is fully cognizant of it because the transition was so smooth. Like forgetting the approximate date and time you develop a shame complex and do not want to run around in the yard naked anymore (I know, this probably does not apply to some of you). It enraptures. It inspires. Neither of these conditions is such a problem all by itself. The problem is forgetting that you are the one responsible for all of it (no, really, you traumatized yourself. Is that not amazing?!).

Let me pose a not-so-irrelevant question to myself. Has anybody ever broken my heart? The answer is no. I broke my heart. Several times. The first person over which I broke my heart I relentlessly guilt-tripped. Rather, I passively-aggressively communicated how much I was hurting, and he guilt-tripped himself over it. But it was not a natural state of guilt. It was all a fraud from the very beginning. I claimed that he was responsible. He was not. I'm sorry, first person I ever loved. I am now aware that I did that because I forgot how to shift out of react mode. And I could not keep falling back on my personal opinion of how much you sucked in bed. ;)

The overarching question, then, is when is it appropriate to allow ourselves to stop being dosed with stupid human drama? Let's face it, it is pretty much impossible to live one's life completely aloof anymore. In some sense or another, somebody is going to require your assistance and you are going to want theirs. You cannot let the experience pass through you like a shadow, because then you may forget to appreciate it later. You have to play the game. You need to act the part for which you auditioned in the first place.

I have a couple of answers for different conditions. For all conditions, let yourself do the initial 'feel' of the situation. You aren't God for Science's sake.

Daily Stupid Human Drama: Somebody doesn't like you much today? Just do not sweat it. Remind yourself at the end of the day that if somebody is thinking about how much they do not like you, they are just avoiding knowing themself. What a boring individual.

Monthly Stupid Human Drama: Somebody has a long-standing misconception about you? what did you do here? is it possible that you've built up a multi-layered fantasy in your head of what others are thinking? Stop being so presumptuous! If you have made the time to do this, you do not know shit. Have you misrepresented the consciousness that drives your external personality in search of their approval? Step back from all of the ways in which you've judged your own external personality to locate the source of the problem.

Urgent Stupid Human Drama: Somebody died? oh well, they're gone. If you do not see them floating around on a cloud and singing your graces through melodies produced on a harp, let them go. Transform the anguish into creative energy and offer the world something beautiful that was inspired by that person. If you cannot do that, just mope for a bit. Surely there are some who will enjoy seeing your pain.

Mistaken For "Urgent" Stupid Human Drama: All you need is a little perspective. Is anybody in ....Ethiopia.... crying over a broken heart? No, they're probably too busy starving to death. Do your pain, if you absolutely must, but remember that with respect to something else, it pales in comparison.

All Stupid Human Drama: Never forget, it's your own damn fault. From where does it come? your own expectations. The only phenomenon that allows us to live is the fact that some change will trigger a motion. Something will change and you may react. You may be ecstatic. You may be depressed. Ninety-five percent of the time, you'll be somewhere inbetween. Your emotions have nothing to do with your consciousness. Your mind will always be there, bugging the crap out of you. If you do not want to feel, stop expecting things. Stop expecting that people will live forever. Stop expecting that your affections will be returned. Stop expecting others to live their lives according to your standards. And for Science's sake, do not lament about your pain. You're still alive and you get to feel it! Weather systems are driven by pressure gradients. Imagine that every emotion you will ever feel is driven by a gradient of pain. It rapidly increases and you feel awful. It rapidly decreases and you are walking on air. But if it does nothing, you get to live life in an emotional stasis. To this writer, that does not sound like fun.

Note: Drama will happen to you. This post is not an anti-drama rant. If you profess to 'hate' drama, to me that is like saying "I really hate being human." People in your life will die. People will coerce you into situations where you feel alarmed and absurd. People will do things that inspire you to break your own heart. The point of this exercise is to illustrate the ways in which you may gain control over your emotions. Nothing more to it than that.....

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The most interesting people I know all have one thing in common - they think about things. While thinking may not sound like a special activity, very few people use their minds actively; instead, they go through life making passive associations, allowing whatever words or images float to the forefront of their minds to convey their thoughts. This tendency to live blurrily, rather than with acuity and awareness, inhibits communication on a large scale in our society. The result is that everyday interaction has become much less meaningful than it could be. ....

I attribute much of this passivity to the mass consumption of popular culture. While teens are reading magazines and watching celebrity-centered television shows, their imaginations are becoming insular. The reason why popular culture has such a druglike effect on people is because it baits viewers with flashiness, action, and excitement on a level that could never exist in real life; then, when the viewer has become transfixed, it transmits opinions that slowly and over time substitute for the viewers' actual thoughts. People regularly quote television programs and news sources as if they had personally observed the events they watched. The truth, of course, is that a relatively small group of people create the media and decide what to feature, and even outside of that core group, the majority of smaller media outlets are so heavily influenced by what they see in mass media that they end up recycling the same thoughts. ....

We are taught to feel embarrassed about having out-of-the-mainstream ideas as soon as we are old enough to cognize our surroundings. Certain things are right. Certain things are wrong. Certain things are normal. Certain things are peculiar. Certain things are the way they should be. Certain things are unjust. Our parents purvey most of this information to us, and television, along with the outside world, fills in the rest. Our tastes and preferences are handed to us rather than decided by us. Yet the mainstream isn't the one that wakes up every day in your body, whose pulse travels in just the way yours does, whose singular store of memories shapes your perceptions. Therefore, it has no right to control your thoughts. ....

Naturally, there are original thinkers among us, but they are overwhelmed by the masses of programmed people. To make matters more complicated, even those with good intentions - people who try to think on their own - end up adopting thought processes that, despite purporting to oppose the majority view, actually are just different types of passive thinking. The alternative crowd, the revolutionary crowd, and even the anarchist crowd have not differentiated themselves, but rather, they have classified themselves. Trying to distinguish yourself by belonging to a group is a fruitless activity. Our deepest beliefs come from an internal truth that is as unique as our personal experiences and the makeup of our brains. ....

I used to "know" that Mozart's music was better than Tupac's, that an opera was more meaningful than a Disney Movie, and that Shakespeare was a better writer than the girl I lusted after in my English class. Now that I've gotten to thinking actively, I know exactly the opposite. Those beliefs may challenge the notions of all of the passive thinkers out there, but in my little world - the one that no one but me can control - that's the way things are. ....

As challenging as it can be to unravel everything you believe and look at each event in a fresh light, doing so will spare you anguish on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level. Do not try to be unique for the sake of other people; be unique because you can't help it. ....