NorthernGent
Posts: 8730
Joined: 7/10/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Termyn8or
I call my good friends "chosen family". I have a job that comes with alot of unavoidable stress and I am unavailable for a half hour after work, even to them. I take my shoes off even before my coat. If the phone rings I do not even look at it.
After that half hour my mind has slowed down and I am ready for socializing. Actually I am not a total hermit for a half, if someone has car trouble or something like that I can deal with it, but if you want the happy jovial Termy it ain't gonna happen for a half hour after I get home from work.
And it's the job, not the people. They do as much as they can to cooperate. The nature of the work is frustration. The people at work make me less unhappy whenever they can.
The people on the freeway on the way home are another story. The on ramp is treacherous, and drivers are cutthroat. Except for the incompetent ones of course. As perverse as it may be, when I see someone driving like a real asshole I get a bit less unhappy when I see them in a wreck down the road. I hope nobody is injured, but the idiot who caused it should have to go through the incomvenience of having to get his (her ?, no, let's not go there) car towed and fixed, or have to find another car. No, I don't want to see them get hurt, and though I don't appreciate the jamup they caused, they will be there alot longer than I :-).
Even a glorious success at work also only makes me less unhappy. Making me happy takes a bit more doing. Inreacting with kids, hanging around with friends busting each others' balls, seeing those who previously didn't get along start to find some common ground.
Of course I use the phrase 'make me' happy or unhappy loosely. People make themselves happy or unhappy, but do so based on external circumstances. One can isolate themselves. Sometimes one is in such a good mood they can swear "nothing is going to wreck my day today" and short of a loved one getting hurt or dying they are right. Then sometimes one is in such a bad mood nothing will help. They just have to get over it. They will be fine later on, leave them alone for a bit. Other times you need to act as a sounding board, reserving judgement and suggestions for later. Let them calm down first.
As far as consumerism, mentioned not only by me, I am not into it. I never shop, I go to get things I need. Rarely do I buy anything I hadn't planned on, and if I do it was a hell of a good deal.
When I see someone's profile and it says likes or lives for : auctions, flea markets, garage sales, I know this is someone looking for a deal. I am all for that, but just going shopping at the Megamart for the newest plastic junk is not for me. Standing in line to get the new Platstation 3 is absurd to me.
In fact someone got shot recently when a couple of hoods decided to rob the people in line. This guy refused to fork over his money. As precious as the look on the kids' faces may be when they open up the PS3, the idiot might not be there to ever see it again. Perspective.
Now it is one thing to refuse a robber if you have the physical prowess to disarm the robber(s). Hint : if you get shot, you didn't. Actually I don't understand the whole thing. If you have say 100 people and two guys with guns can pretty much rob them all, there is something wrong. Had I been there yes I would fork over the money, and as the robbers went collecting down the line I would get about 4 or 5 other people together and jump them. They can't cover us all, and with a concerted effort we can get their guns and either use them on them, or use them to hold the miscreants at bay pending arrival of the police.
Of course if someone in the line would've had a gun it would've gone a bit different, but then if they're brainwashed enough to take all that time off work to stand in line at all hours to get a toy, I doubt they would, or maybe even should carry a gun. They might take to shooting each other. If people put things in perspective we wouldn't have to worry about any of this.
Before I was enlightened, that is back when I was an idiot, I got myself into alot of jamups. At times I was so depressed I did indeed take the .357 out and contemplated it's use on myself. I obviously didn't, why ? What it would do to other people. If someone killed me they would really wreck the lives of a few people. If I was the one who did it, it's like I kicked them in the balls. I didn't call any hotline or seek out anything. But through quiet comtemplation with the means to my end readily available, reality set in.
That was a major stepping stone, and it was a very long time ago. I learned that, in a way, we are here for each other. Yes, look out for number one, but you are not an island. How could I possibly voluntarily fail to outlive my Parents ? That became unconcionable to me. I knew people who have lost kids, and this is simply too much to do to those who gave me life.
I learned that if you make people happy, or more aptly put, help them to make themselves happy, they will reciprocate. Some have to hit rock bottom to learn this. Others never learn it.
Perspective is not only how you look at the world e.g. positive or negative stance. It is also being able to step outside yourself and see a little bit of the bigger picture.
To see the bigger picture you need the right perspective.
T
Termyn8or,
You talk of work and being happy. I was lucky enough for the penny to drop around my late 20s. I'd done very well for myself at a young age, earning very good money and a successful career ahead of me in finance. Dare I say I stepped over a few people to get where I wanted to be and I worked in an office full of people all doing the same, desperate to earn a wheel-barrow load of money to spend on the stylistic items that life has to offer. Around 28 I began to think what the fuck am I doing? It was all a load of bollocks. People working 75 hours+ a week and I mean proper grafting from the minute getting in and the minute leaving the office. Everyone stressed to the eyeballs for the sake of a £300k house which they were never in anyway because they were either at work or socialising/networking in the pub.
Since then, I've moved away from that. I now earn a decent living but also chase a passion I have which is managing business development and enabling people economically and socially (for local Government).
The point to this? Self-interest will never bring anyone happiness. The reason being, we're sociable animals. As humans we need the four things I mentioned earlier - friendship, love, loyalty, respect - self-interest is blatantly mutually exclusive to the aforementioned. In my opinion, anyone bogged down in self-interest will never have true friends as friendship requires a degree of selflessness. This comes back to your point that "if you make people happy they reciprocate". It is a pre-requisite for being on this planet - even a burrow owl aims to make another burrow owl happy. This is primarily where my political viewpoint comes from i.e. my values - I personally would rather live in a society which co-operated as a society rather than a free-for-all, survival of the fittest culture steeped in self-interest. It follows that, to achieve this, we need a society based on mutual co-operation and a Government creating and upholding laws towards co-operation.
The Britain I live in today - our economy is thriving (although some are cut off from this). Yet, I see a lot of unhappy people. You can see it in their eyes, they don't understand why they're unhappy because on the face of it they have everything they want. What they haven't worked out is that wants aren't needs. The use of anti-depressants is going through the roof in Britain - as a nation we have the highest wealth gap in Western Europe, the highest use of anti-depressants and the highest serious crime rates. It's staring people in the face that creating a society based on individualism which leads to haves and have nots is unhealthy for the well being of society. Humans need community rather than individualism to make them happy.
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I have the courage to be a coward - but not beyond my limits.
Sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.
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