In a lot of ways this blog is just an excuse to create memorabilia from my youth. So, I want to go on record now and say that it has long been apparent to me that if more of us were able to manage internal stress and emotional equilibriums, less bad things would happen. Obvious, fine, but I still want to expand.
I try to be charitable with my appraisal of the sanity of other people. For instance: somebody impatiently honking at pedestrian rightfully crossing the street. A lot of people will just acknowledge with a sigh the presence of another jerk. But, it’s nicer to defer to the innocent-until-proven-guilty policy here. Hopefully, s/he is pressured, hurried, whatever for good reason. Or, if there isn’t good reason to honk, s/he’s got good reason to misperceive that it is a good time to honk. Again, hopefully.
Generally, good reasons – or, acceptable reasons – are things that one can’t control like sick kids, weird clients, unavoidable issues related to the body (PMS, etc.) and so on. Bad reasons are stresses that are directly caused by irresponsibility or laziness. While leaving lots of room for real-time, real-world excuses, I tend to take a pretty hard-line view on why it is the responsibility of the individual to remain reasonable and rational through proper management of one’s internal emotional equilibrium, mainly, by not being irresponsible. If your mind and/or body are out of whack for some reason, your judgement can be impaired. Maintaining presence of mind and a balanced psyche is the best way to solve problems and in my view one of the major responsibilities that comes with adulthood is basic problem solving. So, it is your job to make sure that your judgment is not impaired for bad reasons so that you can solve problems like an adult.
It might be tough to immediately call them to mind, but just think of the people you know who can’t or won’t solve their own problems. If you can’t, I’ll give you a hint – think of small children, the mentally handicapped and the most frustrating and difficult adults that you know.
As an adult, if you are overwhelmed due to some scenario of your own design (or lack thereof), you are still responsible for the proper management of your temper. As in, being agitated in line at the bank because you absent-mindedly left your ATM card somewhere doesn’t relieve you of your duty to treat the teller civilly, and a surly teller shouldn’t be just the excuse you needed to blow off steam that shouldn’t need release in the first place.
What’s the point? On the macro level, everybody has to cope with reality. We can agree that there are always going to be bumps in the road, so to speak. And, most of us wish that we were perfect or had more time and energy to deal with stress appropriately because no one likes being noticeably stressed out and grumpy. That much is obvious. I am worried about those (particularly writerly, academic, political activist and artistic types) who will with a straight face argue that since life on earth might very well have no meaning that therefore chronic misery or misanthropy are symbols of intelligence or getting it. The air needs to be cleared here. At best, this argument results from a forgivable misconception that since things can seem unforgiving or even down right antagonistic, it’s morally acceptable to fight back, reject mainstream society, whatever. In reality this answer fails the basic test presented by existence. Psychological misery is your body’s way of asking you to change something, it’s not a constant to which you adapt for the long term in order not to change your mind. The symbol of intelligence and getting it is practical, incremental and conscious movement towards peace with the world as it stands.
So, the direct argument to self-interest is as follows: making peace with reality and embracing it becomes a responsibility because otherwise you are irresponsibly subjecting yourself to stress and unhappiness, which clouds your judgment. In turn you will make judgments based on misperceptions or avoidable pressure which will lead to inappropriate actions which make you and everyone around you worse off.
Now, the only remaining question is how you value responsibility and the patience of the people around you.
