In this newsletter, I have mainly written about political topics, the environment, and my own experiences with clairvoyance. However, it has occurred to me that the thing that endangers us most as a species (and since we are at the top of the food chain, this endangers every other species as well) is unhappiness. It seems that when extremely privileged individuals are unhappy, they seek happiness in making others miserable. This is deranged, unhealthy behavior.
To better understand what is going on here, let us look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It is easy to understand unhappiness if a person’s basic needs are not being met. When you lack food, shelter, healthcare, a sense of belonging… all of these disparities give a person real cause for worry and fear. But what if you are Elon Musk? All his basic needs are met, and despite being despised by some, he has people in his life who care about him, look up to him, and he enjoys a remarkable amount of recognition and freedom. One might reasonably argue that he lacks self-esteem. But this is where Maslow’s model gets tricky, because I would argue that one does not truly gain a healthy sense of self, and therefore self-esteem, until one begins to self actualize.
Musk has everything he needs to move towards self-actualization, but fails to do so. All of the external validation - the money, the sexual conquest, the throngs of followers - fails to bring him happiness because he remains stagnant. He is tripped up by the fact that his father fails to accept him. He is vengeful in the face of those who criticize him, gaining the admiration of others hell-bent on misery. When a person gains a sense of belonging based on tormenting others, that person will never find happiness. Misery only begets misery. This is the biggest roadblock to self actualization.
Musk fails to confront the causes of his misery. Instead, he buys into the old adage that misery loves company. It is truly sad when people build a community upon shared misery. Look at the incels. If they got off their computers and did the work, they would not be involuntarily celibate. These men are so fixated on all the external validations - physical appearance and wealth in particular - that they cannot see what they need to do to become someone that another person can expose their vulnerability to. This is what leads others to share sexual experiences with another person.
Getting back to Musk, if he could admit to his own personal failings, addressing the things he can change about himself as well as those things he cannot, he could move past all of these things that make him unhappy. It isn’t easy, but it all starts with admitting one’s own unhappiness.
Most of us know someone who is extremely privileged but still does nothing but complain. For me, it is my aunt’s husband. He is healthy and has a lot of money, but at family gatherings, he either sits and glowers or complains about things that have absolutely no bearing on his life. This year, instead of being sucked into a non-sensical argument, I am just going to ask, “why aren’t you happy?” If he gives some response that I know does not affect him personally, I will follow up with, “how is that preventing you from being happy?” If he then insists that he is happy, I will say, “you don’t seem happy.” This is likely to shut him down and shut him up, but it also could spark some self-reflection. This is how to handle people like Elon Musk too. It would be a brilliant psy-ops if tens of thousands of people on X would all ask Musk “why aren’t you happy?” all at once. It is a question that people like Musk need to be asking themselves.
In my time on this planet, I have been able to ask myself this question and come up with some very difficult responses. There are the things I have little control over: being abandoned by my biological father, having been abused by people I once admired and trusted, having serious illness. But even with those things I cannot change, I can do certain things to prevent my situation from getting worse. I can surround myself with people who I can trust. At the first sign that someone appears to be truly untrustworthy, I can remove that person from my life. I can make sure the cycle of abuse ends with me and work on myself so that I am the kind of person I want in my life. By doing this, I become a person others want to be around. I can be proactive about my medical care. I can stop blaming myself on the days I am in pain and suffering debilitating fatigue and focus on recovering so that I can accomplish things later on. I can remind myself that I am a work in progress.
Too many people treat self actualization as an end. It is not. It is a commitment that brings fulfillment. It is a choice towards acceptance, and ultimately contentedness.
No one person is beloved by all. Throughout history, the people who were the most beloved by some were also the most reviled by others. It is perhaps just the inherent rottenness of human beings. But I think the greatest amongst us take more pride in being beloved than being reviled. The best amongst us strive to unite rather than divide. Whatever choices we make, those must be our choices. We don’t get to blame others for them. We only invite in misery when we attempt to live up to the expectations of others without asking ourselves what we are reasonably able to do.
