How to Forgive Someone When You're Still Mad

All those spiritual gurus tell us that forgiveness is the answer to everything. 

When I first began to hear this I was in my 20s.  It irritated me.  I thought that the idea was nice for highly evolved spiritual people but I knew I wasn't one of them so it didn't apply to me.  I had no desire to be a highly evolved spiritual person.  I wanted to love and be loved, have enough money to be able to buy what I needed and some of what I wanted, and to have my children be happy.

In my 30s I was deeply devoted to being angry about all the injustices in the world - those done to me and those done to anyone.  I was in fight mode.  Forgiveness was not of interest to me at all.  In fact, if you mentioned it, I exploded and sent you somewhere else.  I was shocked at the suffering in the world.  People seemed to be bent on being cruel to each other.  Sometimes people seemed to be cruel to me.  I had no idea what to do about any of it except be angry and complain incessantly.  My life had become very, very difficult and as time went on I just wanted someone to help me.

In my 40s I began to have a crack in my closed mind, but only because I had made myself so miserable with being furious all the time that I was almost willing to listen.  I was desperate enough to concede that being so angry had not made my life better in any way and that maybe I would be better off with another way of living.  Kind of against my will I had accepted a spiritual teacher.  She was kind and sweet which were the only reasons I could tolerate her at all.   She kept saying things that I thought meant she was telling me my miserable life was all my fault.  But what she was really telling me was that I had the power to change my life and just didn't realize it.  But then she brought up the forgiveness thing.  I thought I was surely lost because I was not going to be able to do that - not even to get out of the misery I was in.

She dished out cliches like "When you stay angry with someone, you give them free rent in your head."  And "Staying angry with someone is like taking poison and hoping the person you're mad at will die."  I had no idea what she was talking about.  What finally got my mind open a bit was when we talked about the very real fact that I had made a lot of mistakes in my life that hurt other people.  I had to concede that that was right.  I knew I was very, very imperfect and one of the people I was maddest at was myself.  She pointed out that I could take action to make those mistakes as right as I possibly could and then let myself off the hook - but for it to work, I had to let everyone else off the hook.  I still resisted.  I was willing to do my best to make my mistakes right, but I didn't see why I had to forgive anybody but myself.

Finally, she brought out the big guns.  We talked about specific incidences where I felt victimized and helpless.  We prayed about what I could have done had I had the information and help that was available to me now.  I was totally amazed!  There were all kinds of solutions that I hadn't been able to see through my anger.  With her help I began to see that my fury kept me from seeing the solutions that were actually within my power.  Little by little I saw that it was a delusion that I was helpless, and I realized that all that anger was really coming from fear because I thought I was helpless.

She pointed out that I had always had a God that was looking out for me and that always would look out for me - not by making my life easy but by presenting me with ways to learn how to live in the world in peace.  She said I was angry all the time because I had the delusion that by being angry, I was doing what I could to protect myself, but that was a delusion too.   Since I didn't have to protect myself in that way, that I could let go of my condemnation of the people I was angry at even though I still thought they were wrong, I was willling to forgive them and let it go.  Of course, my anger disappeared as I realized that I was not helpless in the world.  But I was able to forgive and still be angry for awhile.

I still get angry when someone mistreats me - in my opinion.  I still get angry about injustice.  The difference is that I no longer feel helpless.  Slowly over time I've begun to realize that those people are probably angry because they are afraid just like I was.  That new perspective lets me look for solutions that positive and unjudgmental.  Not, of course, that I'm always able to do it, but most of the time, with prayerful thought, I can get there.

Okay! I Really Mean It This Time

For most of my life I was skinny except for a tiny while in my teens when I was addicted to grape pop and barbequed potato chips.  Until around 1957 when those came out I had never seen such things and I fell in love at once.  Of course, I soon was a lot rounder than the bony thing I had been before.  When I was 18 I started smoking and continued until I was 43.  By that time I was smoking five packs a day which is really hard.  I had to smoke in the shower, smoke a couple of times in the middle of the night.  It would be impossible now to smoke five packs a day and do anything else since there's no smoking almost everywhere.  Back then you could stilll smoke in college classes, in the movies, and on airplanes.  The haze of tobacco smoke was everywhere where I worked.  But I went to the doctor for a check up and he said that my heart was stopping for periods of time, probably due to my smoking, and that if I didn't quit in the next 30 days he was going to put me in the hospital where I would have to quit.  So I went to one of those "stop smoking classes" and quit.  It was hell.  I compensated by eating and promptly gained 60 pounds.

