They've got to go somewhere...

Note:  I'm neither a neurologist nor a biologist.  The things I'm writing about in this post have little or no scientific backing.  They are my theories about how emotions work.  My hope is that one day, science will address these theories, but for now, they are just theories.  

Assuming my understanding is correct, thoughts are really just electrical impulses carried from place to place in our brains by our neurons.  Similarly, emotions are chemical signals that are carried from our brain to our abdomens, where if we are paying attention, we can feel them being expressed.  But what happens if we repress our emotions and they are not expressed?  Where does that chemical go?  Based on years of working with myself and others, I believe that those chemicals are somehow lodged in our cells.  And I think this is the link between emotions and disease.  We go through some emotion causing event.  For any number of reasons, we repress the emotions caused by the event.  The chemical is stored in our cells and never leaves our body.  Repeat.  Over and over and over again, until our cells are filled with the chemicals of emotion.

I believe that different types of repression lead to placing chemicals in different locations in the body, which leads to different disorders.  This is where that wonderful article by Dr. Gabor Maté comes in.  He talks about how different diseases are associated with different psychological processes.  He says, 

"People I saw with chronic disease of all kinds—from malignancies or autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or ulcerative colitis to persistent skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis, and neurological disorders like Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and even dementia—were characterized by certain unmistakable emotional life patterns."

I believe that it could be possible, over time, to locate where each pathological behavior caused emotion chemicals to be stored and to thus know which disease is threatening a person before they even get it.  "Oh, you're a self-abnegating repressor.  That causes chemicals to be stored in the muscles in the legs and leads to Lou Gehrig's Disease.  We can treat that physically by doing lots of leg massage, to help release the chemicals and slow the on-set of the disease.  And we can treat it psychologically by both teaching you how to stop being self-abnegating and by teaching you how to regularly express your emotions."

Obviously, there are about a million things that science will have to learn before this could happen, but I believe it's possible.  And think what it would do for the understanding and treatment of disease.

A Moment of Silence: Pat Summitt

Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in NCAA Division I basketball history, died this morning. She was 64. If you don't know about her, take a minute to learn a little. She opened doors for women by giving them the opportunity to get an education and play basketball at the collegiate level and eventually, in the WNBA. In so doing, she combated bigotry in a major way. She is a significant figure in the on-going civil rights battle that we fight in this country and someone whose legacy deserves to be remembered.

A moment of silence on a blog is an obviously difficult thing to do. But if you are able, after you finish reading, to take just a moment or two and allow yourself to feel a little bit of the emotion created by the knowledge that such an important person has died in a tragic manner, it will enrich your life, and by extension, everyone else's.

Thank you, Pat Summitt, for enriching the lives of people everywhere. Your impact is greatly appreciated.

Quote

"There are many ways we have of standing outside ourselves in ignorance.  Those who have learned as children to become strangers to themselves do not find this a difficult task.  Habit has made it natural not to feel.  To ignore the consequences of what one does in the world becomes ordinary."  -Susan Griffin

D.C.

D.C. stands for "Damn Cat".  It's what I named the little monster I found in our breezeway one morning when I was young.  My mother told me he had to go, but he was already my friend.  I was left at home with him while they went away and was told that he was to be gone by the time they got back.  He wasn't.  I somehow convinced my mother to let me keep him.  It's one of the best things I ever did.

My four year old daughter and I play a game we call "being silly about love".  We look at each other and run for the guest bedroom, laughing like crazy people, jump on the bed and rough-house and love.  My favorite part is when I tell her that she has to let me maul her with love, because "I am a love monster.  I need love to survive.  You must love me." And so I munch her belly or require kisses or some other obnoxiousness.  She adores it and laughs in ways that make my soul sigh with happiness.  This is one of my favorite things I've ever done in my life.  I know that I'm passing a deep love of connection, laughter, and silliness to my daughter and that makes me incredibly happy.

