Throwing punches at ocean waves

Over the past few months, to put it simply, I haven't been feeling the love. I've been having some issues with rage. I can't seem to quell it either because I don't even know what is causing it for sure. Hmm... do you have to know the cause of an emotion to be able to change it? Very interesting. You can probably see where I'm going with this, can't you? *wink wink nudge nudge*

Okay, so let's get into the details. First, I'll tell you what symptoms I've been experiencing, and then we'll get into trying to understand them.

So recently I've been holding negative views of a lot of people. While most of these people I only consider to be acquaintances, some of them are my very good friends. I seem to have lost my patience, and when I see people just dilly dallying through everyday life, or just being vague in general, it tends to aggravate me. People who lack direction and drive just make me roll my eyes these days, and I make it a point to avoid them, despite the fact that I have had genuinely good times with them in the past. I've been swearing a lot more than usual, which makes me feel like I'm being aggressive at an excessive and unnecessary level. I also seem to be looking for things to complain about in people: I'll take a very brief, neutral conversation with a person, and over time I catch myself twisting the conversation into something negative, and then I complain about that person. Talk about asinine.

So why am I acting this way? Have I always been an aggressive person? Not really. Are there loads of stress signals going off all around me at the moment? Possibly. I've got a shotgun loaded with excuses.

I want to start with a specific example of how I've been acting. I've noticed that the amount of time I'm willing to wait for my sandwich to be made at the deli has diminished to about half a minute. How is that even reasonable? If they ask me more than once what I want on my sandwich, I huff and puff. If I ask for my sandwich to be toasted and they grill it, I lose my temper. Why do I get worked up over these meaningless things? Maybe it's my failure to understand how someone can be inept when it comes to menial tasks? I don't really think that's it considering that I haven't had this issue in the past. In my last post I talked about how my perceptions have changed over time, maybe that could be the cause? Once again I don't really think so. While my perceptions have changed over time, my personality has remained the same for the most part.

So where can we go from here? Well we know that patience is obviously an issue, but what does having patience actually mean? I found this particular definition to be quite interesting...

2. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.

An ability or willingness. Is patience an ability that we all have, or is it a choice? Whoa, that's pretty deep right there. Has my threshold for annoyance simply been met, or am I choosing to become angry with everyone?

Wow, I never thought of it that way; I always just assumed anger was provoked. What if in reality I am never being provoked, I am only choosing anger and aggression as my answer to social situations. Why would anyone do that? Does lashing out at people make me happy? No, it doesn't. I've been complaining that being angry is making me unhappy. So then why do I choose anger? Anger is, by definition, the opposite of happiness. Maybe when people interrupt our pursuit of happiness, we choose to respond with anger so that we disrupt their pursuit as well. An eye for an eye.

...I think we're getting somewhere.

So in the deli situation, the sandwich would represent an item that brings me happiness. When the deli worker messes up my sandwich, I choose to lash out at them which will cause them to be either angry with me in return, dissatisfied for the rest of the day, or in other words: just not happy. People do this all the time; they choose to get angry in situations like this - Are the choices we make symbolic of human nature? If you think about it, the whole concept of an eye for an eye is about fairness. You take my eye and I'll take yours so that we are once again equal. The idea that achieving fairness is a part of human nature seems pretty plausible to me. Justice is about making all parties equal as well. Is it just for an individual to use anger to render all parties equal in terms of happiness? There's a problem with that: our whole justice system punishes people who act out of anger!

I don't know about you, but I just blew my mind.

So according to what I've discussed so far, anger is a means to which we create justice on a person to person basis, so that our happiness is levied. This however, runs counter to the principal that justice punishes acts of anger. Is our justice system flawed? Or is human nature flawed?

Lets get into the whole human nature aspect of it a little more. Who am I to say that it is human nature to seek for retribution when you are wronged? Well, I'm not anybody to say that. Human nature is one of the most widely debated subjects in philosophy today. It all ties into good and evil and whether those entities actually exist or are just mere fabrications. If we talk about good and evil, then at some point I'm going to have to stick my fingers into religion, which is a whole other messy topic which I just don't feel like getting into with this post.

