Vinegar to treat angst induced gut ache!

Have you noticed people living out their lives with an edge of anger, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, tension? It seems a lot of society lives with a permanent angry gut ache.

Is all this angst authentically based in how life is unfolding? E. J. Dionne argues that it is.

E. J. Dionne wrote of the authenticity of rage in the October 12, 2009 edition of the Washington Post in his piece "Responding to Authentic Rage".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101101556_pf.html

He describes how populations within society become hopelessly disaffected as the society of which they should be a part evolves and seemingly or really leaves them out.

I think there are likely few things worse than knowing your situation is bad and thinking you have learned it is impossible to improve the situation. Along with that is a sense of hopeless frustration and helplessness. Can you imagine living every day with that going on?

As a society we seem to ask people to accept their situation as conventional wisdom would suggest, "That's just how life is."

I like to use the statement, "What is, is." What I mean by that is don't pretend what is is something else. For example, don't ascribe motives to the cosmos that cause "What is" to come about and affect you as it does.

I had the joy of meeting with an aunt on her ninety-seventh birthday. It occurred to me that she has always been someone at peace. She seems to me to truly know how to accept what is. That's far from saying she resigns herself to her "fate". She knows where she's at and works to bring herself to a different state. Pretty amazing ability seemingly constantly reinforced by living.

Yet I meet people whose advice for people in unhappy circumstances is to accept their situation and get used to it. The people saying this, may not appear to be in the same sorry state as the people they are advising, but these "helpful" advisers' state is also one of hopelessness. I expect they live their own lives with that same cynical, fatalistic view.

I wonder how people who are apparently not in a downtrodden state; no major family illnesses, no deaths, gainfully employed in a chosen career - in other words - not living through fire, flood, tornado or earthquake, develop that same cynical sense of hopelessness and helplessness?

I wonder if some of these people, notably economists, philosophers, political leaders, theologians and other society leaders and shapers have set out to achieve a goal and have achieved it. For instance, they might have aspired to a Nobel in Economics, PhD in Philosophy, prime minister, published cleric, gold medal Olympian and now they're thinking, "Now what? Where do I go from here? There is no where to go from here because I'm at the end."

Ouch!

Are they now living without hope because there is nothing more for them to hope for that they can have any influence on? They have become passive "participants" in life. Any sports fan knows it's a fool's quest to allow your team's ability to win to determine the peace you experience in your life. Isn't it the same thing to wait for the economy, your employer, or the weather to bring you peace and happiness?

People have to learn that peace comes from within and we are empowered to bring it to our own lives.

"... have to learn ..." means an educational process is at stake. Our society as a political body evolving to democracy tends to see the world through a feudal or tribal perspective with leader as strong man. We tend to not think of ourselves as masters of our own destiny, perhaps partly because of that tribal view and partly because we almost always need others to help us realize our own destiny. In doing so, we have to collaborate with others to help them achieve their own destiny.

This can be hard work, especially if we don't believe it can work. That hard work is the threshold we must cross to achievement.

So what do we do?

I think we can take a practical approach. Let's find specific needs people have to meet. Pick one that seems a priority need. Lead by example by inviting people affected by meeting that need; people in demand, people providing to meet that demand and people supporting the activities of the other two. Political activists are well advised to look to the example of volunteer agencies, especially those built to serve people living with disease to begin to understand how that process works.

Let's use a transparent process where each party puts its own needs and abilities on the table. Let's work out how each party's needs can be met, then work out how that can be done collaboratively so as to not disable any one party from achieving what it needs to achieve.

Is this possible? I know it is. Is it easy? I know it is not. Is it worth doing? Consider the alternative. Live without peace and in misery, wondering what your neighbour is doing to keep your life from turning out how you need it to be. Live with hopelessness as no one has taken the time and effort to show that the situation is never hopeless.

My brother used to say, "You're not lost til you're out of gas."

The great thing is that we never need be out of gas. We never need to feel hopeless and helpless. We never need to feel angry at our fate. We never need to express ourselves through road rage. We never need to protest without having hope of amending the situation we are protesting against. We never have to abstain from voting because the situation is just so hopeless as "they are all the same". When we join the battle, "they" is us and we have no reason to feel defeated.

Importantly, we never have to accept the vinegar of negativity some political leaders, social commentators, and news and entertainment media offer as a treatment for a person's angry gut ache.