I have been that overzealous volunteer who winds up overpromising and under delivering. I have witnessed this behavior from others as of late. Please know that it is okay to say no, and it is unfair to everyone to agree to accomplish things that are beyond your ability. I just wrote out 100 postcards to get out the vote. I was asked to do more. I knew that I would be unable to do more. I told people as much. I offered to share these volunteer opportunities with others. I did so in a way that did not put pressure on anyone to do something beyond what they are capable of. We must keep things real, especially with ourselves.
There was once a time when I would buy clothes that didn’t fit me and tell myself that I wouldn’t buy myself any other nice clothes until I could get to that size. This was ridiculously unhealthy behavior. It is the sort of behavior that just leads to further isolation and resentment, and life is just too fucking short for that bullshit! I wound up donating those nice things, and bought myself other nice clothes. I began allowing myself the space to fail, which granted me more opportunity to succeed.
I often find myself wishing personal hardship upon privileged yet unhappy people, not out of the spirit of revenge, but because I think it puts things into perspective. When you get a cancer diagnosis, it becomes abundantly clear just what matters and what doesn’t. You don’t think, “if only I had done that, I could have prevented this from happening.” What you do think about is who matters, what you most want to do, and what things you are willing to do to make things better.
I know everyone in this country likes to claim every illness is caused by some personal failure, some lifestyle choice, but that is just patently false. Anyone who would say to someone who has cancer, “well, I guess you shouldn’t’t have (fill in the blank),” is just an asshole. Yes, there are lifestyle cancers, but there are many more forms of cancer where we simply cannot pinpoint a cause. I had a rare form of head and neck cancer. It may return one day. Probable causes include Epstein Barr virus, genetics, and exposure to certain chemicals. There is nothing I could have done differently to prevent this. I was very fortunate to have had my cancer detected early, treated early, and my care team continues to monitor the situation.
I never once cried because of my diagnosis. My mom cried. A cousin of mine said, “I’m sorry you are dealing with this drama,” which kind of pissed me off. There was no drama involved. It was something so un-nuanced, so cut and dry. I wish everything in life was that way. I faced a lengthy surgery, which was concerning for me. I clearly stated what I wanted to do before my surgery. There was a chance of complications that could have made eating something horrifically painful, so I ate foods I would miss if I had to adopt a liquid diet. I spent time with family. I chose which people I would tell about my diagnosis, and only became angry when someone else told a person who had abused me about my diagnosis. This person reached out to me, pretending to care. Maybe it was for the best, because this is what motivated me years later to tell others in the family about how this person abused me, which didn’t deliver the amount of justice I deserve, but still helped me to move past the trauma.
When you are diagnosed with something that may end your life, you decide to make the most of the time you have. You don’t take anything for granted. You enter self actualization. It no longer matters if you win an argument. What matters is happiness. Your own, and the happiness of those who matter the most to you. We can arrive at self actualization without facing hardship, but it takes a lot of reflection and realization.
One of the things I have been engaging in recently is developing an origin story for my multiple sclerosis. Scientists are almost certain that Epstein Barr virus is a factor in someone developing MS, but a virus that 85% of the population has likely been exposed to simply cannot be the only explanation. There are so many suspected causes. There are noted correlations. Some carry more statistical weight than others. Sure, I am of Northern European descent, and live in a northern clime, had suffered a bad case of mononucleosis in my late teens, but I also sustained significant head trauma when I was 13 years old.
Someone who was supposed to be a friend had deliberately hit me over the head with a stack of textbooks. Why? I told the boy she liked that she liked him. Doesn’t seem like a good reason for personal assault. I was sick the following day with all the signs of a concussion. I objected to my mom taking me to the ER because I figured nothing much is done to treat a concussion (and have since learned that the sensory depravation often prescribed actually does more harm than good). I also objected to my mom wanting to confront the girl’s parents or press charges. I believed this would only escalate things. I have since found out that the person who did this to me has had assault charges filed against her in her adult life. Sadly, our legal system so seldom prevents abusers like her from hurting others.