At first I was kind of happy about having curves for the first time in my life and I thought it was kind of funny that parts of me jiggled when I walked.  But soon I didn't like how I looked and went to Weight Watchers.  I learned what foods had how many calories in them and how to eat.  After a fierce battle with myself I lost almost all of the weight and kept it off for a couple of years.  Then I got a sit down job with a lot of stress and snacks in the office.  I promptly gained the weight back and have been fighting with it ever since. 

Now I'm back to square one.  I have high blood pressure and have had for several years.  I've managed to talk my doctor out of putting me on high blood pressure medications by promising to lose weight.  But recently I've been having dizzy spells and had to go to a new doctor who says he's not waiting for me to lose weight.  So I'm on blood pressure medication which also makes me dizzy.  So I really mean it this time - I went to Weight Watchers and am losing a little weight slowly.  I hate counting "points" so I'm eating a low carb diet (which includes regular exceptions).  I've lost about 5 pound in a month and a half.  I've got 25 more to go.  I really do mean it this time.

Pix - June was a busy month for celebrations

 Thien's teddy bears being cared for by in-laws during the honeymood.  Well taken care of.

Slide from Bec's graduation party.  Loved the slides.

Cisco keeping me company during my morning meditation.

First bouquest from the Farmer's Market

Pix - 3 above from Bec's graduation party.

Tammy's decorations for my birthday.

Eric's reunion with Cisco.

Remains of the birthday present wrapping.

Liz and Fred at the graduation party.

Girls at the graduation party.

Tammy wrapping Kristin's birthday present.

Kristin unwrapping her present.

Say It Now!

I've had several deaths of people close to me, and recently I've been to several funerals.  You would think that the person who died was the most wonderful person ever put on the earth from the things people say.  They usually throw in some not so good stuff for contrast but it's never very much.  It always occurs to me that it's a shame we don't say this stuff to people while they're alive.

 I was going to write a letter to the person I called my spiritual mother telling her how much she meant to me.  However, she died before I got around to it.  Not a good feeling.  So now I think it would be wonderful if we wrote those letters as soon as we think of it.  For one thing, I never been close to anybody who didn't suffer at least a little from feeling "not good enough."  My letter might be just the thing to make their whole world a good bit better.

Secrets

As I talk to people in recovery, I've learned that the newer they are in recovery, the more trouble they have revealing who they really are.  They often believe that the secrets they're holding on to are worse than anyone else's and that if anyone ever knew, they would be shunned by the world.  I think the word for this is shame because when they finally get around to telling somebody so that they don't have to carry the weight of those secrets around, they find that a lot of them are exactly the same as a lot of people's secrets and just evidence that they are imperfect humans.  

Of course, there are other secrets they have that involve hurting other people and violating their own values.  But that's guilt.  The only remedy for that is to do whatever they can to right the wrong.  A simple apology is not enough.  Many people have to go to extreme lengths to right the wrong.  I knew a guy who paid back money he owed and it took him over twenty years to get it done.  Another man served time in prison for a crime he confessed to after he got into recovery. 

In either case, when we tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves, to God and to another person and do everything we can to right any wrongs we've done, we are free.  Nothing feels like that freedom - to be who we are.  The saddest thing in the world is those that stay stuck in their shame because of mistakes they've made that cause them to greatly fear being judged, when the mistakes are just those of a normal human being.  The only way we can find that out, though, is to tell the truth.