Recently, I realized that I didn't make up being a "love monster".  D.C. did.  That cat loved so ferociously.  It's hard to imagine.  He would try to knock me over (he was big!) by rubbing his face on me.  He would lay down right in front of me when I was walking in an attempt to get me to stop and love him.  He would follow me all over the house.  As soon as I'd sit down, he'd jump up and purr very loudly, right in my face.  And, unlike most cats, he always, always wanted love.  No cat mind-games for him.  Nope.  You knew exactly what D.C. wanted, all the time:  LOVE!  For an adolescent boy in a not-overly loving household, having him love me so much changed me.  And now I see that I'm passing that love to my daughter, to my wife, and really to everyone who I can pass it to.  It's quite a gift to get from a Damn Cat.

Prava's veggies

On DBB, that Detroit Pistons' website I enjoy so much, one of my internet friends, Prava, always reminds us to eat our veggies at the end of his articles.  He's probably just being silly, but I love it.  I know I eat more veggies because he does that.  It puts veggies more firmly in my consciousness.  I respond to him as often as possible about it, because that also puts veggies more firmly in my consciousness, which helps me to be a healthier person.  So, thanks Prava!

And in the same spirit I ask you, "Have you connected to your emotions today?"  Try it. It'll make you feel better and be healthier.

Neitzsche and Campbell

"There is an important idea in Nietzsche of 'amor fati,' the 'love of your fate,' which is in fact your life.  As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.  Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it.  The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply."  -Joseph Campbell

So readers, do not deny your emotions.  It will unravel your whole life.

But to myself and my readers I also say, do not forget another Nietzsche quote, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."  Because your emotions are truly a never-ending abyss.  Connect yourself to your emotions.  Heal.  And then live. Stay connected, but don't fall in to the abyss.  Moderation in all things.

Quote

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going.  No feeling is final."    -Rainer Maria Rilke

If ya ain't got compassion, ya ain't got much.

Sometimes, Americans leave me speechless.*  If he really believed his own rhetoric, and the Orlando night club shooting had not just happened in his own state, then the idea of adding more guns to the mix is something only the NRA could come up with.‡  "Oh gosh. I'm gonna be out in public, carrying my AR-15 with the Second Amendment engraved on it (really!), and the terrorists are gonna be killin' people and I'll shoot 'em all up and everything will be fine and and dandy!" or "I'll be sittin' at home and 'cuz I'm so important, the Federal Government will storm this place and try to assassinate me.  But I'll have my semi-automatic assault rifle on my lap and I'll shoot 'em all up!  And that'll be the end of that!"  Because if the U.S. government wants to take you out, you'll just defend yourself with an assault rifle, and it'll all work out fine.  Yep.

So we know that he doesn't really even believe his own rhetoric, because it was supplied by the NRA and is completely idiotic.  And the Orlando shooting did just happen and it was in his own state.  So, how could he be doing this?  A complete lack of compassion.  Any human being with a shred of compassion would say to themselves, "there are a lot of hurting people around here right now because of this gun and I'm trying to get elected to represent them.  This is likely to cause them more suffering.  I think I won't do this."  But he clearly doesn't have a shred of compassion.  And he proved that for us, by giving away an AR-15, the gun used in the night club shooting.  If he really believed all his lies and just wanted to be safe and had even the slightest amount of compassion, he would have given away an Uzi, or the like.  But no, that wouldn't suffice.  He needed to make it super clear to the rest of the world:  Scared, rich, straight, white people having guns is more important than the safety and health of everyone else.

People like him, who are dominated by fear and by greed, need to be stopped.  It is time for people of conscience everywhere to recognize the impact of our internal workings on the external world and to stand up against people like this; people who refuse to do what's right.


* He did.  Just not for long.

‡ Studies show that gun ownership increases violent deaths.  This, from Harvard, took me    30 seconds to find on the internet.

W.E.B. DuBois, Of the Passing of the First-Born

I first learned about W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) in college.  He was an African American sociologist, historian, poet, author and intellectual.  His The Souls of Black Folk made a big impression on me that stays with me to this day.  Few white people know about him, but that's a mistake.  His work was first rate and should be known by all Americans.  Of the Passing of the First-Born is a chapter from The Souls of Black Folk.  I hope the reason I have it here is as obvious to you as the reason I have Lorca's poem below.  Enjoy.

