Twice each week, when confronted with what to send out in the world through this channel, I’m hit with a crippling thought: What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Doing????
Current earth situation: sucky ass. I’ll spare us a list of the big stuff, like wars and genocide and melting polar ice caps. I’m not going to point out the excruciating heartbreaks like kickstarters for kids with cancer, your grandparents falling victim to a Nigerian scam or elephant poachers.
Twice a week as I embark upon expounding on the joys of scrounging up a modicum of joy whilst wading through this shit, I consider what I’ve read most recently in the news. Knowledge of current events turns me into a toxic cocktail of anger and despair, mixed with anxiety and disgust, garnished with a bit of hopelessness. I should be doing something, I think. I need to fix this.
Why am I sitting in front of my computer? I should be out in the streets burning shit down. I should be screaming and shaking my fists. I should be cuddling babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome. I should be getting a PhD in chemistry to figure out how to fix the opioid epidemic.
Why aren’t I doing more to make the world a better place? Some of my friends work to directly affect policy and legislation that helps marginalized persons and communities. Other friends heal the sick or protect the cybersecurity of major electric grids.
And here I am telling you to sit on a fucking park bench.
I get up from my computer. I pace a bit, turn the kettle on but never make the tea. I flip through my notes and ideas. I ponder the pointlessness of it all.
Then like clockwork, every time, I remind myself that joy isn’t a zero sum game. We can be angry and feel joy. We can look at the world, and see how sucky it is with a deep knowing that we can’t magically change everything, while at the very same time, with the very same deep knowing, understand that there is beauty and happiness and joy that is our birthright.
Icky and oogey feelings can coexist with yummy yippie feelings. In fact, it is our duty to chase those yummy yippie feelings in an attempt to keep the other shit at bay.
In an attempt to understand all of these complex feels, I turned to the Queen of Feelings, Brené Brown. Brené Brown is a professor, researcher, author, and podcast host. Her work focuses on shame, vulnerability and courage. She has one of the most popular Ted talks of all time.
Her most recent book, Atlas of the Heart, is an exploration of 87 different emotions—most people can only name three. This information is the culmination of years of research by teams of Really Smart People™ and input from tens of thousands of human subjects.
This is the only book I own in three formats: hardback, audiobook, and e-book. It’s also a 5 episode series on Max. It’s also a book that every time I open, I glean a little insight into the whole being-a-human game. I have distilled a few of the angries and a few of the happies for us, but I highly suggest digging into the book.
ANGER
Anger is what we feel when shit isn’t right. There are a lot of ways for shit to not be right: something gets in the way of your desired outcome; you perceive a violation of the way things should be; or it can be a compassionate response to witnessing or experiencing injustice.
Anger is a full contact emotion with a physical component. It activates the nervous system, sending out cortisol and adrenaline, prompting the body into action.
Anger is a tricky devil, masking other negative emotions that can be difficult to confront, and making them look like anger.
DISGUST
Disgust is a feeling of aversion or repulsion towards something offensive. Disgust can be a physical sensation, like the thought of drinking lemonade that had been stirred by a used, but thoroughly cleaned flyswatter. But it also presents as a form of moral outrage that can lead to dehumanization. Check out this episode of Ologies about disgust.
CONTEMPT
Contempt is some weird twisted love child of anger and disgust. It’s a feeling of superiority, “I am better than you, you are a lesser being.” It is a direct path to dehumanizing.
DEHUMANIZATION
Dehumanization is what happens when you demonize or other an enemy or adversary; it can be an individual or group. This psychological process makes them seem less than human, thus not worthy of humane treatment.
FEAR
Fear is our response to a present, perceived, or imagined threat. Our brains register social pain identically to physical pain. The potential exposure to this pain is what ignites the fear response. Fear isn’t all bad, from an evolutionary standpoint, it allows us to continually learn what to do and not do in the face of danger. It can make us wise and self-protective. It can also turn us into assholes. Fear likes to pass itself off as anger.
HATE
Hate is the supersized combo of all the negative emotions: fear, anger, disgust, and contempt. It’s a powerful force fueled by connection— a common enemy unites a force, a.k.a. people love to hate together. Hate finds a current, and goes with it, moving and growing, and reaching as many people as possible. Kind of like herpes. Hate spurns people into action. The goal is not merely to hurt, but for complete destruction and annihilation, either mentally, socially, or physically.
Ok, we’re done with that heavy shit. Let’s move on…
JOY
Joy is a “good mood of the soul.” It is a sudden, unexpected, quick and intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure or appreciation. Joy and gratitude are besties, egging each other on for more. Joy makes colors brighter and birdsong sweeter. Joy can pop the gross bubble of the icky stuff and make it easier to deal with.
HAPPINESS
While joy happens in intense bursts, happiness plays the long game. It’s more stable, lasts longer and is less intense. Happiness is a result of effort, it’s circumstantial.
Calm is creating mindfulness and perspective while managing emotional reactivity. Key word here is creating, as in calm must be created. We don’t happen upon it, we make it happen.
Contentment is that feeling of completeness and appreciation when our needs are satisfied. It is the result of having completed something.
Tranquility, on the other hand, is that gorgeous feeling of having to do nothing. It is the absence of demand.
Relief is the feeling of tension leaving the body. The bad shit is behind us, we can breathe and rest.
GRATITUDE
Gratitude is the grand dame of them all. Gratitude is both the act and emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value and what brings meaning to our lives. We humans get used to the good shit very quickly. We adapt to what is new and novel and go in search of more new and novel. Gratitude allows us to celebrate and steep in that goodness.
These are merely small soundbites of a small sample of the book. Being able to accurately discern and name what is going on inside of the goopy electric meat lump in our skull can help us navigate our way through this weird event that is life. With a little knowledge, perhaps we can figure out how to invite more of the good shit in to counteract the crappy shit.
May have been Heather Havrilesky who wrote "you are under no moral obligation to ingest horror 24 hours a day". I think of it every few days.