Birthdays

In my family growing up we didn't celebrate birthdays.  The only time I remember having birthday cake and presents was when I was 16 and my Aunt Gladys was visiting.  She insisted on cake and presents and she made a "sweet 16" thing to hang on my wall.  It had 16 sugar cubes tied with ribbons and I was thrilled with it.  Since then, I've made sure that I celebrated my birthday whether anyone else remembered it or not.  This year was especially nice since my friend who lives with me, postponed a trip to fill the living room with balloons and take me to dinner.  Then another friend came to visit and took me to lunch, a movie and dinner.  I'm celebrated out!  Today is my recovery anniversary - 29 years.  I am so grateful to be alive and to be in recovery and to have wonderful family and friends who wished me well this year.

Ceremonies and Rituals

I'm now a great believer in ceremonies and rituals.  I design and carry one out nearly every day.  That probably sounds excessive but it works like a witchy charm for me.  I learned about this as part of my recovery.  Most years I attend a women's retreat for women in recovery.  There are many rituals as part of the retreat but the big, important one is on Saturday night.  There's a long guided meditation followed by a ritual and ceremonious burning of a piece of paper on which we've written something we want to let go of.  We are told that when this particular thing comes to mind, remember that we let go of it and gave it to God.  This ceremony has been very effective in helping me let go of things that I was harming myself by holding on to.  Examples:  Resentments, fears, guilt, people who have died, people who are no longer in our lives for various reasons. 

The thing that sticks out in my mind is that rituals and ceremonies imbed in my memory what I've decided.  I suspect that our brains (or at least my brain) is hard wired to use ceremonies and rituals to help us remember and to give energy to our decisions that may be challenging to carry out.  Here's an example of a "generic" ritual I might use to support a decision/change I want to make in my life:  I light a scented candle and put on music that supports me.  I write out my decision in the form of a prayer.  If there's someone or something I want to say goodbye to, I write a goodbye letter.  I ask for guidance and power to carry out my decision and the change.  Somehow these little rituals continue to help me remember and carry out decisions.

Victims

I can't remember exactly what brought this up again, but I read something that talked about the "drama triangle."  That's something a famous psychologist (whose name I can't remember) came up with in the 60s.  I can't draw a triangle on this I will have to describe it:  It's an upside down triangle with the one point at the bottom.  At the top points are "perpetrator" and "rescuer."  At the bottom point is the "victim."  According to psychological wisdom, most of us play these roles in rotation in our relationships and in our thinking.  A great many of us see ourselves as victims most of the time.  If you listen to people talking - any place - restaurants, in lines, in church - wherever - they're mostly complaining and if you're complaining, you are playing the role of a victim.  So sorry; there's no escape from that.  Think about it -  you've cast somebody or something in the role of perpetrator and you're looking for a rescuer.  The reason the perpetrator and rescuer are at the top of the triangle is because people who primarily play those roles see themselves as a cut above everybody else.  The perpetrator would not tell you that he/she was a perpetrator.  He/she would say that he/she was a victim, and the mean stuff he/she did to other people was revenge for how they victimized him/her.  They think those people just got what they deserved. 

I've been interested in these roles for many, many years.  I first was introduced to them when I was in therapy and was immediately horrified to realize I was stuck in that triangle with no idea how to get out.  I asked my therapist how to get out and he said all I needed to do was stop playing those roles.  Easier said than done.  Since then as I've worked with other people who were trying to grow spiritually and solve their problems, I've noticed that everyone I've worked with saw themselves as victims in one way or another.  The trouble with that is that if I'm a victim, I'm helpless and hopeless, because my problems are all caused by someone or something else.  I'm completely blind to the role I play in the situation and to all the myriad possibilities for solving the problem without anyone else having to do anything different.  It's extraordinarily hard to break out of those roles and it is a whole lot harder to convince someone else to see the truth - even when they've asked you for help. 

The payoff for stepping out of those roles is to be free of fear, guilt, anger, resentment and to see yourself as a capable, good person able to navigate this often difficult world and its difficult people with peace and occasional joy.