O sister, sister, thy first–begotten,
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child's blood crying yet,
Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.

SWINBURNE


"Unto you a child is born," sang the bit of yellow paper that fluttered into my room one brown October morning. Then the fear of fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation; I wondered how it looked and how it felt—what were its eyes, and how its hair curled and crumpled itself. And I thought in awe of her,—she who had slept with Death to tear a man–child from underneath her heart, while I was unconsciously wandering. I fled to my wife and child, repeating the while to myself half wonderingly, "Wife and child? Wife and child?"—fled fast and faster than boat and steam–car, and yet must ever impatiently await them; away from the hard–voiced city, away from the flickering sea into my own Berkshire Hills that sit all sadly guarding the gates of Massachusetts.

Up the stairs I ran to the wan mother and whimpering babe, to the sanctuary on whose altar a life at my bidding had offered itself to win a life, and won. What is this tiny formless thing, this newborn wail from an unknown world,—all head and voice? I handle it curiously, and watch perplexed its winking, breathing, and sneezing. I did not love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my girl–mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the morning—the transfigured woman.

Through her I came to love the wee thing, as it grew strong; as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half–formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How beautiful he was, with his olive–tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had moulded into his features! I held him in my arms, after we had sped far away from our Southern home,—held him, and glanced at the hot red soil of Georgia and the breathless city of a hundred hills, and felt a vague unrest. Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue?—for brown were his father's eyes, and his father's father's. And thus in the Land of the Color–line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil.

Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,—a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood–red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star–children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even–song the unvoiced terror of my life.

So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but eighteen months distant from the All–life,—we were not far from worshipping this revelation of the divine, my wife and I. Her own life builded and moulded itself upon the child; he tinged her every dream and idealized her every effort. No hands but hers must touch and garnish those little limbs; no dress or frill must touch them that had not wearied her fingers; no voice but hers could coax him off to Dreamland, and she and he together spoke some soft and unknown tongue and in it held communion. I too mused above his little white bed; saw the strength of my own arm stretched onward through the ages through the newer strength of his; saw the dream of my black fathers stagger a step onward in the wild phantasm of the world; heard in his baby voice the voice of the Prophet that was to rise within the Veil.

And so we dreamed and loved and planned by fall and winter, and the full flush of the long Southern spring, till the hot winds rolled from the fetid Gulf, till the roses shivered and the still stern sun quivered its awful light over the hills of Atlanta. And then one night the little feet pattered wearily to the wee white bed, and the tiny hands trembled; and a warm flushed face tossed on the pillow, and we knew baby was sick. Ten days he lay there,—a swift week and three endless days, wasting, wasting away. Cheerily the mother nursed him the first days, and laughed into the little eyes that smiled again. Tenderly then she hovered round him, till the smile fled away and Fear crouched beside the little bed.

Then the day ended not, and night was a dreamless terror, and joy and sleep slipped away. I hear now that Voice at midnight calling me from dull and dreamless trance,—crying, "The Shadow of Death! The Shadow of Death!" Out into the starlight I crept, to rouse the gray physician,—the Shadow of Death, the Shadow of Death. The hours trembled on; the night listened; the ghastly dawn glided like a tired thing across the lamplight. Then we two alone looked upon the child as he turned toward us with great eyes, and stretched his stringlike hands,—the Shadow of Death! And we spoke no word, and turned away.

He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train. The day changed not; the same tall trees peeped in at the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun. Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing—a childless mother.

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enough,—is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough,—is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here,—thou, O Death? About my head the thundering storm beat like a heartless voice, and the crazy forest pulsed with the curses of the weak; but what cared I, within my home beside my wife and baby boy? Wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou must needs enter there,—thou, O Death?

A perfect life was his, all joy and love, with tears to make it brighter,—sweet as a summer's day beside the Housatonic. The world loved him; the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes, and the children hovered and fluttered about him. I can see him now, changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns, and then to wondering thoughtfulness as he watched the world. He knew no color–line, poor dear—and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I—yea, all men—are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he had flown, "He will be happy There; he ever loved beautiful things." And I, far more ignorant, and blind by the web of mine own weaving, sit alone winding words and muttering, "If still he be, and he be There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!"

