On this Saturday, I am simply seeking solace. Before getting on a plane tonight from Dallas to Los Angeles, I have squirreled myself away from the world.
Last night I looked in the mirror, and I did not like what I saw.
I am under 40, and at the rate I am going I may be dead before age 50.
I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I have no serious physical or mental health problems that I know of.
I have a loving family and the best friends a guy could ask for.
I lead a happy life.
Yet I am driving myself over the edge of sanity by constantly being angry about stuff that does not merit anger.
My desperate struggle to mellow out is not going well.
There is healthy and unhealthy anger. If a referee makes a bad call during a sporting event and it hurts my team, I may curse for a few moments. Then I get over it. Sports is just fun. It is not life and death.
With politics, I may yell at the television on occasion, but rarely. I come across as angry when I write, that is mock outrage at times.
Sports and politics are not the problem.
My real anger comes when feeling powerless. When something happens I cannot control, I get enraged. This usually occurs in two types of situations.
When I am lost, I scream my lungs out. It does no good. Yet I am simply unable to remain calm when I am in my car and I have no idea where I am. Traffic does not bother me nearly as much as when I get bad directions. I am convinced that I will end up dead in some unknown area because somebody insisted that they knew how to direct me.
If I miss a turn and then have to go a different way, I am pounding my fist in frustration.
The other time I get angry is when dealing with defective human beings.
I have tried to be patient with these people. I can’t do it. I made the mistake of flying American Airlines, which I never do. They still suck even by airline standards. I booked a package of a flight and three days hotel. My plane landed on time, and I called the hotel. They had no record of my reservation.
It took almost two hours, but American Airlines admitted that they neglected to fax the reservation to the hotel.
This is when I explode. I am sure other people remain calm in this situation, but how hard is it to fax one piece of paper?
I know it is not worth getting worked up over, but a combination of exhaustion and frustration led me to use language at a decibel level I am uncomfortable with.
I just can’t stand defective human beings. I want to rip their throats out. What I always told people was that when I worked in management, I was not warm or fuzzy. I could be heavy handed. Yet I was effective. I got things done. People knew they could count on me.
So to bring it back to getting lost in a city, I am too hard on others but even more ridiculously unbelievably hard on myself.
Some people would say “these things happen.”
I responded by saying “they shouldn’t happen.”
The response I get is that if I do not chill out I will heaven forbid have a heart attack or stroke.
I know this. That is why I am worried.
Slow internet access really makes me spit blood. Because my career involves me contacting people to book events, working internet is my financial lifeblood. I do not need a five star hotel. I just need working tv, phone, and internet access. That’s it. If I cannot make business calls and send out my resume, then my career grinds to a halt. Enough days like that, and I end up homeless on the street flat broke and dying of diseases found on those streets. It all starts without internet.
If somebody screws something up and it costs me money, I fantasize their generations burning in Hell. I don’t even have stuff to buy with the money. I don’t even need another possession. I have my toys. Yet when somebody causes me to lose money and is the callous about it, verbally beating them senseless makes sense at the time. It could be a soda machine that has my drink get stuck. I will shake that machine until it breaks, but I am getting my soda. I hate being cheated.
I know I am not crazy. I do not run around arguing with inanimate objects. Yet I also know that I have to somehow calm down.
There is an expression about people changing what they can, accepting what they cannot, and knowing the difference. I am terrible at this.
I got so angry this past Friday because I was lost on the way to synagogue for Friday night services. As I cursed and pounded my fist, somehow it hit me that I needed to be in synagogue more than I realized.
Synagogue for me has always been about the social scene. I see my friends, make new ones, and of course meet women. The prayers are often ancillary.
Yet this past Friday night saw me in a temple when I needed it most. I paid attention to every prayer, and cried in between more than one of them. Little by little perspective began to return as prayers for the ill and the deceased reminded me that I was neither.
There are people who have lost their homes due to natural disasters. Some have lost their family members.
In a world of real disease, war, famine, natural disasters, and other human suffering, I should thank my lucky stars that my life is very good. I have virtually everything a guy could want.
Yet the one thing I have been unable to do is accept my limitations. I am not superhuman. Humans make mistakes. They get lost in strange neighborhoods. It does not make them losers or bad people.
Yet I need to stop losing my patience with people and be more understanding. I also need to stop beating the daylights out of myself when I make a mistake. Otherwise, that early grave I am driving myself to will come much sooner than even I anticipate.
So last night rather than socialize in Dallas, I went back to my hotel room by myself and just forced myself to calm down.
Today on this Saturday I am engaging in solitude. I have everything in this world going for me, and I must calm down. Screaming my lungs out at people, even if I think they deserve it, is bad for everybody.
This does not mean I have to become a chump who just lets people walk allover him. Yet it also does not mean I have to be a battering ram with people just for making mistakes.
I will right a letter to American Airlines asking for compensation for my troubles, as the lady on the phone told me to do. Yet I will make sure I am calm when I write it.
It really will be ok. I just need to remind myself of that.
Then I need to breathe. Then I need to breathe some more.
After a completely fried Friday, by healing shall begin on Solace Saturday.
It will not be easy, but nothing this important ever is.
I have to do it. Stress kills, and I put too much on myself.
Besides what’s the point of great achievements if I cannot even sit back and enjoy them?
I love being alive, and am not prepared for my own death.
I built a business from scratch, and should be content. Yet being all business all the time has me so tightly wound that my lifelong short fuse is practically non-existent now.
This cannot continue. My life in its current form is unsustainable.
It is time to somehow calm down. It is time to mellow out.
It starts today with solace.
eric
I have a friend who is always grumpy. He rarely has a positive attitude.
He cannot understand why he sees nothing good in his future. In fact,
he claims he has no future.
I have advised him to seek out the L-ord. ( I have been told repeatedly
that he who believes in the L-ord, will have peace. He who has fiath
will be with the angels ijn heaven someday. “She was a good person, and I know is with the angels” as one former co-worker told me.
A columunist writes that he who doesnt believe in G-d, believes
in everything (and therefore nothing). Some would disagree with that.
In one faith, prayers can be answered. Its sometimes called a miracle.
In other faiths, prayers can only lead one closer to one’s G-d. Miracles
are for others.
The Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmad and his cronies all
say that its G-ds will that Israel and the US and the Jews be destroyed.
I will next time pray to G-d that they are wrong. Maybe maracles can
happen?