One way that I track down my attachment issues is by looking for things that evoke a strong emotional response, either positive or negative. In doing that, I've discovered
- that there are more things in my life that evoke strong negative emotions than strong positive ones.
- that I have a certain attachment to some negative emotions that I don't have for positive ones.
The reason I experience more negative emotions is not because I have a miserable life – I could live like Warren Buffett and I'd still be about the same emotionally – it's because the 'negative emotion technology' in my system is rather finely tuned, while the 'positive emotion technology' was pretty much smashed flat by my parents (for reasons that could make a whole 'nother blog).
So, when good things happen, I tend to have a flat emotional response, while I can react more naturally and emotionally to bad things.
But the more interesting thing is that I have an attachment to these negative emotions, and I have a hard time shaking them.
Back in 1983 or '84, I worked for a boss who was incredibly abusive. I think I can fairly say he was the worst person I ever knew who wasn't a serial killer. (If it turns out someday that he is a serial killer, that will not surprise me.) He was a lot tougher on the female employees than he was on the guys, but he enjoyed making everyone's life miserable. I don't mean that as a figure of speech – he literally enjoyed making people miserable.
He was forced out in 1989 or '90, but even as late as 1995, I could still find myself in a rage just thinking about him. I eventually kicked that, but it took years because I was attached to the anger I felt, and part of me didn't want to let go of it.
If you read a lot of Buddhist literature as I do, you find a lot about losing attachments to wealth, luxury, sex, fame, power and the like.
But what if your attachments are to anger and resentment?
Well, I got over my issues with that sorry-assed mother$#%^@* psychopath asshole boss... so I guess I can kick the rest of it, too. That sorry son of a bitch... I mean, seriously, you wouldn't believe the shit that asswipe pulled... I remember one time...
3 comments:
I wonder if there is something about the news business that attracts such people. I once had a news editor, on an election night, literally get up on my desk to bellow at me that I was the stupidest man he had ever supervised.
I can't be too harsh since some of the stories about my own supervision of news reporters are not the most kind. Like the time I told new hires at The Oklahoman that although they could get an "A" if they scored 90 on an exam in school, they would be fired if they had a 10 percent error rate working for me.
It is very difficult to give up anger, I agree. It seems so primal and the actual physical reaction to anger is so quick -- and satisfying. One of the more wise things ever said to me, though, points out that it is not anger that is primal, it is derivitive. "Anger is just hurt turned inside out," a shrink friend once said to me. And there's the nub of it. It's those old hurts that build up and rejuvenate all the new ones and feed and fuel our anger.
My experience is that as I looked through the anger to find the hurt and through the hurt to find forgiveness -- mostly for myself -- that my anger began to subside and dissapate.
Blogblah!!!
Major realization, Mike. Just being able to see it clearly is a step towards giving up the attachment.
I've heard it said that the physiological "symptoms" of fear and anger are almost identical.
That is to say, what your body does when you're afraid is about the same as what it does when you're angry.
Remembering some of my episodes, I think there may be something to this theory, which suggests to me that it's not always easy to know if one is afraid, or pissed. The border between the two may be in dispute; an emotional Kashmir.
Not suggesting this applies to you, or any other normal human being, but sometimes if I can remember to do it, when I'm pissed I ask myself if I'm also frightened.
Or JUST frightened.
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