So human nature. I guess I just said that I can't really talk about it with any credibility. So that means I just led us to a dead end... again. Well I'm not done getting to the bottom of this anger issue that I'm having. The sandwich issue was just one of many sources of anger that I have been experiencing lately. Let's try another one, shall we?

As I mentioned above, I have been twisting other peoples words and associating negative connotations with them. Why on earth would I be doing this? What do I possibly stand to gain from doing this? Is it making me happy? No! It's only making me angrier! This really has me baffled. Let's see if we can get into the roots of this issue.

I've noticed that when I have a conversation with someone that I don't speak to frequently, overtime I tend to keep pulling new meanings from the words they used. Why do I dwell on these short winded conversations? Maybe I'm just being too analytical. Maybe I am looking for underlying meanings where there are none, and when I can't seem to find any, I decide to put my own meanings into place. But if that's true, then why do I always associate negative meanings with their words? Well I think that could be due to an overabundance of stress, which I do have in my life right now.

So now my question is, why does stress cause me to be negative?

I took a visit to www.stress.org and what did I find? The very first line on the page:

Stress is difficult for scientists to define because it is a subjective sensation associated with varied symptoms that differ for each of us.

The symptoms differ for each of us. Does that mean that I cope with stress by acting negatively? That seems counter-intuitive to me since I seem to be getting more stressed by acting in that way. In addition to that, I don't remember getting this negative in the past when I've been stressed.

Increased stress increases productivity – up to a point, after which things rapidly deteriorate, and that level also differs for each of us.

Well hang on, this might help. Maybe the amount of stress that I am enduring at the moment is more than I have ever endured, and has pushed me past the 'breaking point'. That seems to fit the bill. But to be honest, even though I think we found an answer, I think it's a pretty boring one. The reason for anger is stress. Ha, methinks I liked answering with questions better.

So anyways, I think I'll end here since I actually found an answer this time around. But before I go, I've got another question for you all:

Can you derive happiness from anger?

Try and answer that question without taking into account the outcomes of your anger. That is, I'm not allowed to say that by getting mad at the deli worker got me a free sandwich which in turn made me happy. I'm asking how can someone get joy out of being angry. Is it even possible? What does that then say about human nature?

Hmm... sounds a little sinister to me.

Well, that's it for me. Until next time, stay frosty

Becomming unlike one's self

I seem to be bouncing around rather haphazardly through life at the moment, and I'm having a difficult time understanding why I say/do the things that I say/do. I used to have a concrete image of who I was; I had goals, I saw my future, and I acknowledged the choices I would inevitably have to make.

Now, however, I seem to be an entirely different person... or at least I feel different. I'll give you a quick rundown of how drastic some of my perceptions have changed over the past couple months, and while some of them are relatively insignificant, other changes are very high impact.

For one, I used to always want to own a large home in a suburban neighborhood. My reasons for this desire are thus: Before my parents divorced, I used to live in a decently sized home with lots of outdoor space. After the divorce, I moved approximately 13 times, each home smaller than the last, and in some really scummy neighborhoods. At this point in my life, my prerogative was to revive my memories of a happy conjoined family by getting a nice big house on my own.

So far so good, maybe analyzing myself isn't so hard after all. Let's move on.

In my present conscious state, I see myself less and less in the traditional family unit snapshot... the white picket fence just isn't as white anymore. Instead, I now see myself living independently in a very modern apartment looking over a park several stories up in a high-rise. What caused the change? Did my desire for a traditional family dissipate? Could be, but I'm not sure why that would have happened. Living in college could be fostering a sense of independence in me that finds living on my own in the city to be more appealing.

Hey, that seems pretty plausible if you ask me. You know, this might be easier than I thought!
Let's try a topic that's a little more serious...