Dreams

I have some of the most amazing dreams.  Some of them are so amazing I just have to record them.  This time I dreamed that I was married to one of my ex-husbands (again) and we decided to have more children.  Now mind you, I was 70 years old in my dream just like I am now.  So he was the one who got pregnant.  I told all my friends that I knew it was odd for people to have more children at our age, never even thinking that it was odd that he was the one that was pregnant.  By the way, we had twins.

Smartest Person in the Room

There are a lot of us humans that think we are the smartest person in the room wherever we go.  It may be an illusion or it may be the truth.  The thing is that thinking that is a huge hazard!  What happens is that we begin to think everyone else is stupid and then the way we interact with them is condescending.  That does NOT make us popular.

I know a lot about this problem since I was told over and over as a kid that my best trait was that I was smart.  Somehow I translated that to mean that I was smarter than everybody else.  I was wrong about that, for sure.  Plus I learned that people are at different levels of smartness, but everybody knows and understands stuff that other people don't.  I've also learned to be patient with the other smartest people in the room who are shocked to find out that I don't know as much as they do.

Don't Believe Everything You Hear

One of the things that really bothers me as I get older is how much stuff people believe that I'm fairly sure is not true.  This is especially true in politics - if my side says something bad about the other side, it must be true, right?  Not really.  However, the number of things that are not true that many, many people believe range far beyond politics.  Some things become "common knowledge."  People say, "Everybody knows that!" 

Since I have two adult children in my life that are cognitively disabled (used to be called mental retardation but it was changed because "retard" became such a bad word that was used to hurt people), I've heard a bunch of stuff that's supposedly "common knowledge."  For example, there are a lot of people in the medical profession and even people who work in the field who believe that people who are cognitively disabled don't feel physical pain like the rest of us.  I don't know about other people, but my adult children feel pain just like anyone else and have suffered a lot at the hands of people who believed they didn't need pain medication.  I've heard a lot of other very bad stuff too that I'm not going to repeat.  Most of it is designed to make people afraid of people with disabilities.

I think the root of these beliefs came from a belief system that was common in the first half of the 20th century.  When I was in college, some class I was in had a book that mentioned "eugenics."  When I read about it, I thought, "Boy those people sure were stupid to believe that stuff.  Glad no one believes that now."  Basically, eugenics was a belief and a movement that people could be bred like animals - and by doing so "defective people" could be eliminated.   The list of defective people went on and on - people (children) with disabilties especially those with cognitive disabilities, people with mental illness, Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, etc.; people who were convicted of a crime, alcoholics and addicts, poor people.  How the movement functioned to eliminate these people from the population was to sterilize both men and women.  The media worked to educate the public to report and/or capture children and adults and turn them in to be locked up and sterilized. 

Good grief!  How could this have happened in the 20th Century?  I have no idea.  In fact, Oklahoma still had a sterilization program for Native American women in the 1960s.  These practices are not so far away in time.  I would have thought that this stuff would have to be carried out on the fringes of society but the Rockefeller Foundation funded a lot of it, Winston Churchill was a proponent.  Also, Margaret Sanger and Theodore Roosevelt were proponents in the United States.  Oklahoma was the 30th state to pass a law mandating compulsory sterilization and institutionalization for "undesirables."  Sterilizations were carried out at the "Institution for the Feebleminded" in Enid, Oklahoma (a facility that still exists) and at the McAlester State Prison (also still in existence).  According to statistics kept by the federal Indian Health Care system, in the 1970s there were more sterilizations of Native American women than there were births at the Claremore Indian Hospital.

It's not a surprise that Hitler in Nazi Germany took up the crusade - he loved eugenics.  Of course, that led to the rounding up of Jews AND people with disabilities, gypsies, people in prisons, etc. and getting rid of them in gas chambers.  He was "purifying the Aryan race."  A lot of people in the rest of the world talk about this as a horrible, evil thing that Hitler did and how he must have been both evil and crazy and how awful it was that the people of Germany went along with it.  The thing is, right here in the United States of America we did something similar for half a century.  Odd how since World War II no one even mentions the eugenics movement.   However, I can see every day by how people talk about people with disabilities and minorities that there are still a lot of people who regard these groups as "defective."  It isn't that far a jump to start allowing people to die without medical treatment,etc.