Blithe was the morning of his burial, with bird and song and sweet–smelling flowers. The trees whispered to the grass, but the children sat with hushed faces. And yet it seemed a ghostly unreal day,—the wraith of Life. We seemed to rumble down an unknown street behind a little white bundle of posies, with the shadow of a song in our ears. The busy city dinned about us; they did not say much, those pale–faced hurrying men and women; they did not say much,—they only glanced and said, "Niggers!"

We could not lay him in the ground there in Georgia, for the earth there is strangely red; so we bore him away to the northward, with his flowers and his little folded hands. In vain, in vain!—for where, O God! beneath thy broad blue sky shall my dark baby rest in peace,—where Reverence dwells, and Goodness, and a Freedom that is free?

All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart,—nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veil,—and my soul whispers ever to me saying, "Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free." No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the poise of his little curl–crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.

Idle words; he might have borne his burden more bravely than we,—aye, and found it lighter too, some day; for surely, surely this is not the end. Surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the Veil and set the prisoned free. Not for me,—I shall die in my bonds,—but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not "Is he white?" but "Can he work?" When men ask artists, not "Are they black?" but "Do they know?" Some morning this may be, long, long years to come. But now there wails, on that dark shore within the Veil, the same deep voice, Thou shalt forego! And all have I foregone at that command, and with small complaint,—all save that fair young form that lies so coldly wed with death in the nest I had builded.

If one must have gone, why not I? Why may I not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this wide waking? Was not the world's alembic, Time, in his young hands, and is not my time waning? Are there so many workers in the vineyard that the fair promise of this little body could lightly be tossed away? The wretched of my race that line the alleys of the nation sit fatherless and unmothered; but Love sat beside his cradle, and in his ear Wisdom waited to speak. Perhaps now he knows the All–love, and needs not to be wise. Sleep, then, child,—sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet—above the Veil.

Federico García Lorca

Years ago, I watched the movie The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca.  It stars Andy Garcia, who was fantastic as Lorca.  His performance has stayed with me over the years and I have returned to Lorca's poetry repeatedly because of it.  The movie features the poem, Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, which I have come to love, and will reproduce portions of here.  Unfortunately, I can not find this translation anywhere on the internet, but there are other versions around that give you the idea, if you are interested.

Excerpts from Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,
by Federico García Lorca.
Translated by Galway Kinnell


1.  The Goring and the Death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the linen sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime standing ready
at five in the afternoon.
Everything else was death, only death,
at five in the afternoon.

Wind scattered bits of gauze
at five in the afternoon.
Oxide sowed glass and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove battles with the leopard
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
Now began the drums of a dirge
at five in the afternoon.
And the bells of arsenic and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Silence gathered on every corner
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with lifted heart!
at five in the afternoon.
When sweat of snow began
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull-ring was drenched in iodine
at five in the afternoon.
death laid its eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At exactly five in the afternoon.


          ***********


2.  The Spilled Blood

I don't want to see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I don't want to see
Ignacio's blood on the sand.

I don't want to see it!

The wide-open moon.
A house of unmoving clouds,
and the gray bull-ring of dream
with willows at its barreras.

I don't want to see it!
Remembering burns.
Send word to the jasmines
to bring their tiny whiteness!

I don't want to see it!


          ***********


Ignacio climbs the steps
carrying all his death on his shoulders.
He was looking for daybreak,
and daybreak was no more.
He seeks his confident profile
and drowsiness disorients him.
He was looking for his beautiful body
and found his upwelling blood.
Don't ask me to see it!
I don't want to feel the gush
each time with less force,
the gush that lights up 
the rows of seats and spills
over the corduroy and leather 
of a thirsting crowd.
Who cries to me to come forward?
I don't want to see it!


          ***********


4.  Absent Soul

The bull doesn't know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants of your own house.
The child doesn't know you, nor does the afternoon,
because you have died forever.


          ***********


No one knows you.  No.  But I sing of you.
I sing, for later on, of your profile and your grace.
The noble maturity of your understanding.
Your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
The sadness in your valiant gaiety.

