Social Aspects: Back to the Depths II

One of the most basic drives is discomfort-avoidance. Babies gretz and cry when they're uncomfortable without necessarily knowing what causes their discomfort or how to stop it. Before they have a clear goal, they have a basic drive--something pushing them towards something even if they don't know what. We have a basic drive for life to be interesting and wonder-filled but we don't necessarily speak of it as such. But comfort, wonder, and love/acceptance are huge motivators we don't always recognize. Many adults aren't any better than infants at recognizing what they actually want. The research is actually conclusive on this point, and we say this more colloquially when we call people "stupid". People are stupid.

Part of what happens in our lives is that we encounter/create conflict between drives, identity, and our situation. Originally, in response to that conflict/chafing, we want only to be soothed or distracted. Between the ages of 2 and 10, let's say, we should learn the lesson that some other people actually don't see it as their purpose in life to soothe or appease us. But that lesson doesn't make the desire go away. It teaches us to express that desire in moderated ("appropriate") ways. Some folks believe that we can learn to not express that desire, and they're wrong. When desires can't be expressed in a straightforward manner, they twist. This is part of what I mean by action potentials. Action potentials are expressed. That's how it is. Drives are action potentials. Let's say you try to not verbalize a desire for food when you're hungry. You've learned to not simply scream endlessly until someone feeds you, and that's all to the good. But if you don't get food, blood-sugar levels drop. Does the desire for comfort disappear? No. But your ability to concentrate and the likelihood that you'll feel in a good mood rather than grumpy ("Does someone need a nap?", "It's that time of the month again") does diminish. Will your decreasing energy, mood, and ability to concentrate come out (be expressed) in some way? Of course.

There is a difference, then, between verbalizing and expressing. There is also a difference between verbalizing the desire for food and having an expectation that someone else should provide for an expressed desire. So your blood-sugar is dropping, mood and concentration are waning. Since we're taught not to expect everyone else to parent us, and because we often conflate expression with expectation, we try to not even verbalize that we're hungry. We even know that if we continue to obsess on our hunger, it will seem worse, so we might deny even to ourselves that we are hungry. And this is considered socially acceptable and relatively mature. Our society actually takes it as a sign of maturity that someone deny something as basic and simple as hunger. And most people do not question this on a daily basis! We create, then, a "social reality"--a socially accepted representation of reality--that is horribly skewed. It is skewed against your happiness when it is skewed against reality. You may not believe me yet, but it's true.

And everything that we do to deny reality goes directly against human happiness.

We can sometimes act as if this is not the case because it happens in a distributed manner.

If you are sharp or clear, this is not anywhere close to being open to question.

So, in the moment your mood is waning, you may try harder to "stay focused". This extra focus takes up more energy (brains use about 25% of our metabolic energy) and wears you out even faster, using up your diminishing internal resources on simply not getting worse. Getting better now is nowhere in sight. Getting food has been given up on, and the goal is to not lose focus. Of course, in your diminished capacity, almost anything can distract you. When it happens, you are prepared for blaming because you're primed with: diminished resources, the frustrated goal of staying focused, and an internal milieu that sets you up for petty expressions of the negative mood that might have been avoided by a sandwich. Once this happens a few times, you can see it coming, so you prepare yourself by keeping coffee around. That spins the stress/insomnia cycle, making it harder to get going and harder to keep going. Your discomfort increases while your ability to address discomfort decreases and you are left with little besides the myth that it is worth denying what you want because you are clearly unable to get what you want (rest, recuperation, and the potential for consistent happiness) by the methods you know. You are now on your way to completely trying to deny your lack of happiness. As I said, this is a poor recipe for happiness--trying for the denial of the desire itself since the actual thing is unattainable to you by this way of being.

Your desire for comfort and wonder have come up from the depths, so to speak, and has been sent back from whence it came. We end up saying about the desire that could point us to happiness, "Get that shit out of here--we're all stocked up!" And it's true. When your warehouse is stocked full of shit, everything begins to smell like shit to you, and there is no room for any more shit.

Rumi said anyone can bring gifts; I want for someone who will take things away.

Sometimes we have to take our focus away from "that shit" in order to apply our minimal resources for focusing on the housekeeping (clearing the warehouse) involved with getting rid of "this shit". We own it, accept what is, before we can address what is. Or we spend our lives trying to get shit "out of my face" while trying to pretend to not be unhappy. No one wants to spend their life pushing shit out of their face. Ewww. I want for someone who will take away. (No, it's not Calgon I'm missing.)