The conclusion I reach is that I'm not believing the latest "scientific" research or philosophy, no matter how famous and credible it's proponents.  I'm taking everything with a grain of salt. 

Wedding Pix

Rehearsal Dinner

Vietnamese tradition - the groom's family gives the bride's family a pig.  Here it is - ready to be eaten!

Dad and groom

Rebecca, groom's sister, bride's mom and sister plus groom's grandad and wife in the background.

Bride's sister and boyfriend with bride's mom in the background taking a picture.

Rebecca and Jeremy

Groom, bride's mom and bride.

Groom's brother and date

Groom's brother looking sad because it's sparkling cider and not champagne

Pig after dinner.

Lynn, Uncle Sam and Anita waiting for the ceremony.  Uncle Mike looking at the door waiting for the wedding party to come out.

And here they come - Aaron, best man, Steve, Liz (groom's mom) escorting the groom.

Bridesmaids looking for the bride

Groom and chaplain waiting for the bride.

And the bride made it!

Moms

 

Jeremy and Bec

Bride and groom eating the fabuloous food.

And a good time was had by everyone!!!

Pix

First picture - playground at the park nearest my house.  If you're older than six you can't get on this playground equipment.  Bummer.
Above - picture of the podium and stage at the Springtime in the Ozarks conference.  Very dramatic and suited for the dramatic story that followed.

Along the street in Eureka.

View from the balcony outside our room in Eureka.

My friend Cynthia's back yard of her office.  The pigeons are always happy there because they are so liberally fed.

I took this picture out the window of my car and it appears I was holding the camera crooked.  But it's still a terrific looking tree!

My friend, Phyllis, had a coupon for this Jamaican restaurant.

My hydrangea bush is blooming.

Stew with ground chicken.  Never made this stew with ground chicken before, but it's pretty good.

Anniversaries

April, May and June of each year are full of anniversaries of some of the worst tragedies I've experienced.  Some years I do better than others with those times.  I've worked through the feelings, done the grief work and still sometimes my body remembers anyway.  This has been one of those years for remembering things I don't usually have occasion to think about. 

In April of 1976 my grandmother and mother were killed in a tornado.  For some reason, this year the memories that came to me were of how my youngest son and daughter, who are very severely disabled, reacted to being left with strangers while we went to my dad after the tornado.  Both of them came to me through the foster care system and never really left.  I knew that when they arrived at my house.  The placement was supposed to be temporary but due to their disabilities, I knew they weren't going anywhere.  By the time of the tornado, they had been with me most of their lives.  My daughter stayed with friends and my son had to go to Children's Medical Center.  Both of them were unbelievabley difficult to care for so we were lucky to have had any options for them.  Both of them were about four years old at the time.

While we were gone, one of our friends who also had a child with severe disabilities, called to tell us that our daughter had laid down in her bed with her eyes closed and would not respond, not even to eat.  She said that she had been that way for three days and thought we should come back.  So my husband jumped in the car and went back.  When he got there, he just picked her up.  She immediately opened her eyes.  He fed her and held her and when she was back to herself, he returned to my dad's.  Apparently, she did fine after that.  She just needed the reassurance that we had not left her forever.

When we returned from being with my dad, I picked our son up from Children's Medical Center.  He was very quiet on the way home.  I carried him into the house and set him down on the kitchen floor just inside the back door.  He immediately lay down on the floor and began to cry softly.  He just lay there for almost an hour, crying softly - I think with relief because he was finally home.  He too probably thought he had been deserted forever.

Both of these two are now 40 years old and I am always aware of my responsibility for them.  for the past 20 years they have lived with roommates in homes in the community with 24 hour staff assistance.  Their disabilities make them vulnerable in the world and the only consistent person they have in their lives to look out for their safely and well being is me.  Sometimes that responsibility is heavy and I would rather skip some of the things that need to be done.  But I always remember that my daughter tried to die when she thought we had deserted her and my son could not stop crying with relief for an hour after he came home.