There will not be born for a long time, if ever,
an Andalusian like him, so open, so bold in adventure.
I sing of his elegance in words that moan
and I remember a sad breeze in the olive grove.

"That familiar ring"

"Kathi says a lot of things and it all has that familiar ring."  -J Church, Kathi

"That familiar ring."  The sound of a person arguing without hearing.  Arguing because they have an agenda, not because they want to find the truth.  Why do people have agendas?  Because their emotions are a mess and they are feeling pushed by them.  The next time you hear that familiar ring, see if you can stop arguing with the person and just look for the pressure behind their words.  It will be there.  And if you can identify it in others, you'll be closer to being able to see it in yourself.  And that's when you will have the ability to address it head-on, instead of just putting it out there on other people.  All you (or they!) need to do is express your emotions.  That releases the pressure.  Then you can argue in pursuit of the truth, instead of making some ridiculous, irrelevant point about something that nobody cares about.

Cultural-level responsibility

I said in my post yesterday about the Orlando shooting that the way for this not to have happened is for him to have had better emotional skills.  And that's true.  He failed miserably in his responsibility on a personal level.  But responsibility has many levels to it. On a cultural level, I think we are all failing miserably in our attempts to stop this kind of violence.

There are three main ways that I see us failing to stop violence at a cultural level.  The first seems obvious to me.  Our gun laws are a joke.  No regular person needs to own an assault rifle.  There is a ton of evidence that in places where there are more guns, there are more violent assaults.  The NRA owns this country and prevents sensible gun laws from being enacted.  If you vote for candidates that support the NRA, you're part of the problem.  Simple.  Obvious.

Two:  If you follow the roots of any violent act back far enough, you are going to find suffering.  This man who killed people in Orlando, like all the violent criminals before him, has suffered.  Let me say this very clearly:  THIS DOES NOT JUSTIFY HIS ACTIONS.  He failed in his basic responsibility as a human being.  But it does give us at least a partial explanation for his behavior.  And if we truly want to see the violence stop, then we need to recognize that if we eliminated the conditions that cause this kind of terrible suffering, we would have eliminated the original starting point of a lot of violence.  That doesn't mean that there wouldn't be other starting points for violence.  There will always be violence.  But our responsibility is to look at our role in causing suffering.  His parents are from Afghanistan.  Do we have any responsibility for causing suffering in that country?  I would say we do.  Whether we should have done things differently in Afghanistan doesn't seem worth discussing to me.  It happened.  What is worth discussing is the recognition that we played a role in the creation of conditions favorable for suffering.  I hardly think we're to blame for this terrible act of violence, but I do think it's a possibility we could have prevented it by creating thriving environments around the world.  Says Def Poet, Suheir Hammad, in her poem First Writing Since,

"affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life."

Remember, it's not about assigning blame.  We know who's to blame.  It's about preventing violence.

Finally, we are failing on a cultural level to prevent violence because we are not teaching healthy emotional skills.  I explained yesterday how healthy emotional skills are what would have prevented this and most every other violent episode ever.  So how do we do it?  We need a broad approach.  Relying on the most broken people in our culture to seek out a therapist who may or may not help them is ridiculous.  People like this guy don't even know they're broken.  Healthy emotional skills should be taught in schools from kindergarten all the way until graduation from high school.  Back in the day, when we were just a bunch of farmers, nobody needed any damn emotional skills.  Just milk the cow, plow the fields, eat and sleep.  Was it hard?  Hell yes.  But it wasn't complex.  Now, life is just too complicated for anyone to handle without the necessary know-how.  And almost no one has the know-how.

In summary:
1)  Fix gun laws.
2)  Affirm life.
3)  Teach emotional skills in schools.

Happy is an emotion

And this makes me happy:

I am now a fan of James Corden.

Well Obviously...

