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Sunday, May 06, 2018

Must Remember Self-Care and Self-Compassion, Not to Give All In to Anger


This week, I realized that I have focused too much on angst and anger, not enough on love and happiness. This realization reminds me that even during these hard times filled with anger and despair, I can't forget love, kindness, and care.

In the middle of a near continuous ruminating cell phone text feed to Michi, we had the following exchange:

L (Lex): I've really been way too obsessd with project & "parallels" to current affairs.
M: Maybe a little
Keep in mind, I do tend to get very focused on things, am aware of it, and try to have a good sense of humor about it. Michi's response induced a chuckle, but it go me to thinking. My social media feeds have focused a lot on negative and anger-inducing matters. My project goes in that direction quite a bit, too.

Comparing the current state of how elections and politics work today provides me with a bit of understanding of the time period of Brook Farm, one of the utopian communites I'm studying, except things were scarier and darker then. Chattel slavery was legal. Brook Farm started in 1840, a few years after Andrew Jackson left office and after the Crash of 1837 had occurred. Really only white men had political power back then, and sometimes only white men who owned land. State governments chose who would be US Senators rather than through direct vote. The eve of the Mexican-American war, a time when that area of America had so many factions fighting each other, especially with sides picked by ethnicity, it reminds me of the modern
day Middle East with how often alliances and coalitions change between countries, activist groups, ethnic groups, militias, and terrorist groups.

Less enlightened times and more violent times back around 1840, understanding how the US ran things then and understanding how the country evolved to today can enlighten all of us quite a bit, while both depressing and inspiring. Engaging in this practice, along with the Charlottesville riots and [45]'s horrible reaction to them, inspired me at the end of August to get more involved in politics when I volunteered for Ameya Pawar's gubernatorial campaign here in Illinois. I need to get engaged in the political process again. . ..

But the focus of my social media expressiveness has gotten a lot into criticizing problematic parts of US culture, society, politics, and current state of government that induce rage and anager. All those aspects of this country need the criticism and activism to turn it around.

I've already made a post or two in attempt to provide some more uplift and brightness. I can't say much has come from it, but I'd like to try at least one post a day on a brighter note. Focusing so much on anger and despair, despite the validity for it, does not feel healthy.

A lot of my Facebook feed has a lot of angry posts, too. Even more frustrating, most of the posts just point out an example of something bad happening in the current administration, among the GOP, or by a certain group of people in the country. Maybe a few of the posts show a change of sentiment among a group that had, by and large, voted for [45] but now regret it. People hardly post petitions or actions for resistance to take these days, especially not concrete actions. These days, I'm more likely to quit Facebook because it's such downer, despite the validity of the anger and despair, rather than quit because of some data vulnerability issue.

Concrete action, even just action to come together for community and common cause and common humanity would do some good. Even moreso, though, we need to remember self care and self compassion. If we allow ourselves to be enveloped in anger, we can lose ourselves, lose our health, and become hollow shells.

The anger and despair is valid, some if it extremely valid that makes it hard to think of taking care of ouselves and taking care of others. The situations causing that anger and despair can be actual danger to certain communities and populations. Nonetheless, for our health and sanity, we need to remember that we need care and compassion, and we need to bring care and compassion to others, too, whether to people in our immediate communities or if possible and appropriate, to people not normally in our communities.

I'm still in the midst of re-organizing life these days, which takes up a lot of time. Nonetheless, while re-organizing, I want to try thinking up some ways to show myself self-compassion and self-care. Being in the midst of things makes it easy to push off coming up with ideas and executing them. Some people might find the caring and showing compassion easy, but not so much for me, it takes effort.

Anyone have any good ideas? Anyone engaging in some good self-care and self-compassion now even while they're protesting and expressing anger? Anyone just just have jokes or something, anything uplifting that you're willing to share? Feel free to share in the comments section.

And while we're at it, here's some Twittervism:
















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Posted by The_Lex at 8:41 PM

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