Rules

It occurred to me the other day that I should write a book called, "Rules I'm Never Going to Follow Again."  At age 70 I'm pretty sure I'm done with a lot of them.  Of course, I'm still going to stop at stoplights, use my turn signal (follow traffic laws).  I'm still going to follow most of the laws of courtesy - basically they're just about caring about other people - not a bad thing at all.  However  I no longer think I have to wear make up when going out in public.  I no longer comb my hair more than once a day.  I don't have summer and winter clothes - I wear the same stuff year round.  I buy very comfortable clothes so that they can double as pajamas.  (I know.  That's really terrible.  That means I sometimes am too lazy to put on pajamas.  OMG!)  I don't like traditional breakfast foods so I often eat spagetti, pizza, salad, hamburgers, hot dogs and other lunch type stuff for breakfast.  What's the big deal?  My sleeping patterns have been messed up for years so I sleep at odd times.  Whatever. 

I hate business meetings so I never go to them anymore.  I've been boycotting funerals unless I think they're going to be the kind I like where they just talk about the person or I need to be there for support for the person's family.  Otherwise I generally don't like funerals so I don't go.  On the other hand I go to every wedding I'm invited to - I might even start crashing them.  They're usually fun.  I feel that way even though I've decided that no one should get married unles they're prepared to accept the other person exactly as they are. 

Well, that's just a few of the rules I'm not following anymore.  When the book is published, I'll post where it can be purchased.

Fun

Just came back from the Eureka Springs, Springtime in the Ozarks conference.  The weather was lovely and the speakers were entertaining and very helpful.  I laughed and laughed at the speaker on Saturday night.  He said that meditation was not "extra credit" in working the program - it's in the steps so we're supposed to do it.  He said meditation had taught him that he was not his thoughts.  He said that people sometimes believed that their thoughts were enemies since acting on their thoughts often got them in trouble.  No, he said, it's not that our thoughts are enemies - they're trying to help us but they're just stupid is all.  Boy has that ever been true for me.

This was the first time I'd been to the conference since the wreck.  For several years I didn't want to go because I thought going would trigger grief.  Ron and I were married there in 1986 and went to the conference every year but one after that until his death.  We thought Eureka was our town - just made for us and we went there a whole lot in between conferences.  We shopped, ate and walked.  My whole house is decorated with stuff we got in Eureka Springs.  I got my beloved bubble machine there.  This year when I thought about going to the conference I didn't have the feeling that I would grieve there and I didn't.  It was like coming home to a place that has always been filled with joy for me. 

Thanks to my friend and roommate for making the drive and helping me get around and thanks to one of Ron's friends who gave me a ride on his motorcycle up the hill from the conference.  I know my truma surgeon would have a fit, but it also felt good to be back on a bike!

The Precious Gift of Serenity

Two weeks before the end of February I had my two week detox from the prison of the to do list I've lived in all my life.  I didn't kick it out of my life forever; I just quit making one for two weeks.  That eliminated the anxiety of trying to figure out what to do first and thinking that I had to do everything on it all at once or I was a failure.  Of course, I didn't rationally believe any of that, but some part of me kept on trying to make me believe it.  It was a weird two weeks.  I was just trying to get in touch with my intuition so as to be able to use that as my guide rather than my ego.  I was more peaceful but certainly more discombobulated.

Then I immediately went into the inner ear mess where I was completely disfunctional for over a month.  Boy oh boy did things ever get piled up.  So now I'm digging out.  Had to get an extension on my taxes.  My bookkeeping was two months behind.  Plus I hadn't written a word in I don't know when.  I had started on a major cleanout of closets, cabinets and drawers and was right in the beginning stages of that.  Without the detox from the to do list I would have been in a quandry at this point.  But I'm not.  I just do two or three things a day and then rest.  If I feel like more I do more.  If I don't, I don't.

Several months ago I started re-reading The Artist's Way as a way of breaking out of the writing slump I was in.  One of the major things it recommends is something called "morning pages" which is three pages written every morning in long hand just as quickly as possible.  The idea is to empty out all the thoughts that are in the way of the right brain which is the creative side of the brain.  I started the writing back at the end of December and have been fairly diligent since.  I've missed some days but the majority of the time I write.  I have been amazed at the crap that spills out of my head.  The longer I do the writing, the more quickly I get to the right side of my brain that's the part that tells me what I really want to do with the precious moments of each day.