Part of why I believed that pressing charges would only escalate the violence is related to an experience I had when I was 5 years old. The teenage son of a neighbor shot our dog when he illegally fired a gun at a deer in another neighbor’s yard. My dad had taken our dog (still a puppy) out with him as he got the mail. The dog saw a deer in our neighbor’s yard and ran after it. Shots were fired. This was not during hunting season, and the neighbor who fired the shots did not have permission to hunt on our other neighbor’s property. In fact, the shots were fired very close to that neighbor’s house. The shooter took the dog to conceal the evidence (notably the blaze orange collar the dog was wearing). My parents called law enforcement. The shooter was fined. Apparently, being fined upset the guilty party, and that night, he tipped over the rabbit hutch, killing my pet bunny. My family was unable to prove this is what happened. The acts of revenge didn’t end there. When I began kindergarten, the nephew of the shooter was in my class. He would constantly taunt me, “my uncle shot your dog.” I responded, “he killed my rabbit too.” I had one person who stood up for me who became my best friend for four years, until we were eventually sent to different schools as the result of redistricting.
Justice is an elusive thing. Sometimes we are just better off mitigating damage, moving on, and redirecting our energy. This person who taunted me, I later found out that he was likely the product of incest as his grandfather raped his mother. This is just another example of misery begetting misery.
If I put all my energy into seeking revenge against the people who wronged me, I would be denying myself of any chance of happiness. There is that old adage, the best revenge is living well. While I fail to see that as righting any past wrong, focusing on delivering punishment for misdeeds just absorbs so much energy better spent elsewhere. If I had the choice of what to do with such horrible people, I would opt to delete them. This isn’t to say take their lives. I simply want to remove them from my own life. Then it dawned on me; I can do this! I can’t erase what happened, but I can keep these people far away from me. I can move on with my life.
The first time I left Facebook, the person who gave me a concussion made some disparaging statement about my mental state. I was told this by my partner who could see what people were saying in the two weeks that Facebook keeps your account open in case you decide to return. Other people shut down her comments. Every time I rejoined, I would not accept a friend request from this person. It is irritating to me that if I call out my abusers by name, I could be held legally liable. I want to warn others to stay away, but can only do this on an individual basis. My motivation is not revenge but concern for the safety of others. Revenge fantasies, at best, only lead to entertaining literature (and if you can live well off of money you’ve made selling these stories, then I guess you’ve succeeded at revenge). A whole lot of people have trauma that they will never ever recover from. That is because we cannot undo what has been done. Many of us have done things we regret as the result of trauma. We may have hurt ourselves or others. I repressed memories that only resurfaced when I realized I was blaming my stepfather for something his brother’s stepdaughter did to me. I was ready to heal, but it was extraordinarily difficult, and took so much of my life.
I had to reclaim my narrative. I had to accept that there are people who will always be a danger to me; there will be parts of me that will be forever damaged because of what these people did to me. There are relationships that have been ruined. But the only person who has any power to make anything better in my life is me.
There are things that I want that are unrealistic. I always wanted to travel more, but there have been financial hurdles, and now air travel makes me very sick. The only thing likely to offer any relief is coca tea, which I would not be allowed to take with me. Travel also poses extraordinary risk for a person such as myself who is on immunosuppressant therapy.
I had to find other ways to experience these things; other ways to be happy. Sometimes that meant eliminating the influence of people who seek to make others envious. Jealousy peddlers are often deeply unhappy people who seek to make others miserable, but we can choose to not let them. I had friends who posted nothing but smiley vacation photos on their social media. I knew their life was not one big happy vacation, but that is what they wanted others to think. If social media makes you unhappy, leave it.
Finding things that make you happy is important, but so too is finding what makes you unhappy. We all get to choose what we pay attention to. It makes no sense to me that anyone who rejects reality would choose something scarier, and far worse, but that is what so many people who identify with the alt-right do. It is time for the alt-right to alt-ctrl-delete. Their only chance at happiness is to restart.
If you had a pipe burst in your house, you wouldn’t just sit there and blame your misfortune on someone else. You would eventually drown if you did that. You would get up, turn off the water, and start to fix the problem. Or maybe you’d pay someone else to fix it, or ask for help. If something is making you deeply unhappy, you need to do the same thing. Stop sitting around, complaining, drowning in your misery, and stop that problem from getting worse. Then make the decision to make things better.