What does "obvious" mean?  Various on-line dictionaries peg it as some form of, "easily seen, recognized, or understood".  Seems pretty obvious.  But in large parts of our modern culture, "obvious" is becoming an unusable word.  Wouldn't you think it would be "obvious" that in modern America, all people deserve equal rights?  Not to LGBT opponents.  Or that bigotry is wrong?  Not to huge portions of white America.  Or that lying is wrong?  Not to our politicians.  Or that murder is wrong?  Not to our government or to the many among us who think it's a political tool.  These and many other "obvious" concepts are being whittled away.  
I'm sure it happened plenty of times before this, but the first instance I recall is Bill Clinton parsing his words in ways that may have been technically correct, but were not representative of reality in relation to Monica Lewinsky.  I'm not going to try to repeat it all, because it might make my brain leak out of my ear, but it was an assault on the truth. Since then, this seems to be the way all politicians and most of the media and virtually everyone who comments on an on-line article anywhere speak at all times.  Everyone has an agenda, and they all just twist reality to fit that agenda, no matter how absurd.  They clearly believe that if they speak with a straight face, there's nothing that anyone can do about it.

All of this spin leaves Americans without an anchor to which they can tie themselves.  It's clear that many, many Americans derive their beliefs solely from what they hear in the media.  When the media says crazy things, the people repeat those crazy things.  They lack an internal mechanism for determining right from wrong.  So now, with objective reality long gone, people just say whatever they want, without regard to the truth.  And that's how we get so many broken parts of our culture, including our two presidential candidates, both of whom are obviously unfit for the job.

Emotional connection can be the anchor that people are missing.  When you have a strong connection to your emotions, it becomes a fantastic bull-shit detector.  You might be able to convince your brain of some of these crazy things, but your soul will scream (meaning you'll feel angry or upset emotions) when it hears that stuff. If you are able to listen to it, then that listening is your anchor.  

Ignoramus:  "Gay marriage damages the institution of marriage.  Marriage is one male and one female."  Soul:  "Nope."  Ignoramus:  "Black people are the real racists.  They're the ones causing the problems."  Soul: "Nah." "(Virtually anything to come out of Trump/Clinton's mouth.)"  Soul:  "I don't think so."  

It just works.  You don't have to think about it.  Your soul will tell you, through your emotions, if you develop your ability to listen to it.  I hope you will, because if not, life in this country is going to continue to get much worse.  And that's obvious.

Orlando night club shooting

The man's motivations for going into a gay nightclub and shooting the place up are not yet clear.  His father says he was not religiously motivated.  That he hated homosexuals.  But he called 9-1-1 and pledged allegiance to ISIS just before he started shooting.  In my opinion, which of those two it was really doesn't matter because the root cause of either one is the same thing:  anger.

This man was clearly emotionally unstable.  If you take the most unstable person ever and give them a way to regulate their emotions, they will no longer be unstable.  It's not about ISIS, homosexuals, or any other thing under the sun.  It's about his inability to process his emotions.  So the politicians want to build walls (terrible idea) or take away guns (good idea, but not just because of this event) when they should be funding emotional health classes in elementary schools.  

People simply don't know how to take good care of their inner workings.  If you want to take care of your brain, what do you do?  You take a college course, or do a cross-word puzzle or have a stimulating discussion.  If you want to take care of your body, what do you do?  You exercise and/or you eat better.  What do you do if you want to take care of your emotions?  NOBODY KNOWS!  Well, I do.  You build a connection to your emotions, so that when something causes emotion, you allow yourself to feel it and express it instead of repressing it.  If you can do that, the emotion never builds up and we don't see you on the nightly news.  So, if you are really sick of these events, start spreading the word about emotional health.

Quote: Aldous Huxley

"It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila.  "Dark because you want it to be light.  Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly. You've got to learn to do everything lightly.  Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply.  Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.'  ...Lightly, lightly - it was the best advice ever given me.  Well, now I'm going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi...Lightly, my darling, lightly.  Even when it comes to dying."

This passage is from Island, Huxley's last novel, published the year before his death, in 1962.  Huxley is mostly famous for Brave New World, a depiction of a dystopian society, published in 1932.   I feel that Island, published 30 years later, is a much more mature book.  I think because it depicts a utopian view of how a society could be structured around the needs of the individual, it is wrongly perceived as naive.  Particularly in modern America, where we are all well-versed in dystopia, Island has much more to offer us about life.  I encourage you to add it to your reading list.  