Pix

Karly is singing to the theme of Two and a Half Men.  (Visiting dogs)

Kooper is playing with his toy.

Caryn did my spring pedicure!!!!

Judy did my spring haircut.

A birdfeeder the squirrels can't figure out.

A very weird tree.

The wildflower garden is growing!  Thank you, Aaron and Tammy (Tammy made a fence for it so the dogs wouldn't dig it up.).

Addiction to Being Right

It's election time again which means the media is going crazy looking for stuff to report on that makes somebody look stupid and wrong - either side will do.  I don't blame the media because it the way politics works these days which in turn in a reflection of how the whole culture functions.

I talk to enough people on a daily basis that are trying hard to correct their thinking so that they can have some peace of mind and peace with other people to notice how pervasively we all seem to work at "being right."  Most of the stuff they talk about is how somebody else is wrong and how pissed off they are about it.  I'm almost always completely amazed by how ridiculous their stories are.  They guess at what other people's motives are and get mad at what they guessed.  The behavior they report is usually neutral unless the motive for it is part of it.  Plus they are not actually impacted by the behavior at all.  They're just mad because the person is "wrong."  Totally goofy.  The whole thing deserved no attention whatever. 

I'm just guessing, but it seems likely to me that when we're feeling bad about ourselves, we look around for someone who's "wrong" and that makes us feel better - eventually leading to a deep seated addiction to taking offense at things that are completely unimportant because it makes us feel "right."

What I'm doing about my own tendency to do this is to use the 10th Step to root out anything I'm kicking myself for and doing what I can to correct it with the help of God.  Then I try to turn my attention to enjoyable and wonderful things.  Right now I am reading a poem every day and reading about poetry.  I used to write poetry all the time and I'm going to start writing in a few days.  This is a lot more entertaining than wondering if I should get mad at somebody for something.

FLOW

In order to have an enjoyable life, the author of FLOW believes (based on research), we need to discipline our minds to focus on the present and on the activities we've chosen.  The author says that left to itself, our mind will just wander around and eventually focus on thoughts that carry the biggest charge of energy - which in almost all cases is whatever randomly shows up that's negative.  Our minds have evolved to protect us from danger so naturally run to the negative.  Unfortunately since we are not living with saber toothed tigers, this negative thinking is mostly not helpful - in fact, it's very UNhelpful.

According to the author, most of our addictive type activities:  drugs, alcohol, work, tv watching, etc. are designed to stop our minds from running to the negative.  Of course, there are big downsides to these efforts.  A much better way is to systematically train ourselves to think about - for the lack of a better word - our goals.  The author isn't very happy with the word,  "goal" because it's associated with the extrinsic rather than intrinsic.  He means activities and goals we have chosen strictly for ourselves rather than the objectives the culture determines for us.  The structure of goals we chose for ourselves decides what our lives will be about and how much we will enjoy our lives.  The research shows that when people are focused on the activities that will move them toward the goals they have for their lives, they are happy.  In the beginning, of course, these goals will usually be focused on the material as we establish ourselves as adults in the world, then many people will focus on the larger framework of the community and finally, the happiest people will work toward developing their talents.

The author is really unhappy about the direction our culture has taken in downgrading "amateur" hobbies.  He says that it's a shame that one's "hobby" is not considered important unless one makes money from it (which entitles one to be called, professional).  It's his contention that it used to be more common than it is now, that people sang in "amateur" choirs and choruses, played musical instruments in local bands and orchestras, painted, sculpted, wrote poetry, studied history for their own interest, etc.  Now, he says, people look down on those who do so.  In his opinion, if you have talents, you should develop them.  If you have interests, you should study.  What matters is that by developing yourself as a human being, you will have optimal experiences, which even if those experiences give joy only to you, the world will still have one more joyful person in it.