The Great Reasoning Success Story: Chapter Two. Emotional Intelligence.

 Emotional Perspective(The Reasoned Life Chapter Two)

“When in disgust with fortune and men’s eyes, I alone beweep my outcast state…”

-William Shakespeare

“After eating my cookie, I could cry because the cookie is gone.   Instead, I can be happy that I had the cookie at all.”

-Cookie Monster

    One could be sad for any number of reasons.  Every few minutes, somewhere in the world, a newborn baby dies.  A mother weeps.  We too could unfurl our sensitivities and wail constantly for those and any number of harsh aspects of existence, and thousands more injustices that occur all the time.
    There is ample reason to despair.
    However, the fact is that despair is hard on a person, it taxes the body and mind unduly, and many times, needlessly.  The blood pressure is made erratic, the countenance dour, downcast, and the general outlook, bad.  There are rumblings in the scientific distance of bad mindset destroying health in a general sense, nothing specific.  It reeks of the old medicine, of taking rest or scenery or vacation to cure real ailments, rather than taking medicines.  Sometimes, as it were, the situation, hints medicine, is hurting our health.  But this is just vaguely hinted, some mind-body connection in which we might even unconsciously use force of will to inflict disease and sickness on ourselves.  Then go to the contrary, of the truly positive set of circumstances, a rewarding job that doesn’t keep us in a bad mood all the time, a good home life, and see how long we live; indeed, we’ll live if we really have a vim to live, something to enjoy.  And if we are sour about life, it would be amazing how our pains and displeasure multiply on us.
    And not only that, but every person alive is one day going to die.  We would deceive ourselves and ignore that fact, only postponing a usual, and thought-normal reaction to death?  What goes up will come down, the body will fail, and the dog will return to its vomit, but think to of the old saying that perspective dictates reality, or one wills sickness and despair.  Need we lie?  Well, we should of course have some honesty with ourselves, but usually at a young age, its too morbid to focus on such things.  In those days, its infinitely more productive to focus on building a life that you can maneuver in as the years go back, and all under the assumption that there will be years ahead of the younger person.
    What if we dwell on death?  Then death is our reality.  But we delight in the autumn foliage, leaves dying, without significantly taking into account what we’re seeing: we take in only the superficial beauty.  There is something perhaps more deeply beautiful happening, the dying of the leaves, the changing of the season and the life cycle.  There are people that would go to the newborn nurseries in hospitals and stand at the window, as if to welcome the new partakers of life, the youngling infants.  Hate it or not, respect it or not, it is a thing we were born to do, is to die, and we can but go about it being true to ourselves and our familiars, perhaps even remember our ancestors who faced the same conundrum that is human life.
    We know it well happen to all that lives, even the great solar body in the sky will die one day.  There is a time and season for most everything, the old king said, and another said every dog had his day.  It was another that said only death and taxes were certain, though so many say Ben Franklin coined the phrase; he did not.  The downcast person would even celebrate the fact that the dead newborn never owed any taxes, never knew much heartache at all.  But that’s all a matter of casting things a certain way, and again, that person fresh-dead never falling in love or enjoying a good grilled steak, or any number of goods and rites of passage of life.  You could see to never have loved was to have never known heartbreak, if you were of that turn of mind, and it is no less true, but does not resonate among common people.  And why? Too much recognition of death, perhaps, keeps us from acting in life, appreciating life, and somewhere in between, we have to throw our backs into this thing called life, and have some kind of spirit about it, or might we say it has been squandered or ignored, life?
    We are not guaranteed life; it was thrust upon us, but we know there will be a death, and it is as sure and certain, more so than any under promise or obligation under the sun.  We are in turn so at the mercy of clocks and time that we ourselves could be considered flesh-bound clocks, going between feedings and other minutia as if on schedule.
    Indeed, where death is a certainty, life is a gift.
    And of our time, are we much concerned with how such a cosmic gift is spent away?
