Pettiness and Self-Hatred

Some days finding something to be grateful for seems like just another job on my to do list, and I feel resentful, then guilty for feeling that way because how dare I, and so forth with the self-criticism that borders on -- and often crosses the line into -- self-hatred. 

My problems are so petty and First World, and yet I can't seem to force myself to stop letting them get me down. I know this isn't just me. This is what people do. A quote from Adam Smith that I've seen several times before but just ran across again in the audiobook I'm currently listening to reminded me that this is true:

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe,who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

This is what people do. We care more about our little fingers than millions of people we don't know. That's why Stalin said, aptly, that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. It's human nature to feel that way, so why do I feel so guilty about it? 

The book where I heard the quote anew this week was Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, a wonderful book that contains much that I could have written myself (and some that I actually did write in a book I wrote but never published). The Adam Smith quote reminds me, on an intellectual level, that it's not just me, that everyone does this, which is one of the fundamental ideas in Kristin Neff's Self-Compassion, a wonderful book but one whose principles I seem to be able to accept on an intellectual but not an emotional level. 

I know everyone does this, so why do I hate myself for doing it? I know it is hard to feel truly and profoundly grateful for not having Ebola or living in Afghanistan or being blind or deaf or paralyzed or dead and let just being whole and alive and healthy and American be enough already so STFU about your stupid, petty problems. I know it isn't just me. So why do I hate myself for it?

Gratitude

Gratitude is a good thing.  We all ought to be grateful, especially today, on Thanksgiving, when gratitude is positively a patriotic obligation.

Gratitude is wonderful when it is spontaneous and comes from within.  Gratitude is difficult when people tell you, "You ought to be grateful because you have X," or "You ought to be grateful because you don't have Y," or, more bluntly, "How dare you complain when you have so much, you ungrateful narcissist?"

We can cultivate gratitude, just as we can cultivate mindfulness and empathy and all the other positive qualities and emotions and states of mind that will make us happier, kinder, better people.  We can, but all too often, we don't.

I have a relative who is refusing to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.  She says she doesn't have much to be grateful for this year.  I don't know what to say to her, because from where she sits, I have more to be grateful for than she does.  From where I sit, too.  So how do I say to someone who has more problems than I do, yes, you do have things to be grateful for.  I can't.  It would sound preachy.  She has preached to me in the past about how ungrateful I am because I complained about this or that, and I didn't like it, so I am not going to do it to her.

I don't know how you inspire someone else to be grateful.  It isn't by telling them, "You ought to be grateful."  When people say that to me, I want to say fuck off, but instead smile tightly and try to say something that isn't too passive aggressive.  I want to be grateful.  I try to be grateful.  Most days, I am grateful, including, thankfully, today.  But when I am not feeling grateful, being preached at doesn't help.  It generally makes my state of mind much worse.  So I am leaving my sad, resentful kinswoman alone, because I don't want to make her feel worse, but don't know how to make her feel better.

Make her feel better.  That's the thing.  Not only can you not make someone else feel better or worse or any way, but other people can't make you feel a certain way.  People do things, or things just happen, and then we react with one emotion or another.  We can choose how to react.  Often, the initial reaction is involuntary, a flash of annoyance or fear or pleasure, but once that flash passes, we can choose whether we want to give in to that emotion, or do something to try to counteract it.  From Buddhism to Positive Psychology, there are a variety of tools and behaviors we can use to help us control negative emotions, but the motivation has to come from within.  It can be inspired from without, but whatever the external stimulus is, it needs to touch a nerve inside the person, and inspire him or her to want to make a change.  Same thing with losing weight, or exercising, or getting sober.  If the person in question doesn't want to do it, you can't bully or cajole or guilt them into wanting to.

So today, what I am grateful for is the desire to be grateful, to be healthy, to be sober, to be empathetic and kind rather than angry and resentful.  That is really a gift worthy of gratitude.

Sobriety

I was sober for nearly two months, then the other night I had a glass of wine or three or five or whatever it was.  I had decided in advance a few days before that I was going to have wine on that occasion, that it would be sort of a test to see if I could do the moderation thing, and I can’t.  I woke up on the couch in my clothes at 5 AM with a raging headache.  I got undressed, went to bed and couldn’t get up in time to make an appointment on time, was more than half an hour late, and was kind of checked out, not all “there” because I felt so lousy.  I felt lousy all day.  But it told me what I needed to know.  I can no longer do the “moderation in all things” thing, which was really a source of pride for me.

I finished Ann Dowsett Johnson's Drink yesterday, and cannot recommend it highly enough.  It is exceptionally well written and emotionally powerful.  I don't agree with the public policy recommendations, but the personal narrative is riveting and inspiring.

I have been reading Stefanie Wilder Taylor's blog, Baby on Bored.  The author of snarky, mommy-loves-her-wine books like Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, Taylor took the courageous step in 2009 of publicly admitting she drank too much and was stopping.  Her blog posts on her struggles with sobriety are raw and funny and she seems like the kind of mom I would love to have a cup of coffee (not a glass of wine) with.  I loved this post; be sure to read to the end.  Not that anyone is reading this blog and will on my recommendation, since there are no comments and hardly any hits on the stat counter.  But what do I expect from an anonymous blog I don't promote on Facebook or tell my friends about.  Maybe someday I'll work up the courage to do it.  Maybe not.  In the meantime, I will go on not drinking (that's the plan anyway) and reading and writing and taking care of my kids and being grateful, not necessarily in that order.