Quote: A friend (R.M.)

"If hubris is totally absent, self-love is not really a sin, but a completely healthy state of mind."

Bob Ross

No explanation necessary.

Well, actually there probably is a need for an explanation.  When I was young, I didn't know who Bob Ross was, but if I had, I would have thought him the cheesiest m-er f-er alive.  That's because my life was devoid of compassion.  Now I understand the value of kindness and compassion.  It's clear to me that the late Bob Ross was a master of compassion.  And instead of seeing a cheese-ball, I now see a deep love for life.  It's a terrible shame that he's gone, but his love and his work live on through videos like the one above.  Listen to it with compassion and see if you're smiling by the end.  I know I will be.

Quote: Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Socialists,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left to speak for me.

Jack-wagonry

Why is being a jack-wagon expected from such a huge majority of the population?  Really. There are countless examples of people being nasty and mean-spirited for no real reason, when they could easily be pleasant and kind.  Why?  Here's a shocker for you:  I think it's emotional.

The world is not always a very kind place.  We've all suffered.  I think a large number of people have looked at their own suffering and felt cheated or abused.  Because of the huge taboo against expressing emotion, they don't do what's healthy.  They don't express their emotions about feeling abused and then just move on.  No, instead they push that emotion down inside.  This repression gets them through that instant, but causes a huge amount of pain over time.  And they come to resent that pain.  And because all of this is happening subconsciously, they don't attribute the pain to it's source, which would allow them to solve the problem.  They just feel angry and resentful.  The obvious next step from angry and resentful is entitled.  And all the jack-wagons are incredibly entitled.  "It's my right to act however I want."  And they do.  Internet trolls are sort of becoming passé. They're too obvious.  The real problem are these entitled jack-wagons who just spew nastiness all over the place, but do it in a way that fits within the bounds of what people will accept.  It creates horrible environments.  I don't watch television, so to get local news, I like to read MLive.  It's a great source for information that I wouldn't get otherwise. But any time I get sucked into the comments, I just can't believe my eyes.  The environment there is so disgusting that it's hard to maintain any faith in humanity while reading those comments.  Any time I can, I try to leave pleasant, positive, non-judgmental comments there.  You never know.  Maybe one of them will read that positivity and it will have an impact.  

But not really.  Because they aren't really angry at the specific situation they're blowing their nastiness at.  As I said above, they have structural anger that is caused by repressing their emotions.  So, until they decide to emote, we'll all just have to put up with them.  I'm doing what I can to break that taboo, but it could be a while.

Quote: Emily Yoffe

"People who have the capacity to ruthlessly maltreat their children tend toward self-justification, not shame." 

I love this, not just because it calls out the sickness of how so many people interact with their children, but also because it highlights this dichotomy between shame and self-justification that pervades our culture.  You should be ashamed for supporting this political candidate's bigotry, but instead, you justify it.  That pretty much describes modern America.

Maus

Art Spiegelman is a famous cartoonist.  He authored the graphic novel Maus, a story about the Holocaust and his relationship with his father, who was a Holocaust survivor. It's an amazing story.  The pictures and the interaction with his father really bring the story to life.  Instead of hearing about his father's story in an abstract way, you see how his father's history influences his current life, as well as the author's.  It's a moving experience to read it.  I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in our deeper internal workings.

Quote: Dr. Seuss

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Quotes: Muhammad Ali

Here's an article that lists so many great quotes that I can't put them all on here: 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/30-of-muhammad-alis-best-quotes/ar-BBtQfcR?li=BBnbfcL

Here are the ones I already had and wanted to post:

"Will they ever have another fighter who writes poems, predicts rounds, beats everybody, makes people laugh, makes people cry, and is as tall and extra pretty as me?  A prize fight is like a war:  the real part is won or lost somewhere far away from witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road long before I dance under those lights."

"He has two chances.  Slim and none, and slim just left town."

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." 

"When a man says I cannot, he has made a suggestion to himself.  He has weakened his power of accomplishing that which otherwise would have been accomplished."

"Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

"No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger."

"Nobody has to tell me that this is a serious business. I'm not fightin' one man.  I'm fighting a lot of men, showing a lot of them, here is one man they couldn't defeat, couldn't conquer...My mission is to bring freedom to 30 million black people."

"How can I shoot them poor people?  Just take me to jail." 

The Greatest

Today is a sad day for many, me included.  Muhammad Ali has died.  From my youngest years I remember loving him.  By the time I was born he was past his prime, but I didn't know that.  And I didn't care.  Boxing was just the arena he chose to display his awesomeness.  I remember the words much more than the punches.  He was a poet of the highest order who threw fists to emphasize his points.  If you had asked me at any point in my childhood who my hero was, I would have quickly responded, "Muhammad Ali". Not my dad, not the president.  Ali.  I didn't realize it then, but looking back at my teen years, I was emulating Ali everywhere I went.  I loved his brash style, the idea that you could say these beautiful words, just as long as you backed it up.  But, of course, I was a teen, so I just spoke like him and worried about backing it up later.  Surprisingly, it never really got me in trouble.  At all my greatest moments in life, I've hollered, "I am the greatest!" and thrown my arms up in the air like him.  I will continue to do so for as long as I live.

He was a curious choice for a young, suburban white kid to idolize.  But idolize him, I did. Any time I've said anything witty or off the cuff in my life, you can be sure, it really came from him, even if the actual words were mine.  And I grew up and got a minor in African American Studies, certainly at some level, because of him.  He is a huge part of who I am, and his passing leaves me desolated.

That Republican who's running for president.

I no longer pay attention to politics, but he's impossible to avoid.  The media plasters his image everywhere.  I continually think, "why don't they just ignore him?  He'd just fade away if they did.  The media is all he's got."  But they can't.  They're as addicted to him as the American public is.  Why?  All the answers his followers give for why they like him are ridiculous and not based in reality.  The real reason is that most Americans have no emotional skills whatsoever.  They don't know how to process any of the emotion they feel inside.  So their insides are a complete mess and they aren't going to get any better.  But that feels awful!  What to do?  Avoid.  Do anything possible to not be aware of that awful feeling inside.  So they run to any form of drama they can find.  The more obnoxious something is, the better it serves as a distraction.  Cue what's his name.  He's a great distraction.  And he knows it.  All he does is say stupid stuff so that people have something to talk and argue about.  And he'll ride this all the way to the presidency.  And then the American people will have the president they deserve.  All because emotions are scary.

The Great Existential Questions

“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.” -L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

When I was younger, I had a lot of interest in the great existential questions.  Why are we here?  Who am I?  Is this all there is?  As I've learned more and more about emotions, I've come to believe that simply "being" is why we are here.  Life, when experienced only through the mind or through the body, is hollow.  And that's how so many people experience life.  When healthy emotion is added to the mix, life becomes full and wonderful.  No longer do we need to push our bodies or argue endlessly to avoid the emptiness inside.  With emotion, we can sit and stare at a tree and feel fully alive. "Present moment, wonderful moment" is what Thich Nhat Hanh says.  He's right.  Why would I need anything more than what is right in front of me if my whole being is fully engaged?

Detroit Bad Boys

The only sport I follow any more is NBA basketball.  I've been a fan of the Detroit Pistons since I was a kid, back in the early 80's.  A couple of years ago, I stumbled across the greatest fan blog in the world, Detroit Bad Boys, or DBB for short.  Over time, I've commented there quite a bit and really come to enjoy interacting with the other commenters.  Today, there was an off-topic article that asked what we did in our spare time.  I mentioned that I write this blog and two of the most prominent members of the masthead showed interest.  I ended up posting a link.  So now, Emotion Colored Glasses is open to DBB!  It's really an honor to me that they would show any interest at all.  Sports and emotions are two areas that don't come together too often.  And there was no real reason that either of them needed to show interest, so it felt very nice.  Now my two favorite blogs interact.  Welcome to you, my DBB brothers (and sisters!).  Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Link

Taedong River Bridge by Steve Kowit