    But do we suffer unseen or unfelt wrongs?  We do indeed; it was Seneca that said we suffer more in our own imagination than we do in reality.  I would check that in certain circumstances, such as World War II, to say that the modern person does indeed imagine most of his harm, and otherwise he lives on a pillow.  He only breaks his back or sweats for want of money or drugs, and is otherwise a child in a nursery ran by other children, having his ice cream when and however he wants, with no ifs or buts about it.  Toil these days is by choice and not necessity, and again, there are the “time millionaires” or the people that forsake work or take short-hour work to actually gain some enjoyment of life.  Those people have so gotten tired of being pitched the phenomenal in society and have realized that their one life should not be wasted.
    How much do we waste without purpose, without use, when all the world is constantly churning, someone somewhere is dying, for other reasons elsewhere, people rage, people cry?  We would work a job that only pays for expenses for work, such as transportation, and then be eligible for government issued benefits to cover the difference, to make a sustainable marginally enjoyable life, and maybe, just maybe, be able to afford commercial-free television to make our downtime enjoyable.  It was Seneca that said a person desiring to be mislead need only follow the crowd, but Seneca was somewhat of a plainspoken anomaly of Stoics in the sense that he was wealthy.  Nevertheless, he thought to instruct a friend of his in that philosophy through a long series of letters, in which he explains that he is not an expert on life, condescending to give advice, but a fellow sufferer, talking as if from a bed in the same hospital ward with his subject.  So he’s sharing notes and observations, and not proven strategies at success, though he was a success in his life.
    It may seem that I revere the man, but I simply respect some of his sayings; otherwise this is phenomenalism, that anything he said would be thought worthy of quotation.  But hardly so, and his hospital ward quote is simply to be put that one should think for himself, evaluate the situation at hand.  It was Marcus Aurelius than briefly delved into the more scientific aspects of his Stoic discipline.  Aurelius reminded himself of the fleeting quality of life, and the coming end of his advanced age.  He seemed almost to tell himself to make the most of the time, but then his tamping any urge to enjoy it, calling that useless or fleeting in itself, and ultimately forgettable, wasting his time in the long run.  As Solomon might have said in the King James, “vanity; all is vanity.”
    We could be downcast, or we could still think of jokes, and rhymes all day, and put ourselves into an almost manic sense of happiness.  That too is vanity, that too does not serve a use.  Rather put the wits to use, instead, use our God-given onboard rational faculty to run our lives and maintain perspective.  We have the most of anything, our own wits, and too few else to mark, so we should cherish that and keep a watch on our own thoughts.  What else do we have so closely kept?  Then too look at the manipulation practiced by things like the entertainment industry.  We had best to heed the advice of Seneca and head the opposite direction when we see a crowd, and that for the simple sake of maintaining the solidity and sanctity of our own peculiar judgments.  The phenomenal of old such as Jonas Salk or Alexander Graham Bell had unique ideas.  Had they listened to the crowd, would they have pursued those ideas?
    When we achieve perspective, maybe we won’t feel as strongly when dealt an injustice, and maybe we would maintain composure to meet such a thing.  We could not so much be pushed, but be guided, but still under our own power, say as maybe having a car stolen on the street or some other harm, be guided or lead, but not controlled, not made to fear overmuch, nor maybe even made overmuch to be too happy.  But so often today, we are trying to be convinced of a car, or a war, or a song or movie or something, when it is all quite passable, and when we maintain mindset, such distractions become improbable and trivial.
    Sacrificing a manic moment might be yet a reasonable price for letting go of emotional suffering, all in the name of maintaining a more even and controlled emotional state.
    If I lived in an old comic book, imagine a tough muscular man in his underwear knocking the snow cone from my hand, and leading away my lovely nubile girlfriend.  My afternoon would be ruined, you would say.  Is my day ruined?  My week, or more, particularly if I responded by attempting suicide.  But if I were powerfully minded to the extent that it didn’t even cost me an afternoon of inner peace?