Trying

This morning, I lay in bed for two hours surfing the internet.  And I don’t feel guilty.

After writing that, it was easier to get on the elliptical.  I exercised for half an hour, finishing the last page of Susan Cheever’s Desire just as the timer beeped the end of the session.  Very zen.  That may be the wrong way to use the word zen, but I don’t care right now.  This is my journal, and I’ll use and abuse words as I see fit.

My, what a rebel I am this morning.  A rebel or an addict?  Cheever thinks addicts are different from non-addicts, but that addictions are not different from one another.  In other words, addictions are interchangeable:  when an obese person addicted to food gets bariatric surgery and can no longer feed that addiction, he or she becomes a compulsive shopper or gambler or alcoholic.  Is it true?  I don’t know.  Not in my dad’s case anyway, I don’t think. 

Was I addicted to food?  I had obsessed over it and struggled to self-regulate for more than 30 years before I took what is probably as near as can be to an AA-style abstinence approach to processed food, sugar and starch.  Since doing so, not eating sugar isn’t very difficult anymore.  Halloween was two nights ago and I didn’t even really want to raid the kids' bags for Reese’s peanut butter cups.  My kids are baffled by my indifference to sweets, since they are all sick addicts themselves.  I mean that in a playfully ironic way, I hope, the way that all kids are sugar addicts.  I gorged on Halloween candy as a kid, but sugar was never really the monkey on my back.  I’d much have preferred two chili dogs and a bite of chocolate to one chili dog and a pile of sweets.  For me, it was mostly savory foods (except mint chocolate chip ice cream, for which I had a desperate passion) and a penchant for excessive portions.

When I stopped overeating, and the feeling of food addiction eventually passed, was I more prone to other addictions?  Did a third glass of Malbec become my third helping of Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing and gravy?  Did two workouts a day replace the two chili dogs?  Did figurative mint chocolate chip (a euphemism for something I have not yet worked up the nerve to write about) become a surrogate for its literal namesake?  Ironic, that.  The connection had not occurred to me before.  I think there may be a memoir title in there.  A memoir to be written when I am old and my children have had their own experiences with that other kind of mint chocolate chip, and so may not judge quite so harshly.  I will be an old lady, dignified and well-preserved, and my amorous past will be no longer scandalous, but only quaintly amusing:  Oh my, can you imagine Grandma doing that?

Do I love mint chocolate chip (figuratively), or do I just love ice cream?  I loved that question Eleanor asked, though I think she said chocolate, and I substituted a flavor I liked better, my flavor of the moment.  Or is it merely a flavor of the moment?  I don’t know.  And the beautiful thing is, I am growing more comfortable with not knowing.  I am beginning to grasp at the edges of what paradox means, and this aspect of my life is nothing if not a paradox.  For a change, I am content to live with the paradox, to be with the uncertainty, not to try to figure out the future.  For the first time since it began, I feel at peace with it.  Well, not completely, but closer to being at peace with it.  And that feels good.

I look at the surface of my desk, and the piles of papers that usually frustrate me, make me feel overwhelmed, lead me to beat myself up for allowing the mess to go on, do not do any of those things this morning.  I realize even as I write the words, that those active verbs are inaccurate:  the mess does not make me feel anything.  The mess is just there.  I feel the way I feel, and blame the mess.

Mindfulness, gratitude and kindness.  I am trying to practice these three things.  Forty minutes ago, I wrote down the time, 7:34, and started clearing the mess off my desk, putting things away, timing myself to see how long things took.  Some of the things to put away were three checks, and I decided to fill out deposit slips for them so I could get that out of the way.  I only had two deposit slips in the house, so I went to get one out of my car, and on the way, instead of thinking what mess the yard was, I breathed in the cold morning air and thought how good it felt, savoring the feeling of it filling my lungs, and feeling gratitude.  When I got to the garage, I was not annoyed at the fallen bicycle in my way, just picked it up and put it to the side with neutral thoughts.  There was no deposit slip in the car, and I found to my surprise that I was not annoyed by this.  On the way back to the house, I looked down at my hands, nine long nails with clear polish and one broken down to the quick, and felt not annoyed by the broken nail, but grateful that I have ten fingers and ten toes, grateful that I have beautiful hands.  Yes, beautiful:  the veined hands of a middle aged woman, and beautiful.

When I came back in the house, the cat was yowling in her discordant way.  It is strange, she is so pretty and delicate, but her meow is harsh and masculine and grating.  The tomcat we used to have was huge and black and majestic, but he mewed as though he were the little white kitten from The Aristocats.  This cat’s guttural howl has always annoyed me, and as many times as I have tried to feel benevolent toward her (I am not a cat person, so it doesn’t come naturally) I don't often manage it.  Today I did.  I spoke kindly to her, and let her out.  Then let her in again.  She had food and water, but still she kept meowing.  “Do you want to be petted?” I finally asked, and bent down to stroke her fur.  Apparently she did, because after that she was quiet.

I never did get the desk cleared off, and it’s more than three hours after I set out to do so.  It’s not cleared off, but it is better than it was, and that is something. 

I have no illusions that I can go on being kind to the cat and the dog and the kids and all of humanity indefinitely, but I can try.  I don’t think I can always keep my desk clear or look with equanimity upon the mess when I don’t, but I can try.  I doubt I can consistently look at my hands and see ten whole, perfect fingers rather than age spots and chipped nail polish, but I can try.  That’s all any of us can do:  try.