In the past, I used to be a hopeless romantic. I wrote poems, bought gifts, always did my best to make my partner happy, etc. My significant other was always on my mind, and I constantly had visions of the future: a family brimming with happiness living in, you guessed it, a white picket house. How cheesy and boring does that sound? I rolled my eyes while writing it to be honest - Does that mean I resent my former self? Regardless, when I think about relationships now, I don't see what I used to, and I don't value the same things either. I used to value the idea of a cohesive family unit. Now when I try to picture potential futures with someone else, I can only picture emptiness. What's the deal with that? It's not even an opposite view, I just can't picture anything at all. How do you analyze that? Maybe I just don't know people well enough to be able to forecast the future. Well that could be true, but I never had problems with that sort of thing in the past. How about I just compare the relationship values that I used to have with the ones I have now? In the past I valued love. Now I value companionship. So hey, those values sound pretty similar, so maybe there's no issue here, right? Well there's a problem, I just don't see love and companionship as the same thing. I can't find the words to explain it, but to me they are entirely different. That might come from my inability to define "love," but I'm not so sure.

I've got an idea! Let's visit dictionary.com.

love
–noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.

companion
–noun
1. a person who is frequently in the company of, associates with, or accompanies another: my son and his two companions.
2. a person employed to accompany, assist, or live with another in the capacity of a helpful friend.
3. a mate or match for something: White wine is the usual companion of fish.

Personally, I don't enjoy white wine with fish, but that's besides the point.

So how similar are those definitions anyways? They seem pretty different to me. I think that when people think of the word "love" they automatically associate companionship with it. If love is present in a relationship, is it automatically assumed that companionship is there as well? The details seem fuzzy to me, and I'm not so sure that it should be assumed that love and companionship go hand in hand. Then again maybe I'm just scared. I've been hurt in the past, and even though I feel like I've gotten over it, maybe I've been traumatized. Maybe I'm just choosing to admire the attributes to love rather than love itself. Did that make sense? Possibly.

Another thing that I thought was interesting is that I used to have problems with honesty and loyalty. I used to constantly worry myself over these things when in past relationships. I always wanted someone that wouldn't lead me to think that they were lying about anything. In other words, I desired predictability. That is not the case any longer. Now I find myself attracted to spontaneity. I want someone who will drive me nuts and keep me guessing. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe, maybe not. Who says that both at the same time aren't possible? I can certainly see how both could be present in a relationship, but what I find peculiar is that I am just less concerned with honesty than I once was. Why did that happen? You would think that after being lied to in a relationship on a severe level that one would be more concerned with honesty in future relationships, right? Well for some reason unbeknownst to me, my thought pattern traveled in the opposite direction.

Interesting... very interesting. So I know most of you are probably thinking, "this guy just can't seem to find the right person and it's bothering him, which is why he's writing this blog". Oh ho ho you clever analysts, you. I've actually got a tid-bit of information that might intrigue you: I'm actually not looking for a relationship of any kind. I presently have no inclinations toward the pursuance of any individual.

"So what was the point of all that, Matthew?" Well gee, I'm not really sure to be honest! And I actually think that's the point. I feel as though you can't understand yourself unless there's something that you don't understand in the first place. I know that later I'm going to go over all this again and try to learn something new about myself. I may actually walk away from this knowing less about myself than I did before I wrote it. Hey, have you ever thought about what it would be like to not know anything about yourself? Chaos intrigues me.

So, out of all that rambling, I don't think I figured out why my perceptions changed. I just found some more in-depth questions in relation to the questions I already had. Oh boy. But you know what, I think I like questions. By answering a question with another question, it keeps the puzzle going. I was never one for definitive endings, so I think I'll stop this search here with the questions I've raised.

So where does that leave you then? What are you going to take away from this? Did you just waste your time reading this whole blog entry by some guy who can't make up his mind? Why did you read it in the first place? Hell if I know.

But don't leave yet! I'd like to ask a question that I genuinely would be interested in hearing your answers to:

How do you know if you are who you say you are?

But there's a catch: you can't determine who you are from the perceptions that other people have of you. Ah ha! Not so easy to analyze yourself now, is it?

Until next time, stay frosty.