    Such as the old saying, at being happy to have loved at all, rather than focusing on the loss.  Or the advice to athletes, to worry more about playing well, than winning.  Perform well, and success will find you, and if it doesn’t, you can still sleep well at night.  Or we look at Phenomenalism again, and look to the world of stock car racing.  Their would be a line of 40 cars, give or take one or two, and only the winner usually gets the recognition, but in a yearly season, lesser placings add-up towards long-term success, and in the case of competitors with the same number of wins, their lesser finishes make the difference.
    To win?  More important?  Imagine to win once and place last twice.  Or place second twice and once tenth.  Which do you think is more preferable?  Are you an attention whore?  I ask partly in jest.
    As per people no longer on the mortal coil, I come to the point where I like the old memories, but I do not dwell on those.  The memories bring a smile to me, and I can enjoy having known those people, but how much of a waste to spend months or years crying?  How much of a tax on a body and mind is despair.
    Even now, pain management researchers are looking at things like laughter and smiles, pictures of smiles and so forth, to expose to chronic pain sufferers, using the facility of the mind to control, perhaps involuntarily, pain, to block it or subvert it into some more positive aspect of mindset, to use nature against itself.  The mind in some yet unknown way seems then to have a control over itself that science has only briefly glimpsed; should we live long enough to understand more and actually live better in more ways.
    Such is the way, there was an addict that claimed all the time to be depressed, sad, and it seemed they had became bent, almost addicted to sadness, to proving being wronged by someone near and dear, that the life of the sufferer was manifesting more and more darkness, as if contaminating any light.  Think of a child angry, but sitting with an ice cream cone at a birthday party, stubbornly deciding to stay angry, as if to prove something to someone nearby, or prove the solemnity and validity of their own dour feelings.  We do indeed respect the dignity of that initial anger and service it, do homage to it, as if having a shrine somewhere with our minds, devoted to its evil cause and purpose, even while lamenting it, we feed it and keep it alive, to prove a point to the world around us.
    Dr Carl Gustav Jung had the shadow self, Dr Bruce Banner has his big green alter ego, and Hamlet pursued melancholy with a high degree of energy.  In all of these, they manifested their own darkness, like darkness feeding on itself, enjoying its own sadness and ill mood.
    The fact is simple: we don’t get those wasted hours back.  And no, I don’t say something like, “snap out of it”, but remind that this is a waste of spirit, a waste of time, as of the old “self-defeating prophecy”.  One day I myself remarked, “when do I have a good day?”  But the truth was clear that where I never really had an especially good day, I did not have bad days, rarely if ever.  As it happens, I worked at nothing at that time of my life and was almost an invalid or an indigent, suspended at the mercy of my familiars.  I would come to have a more regular life later, medicine and mindset prevailing, and things of regular life eventually taken up again.
    There seemed to be an implied degree of “good” in the question when someone asked was it a good day or not.  And I could agree to a low grade of good, especially considering no day was ever really bad at all, but a low grade of existence, that it was good in the sense of being bad in no way it all, but having no essential feature that one could call particularly “good”.  In all this bad and good talk, we might be reminded of the “glass half empty” and “glass half full” circles of logic and interpretation, and some respects, we are then reminded people can drown in just four ounces of water, or at least waste precious time confusing philosophy with word games.
    Also came a time when I could just look at the sky and think that it was beautiful, that it was good.
    Me in a downcast mood, looking up at a beautiful sky, and knowing it was beautiful, and the storm clouds within were powerless in the balance, not that storm clouds were robbed of power or substance, but robbed of their power over my piece of mind.
    Looking up at that beautiful sky speaks not only to the artist within me, but reminds me that we are all interconnected, and some ways, we are one.  Consider how many people can look up at one time at the same picture of the sky, and how many more can look up and see the opposite of the day across the world.

“….all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

    -William Shakespeare, Macbeth


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