[MarkPNeyer]

I just read "life of a slave" by frederick douglass. It's been helpful to calibrate my emotional responses. I try to treat emotion like sound or light - a signal from the outside world, with appropriate responses.

When I get upset at things now, I compare whatever's bothering me to "being a slave, being whipped for teaching fellow slaves how to read the bible" - and i realize how unimportant the thing was.

This ability - to compare our experiences to those of others - is why i think christianity has something to it. I ignore all the talk about God, and just think of the story of Jesus - a guy who went around telling everyone, "hey lets be nice", and got tortured for it. Being able to forgive someone who'd do that to you is a tall order - but if you have that ability and truly follow that pattern, you'll be much happier and contented.

I don't see the guy as divine - i see him as a helpful calibration point. Forgiveness is a path out of anger. There's a lot to be angry about in our modern world, but that doesn't make it helpful for us.

[d0paware]

I used to think that this was a good way to cope with unhappiness that I experienced. I would tell myself, "At least I'm not starving to death" or, "At least I don't feel like killing myself this morning." I would feel better at first, but it didn't change the fact that I would still get the same negative feelings again. It became frustrating that this tactic lost its effectiveness over time.

While on one hand it trivializes what it actually means to go through starvation, or having suicidal thoughts, or what it's like to actually be a slave, I think it also trivializes your own feelings as well.

Like the article points out, this mentality suppresses your feelings. "Oh, I'm not allowed to feel this way. Look at all the wealth and happiness I am surrounded with and non-extreme situations I don't have to face!"

Admitting my feelings and writing them down in my journal in the heat of the moment, no matter how pathetic they made me seem, gave me a chance to reflect on what I had written. It gave me a snapshot to come back to later and say "Is this really what I am like? Have I exaggerated or downplayed my emotions?"

And from there, I was able to come to two types of conclusions:

1) Accept that sometimes for a given situation I would feel blue no matter what. Something I realized after 8 years of heartbreak, things not working out, or rejection in dating is that while I got better at being functional, the pain itself never dulled. And what a relief! I kept expecting that it would somehow hurt less after all these years, but that's just not how it turned out. And I feel so much better now with that in mind.

2) I can decide to act on the problem. I can act and succeed, or act and fail. And after enough failures, sometimes it's OK to give up for the time being and work on other types of dissatisfaction.

I think the article did a great job of succinctly describing a process I have gone through myself for several years. I highly recommend it.

[crawfordcomeaux]

Completely agree with you and would add that I've found mourning after something that gets me down is ESSENTIAL for moving through those things. If I avoid grieving the loss I'm perceiving, that's also suppressing my emotions.

I used to not associate mourning with everyday events; it was something reserved for people/pets dying. Now, if I can't shake a bad feeling, I try mentally eulogizing whatever I lost.

[alphapapa]

Jesus did not go around saying, "Hey let's be nice," nor did he get crucified for saying that. Jesus called out the Jewish leaders of the day for being hypocrites, people who laid a heavy burden on their followers but did not live up to the standards they set, who made up and imposed strict rules while completely missing the point. They crucified him because they felt threatened by him, that their power structure would collapse, and then they wouldn't be powerful anymore. Nothing's changed in that aspect of humanity--the powerful always want to preserve their power.

He did not call people to be nice, he called people to be good and faithful. There is often a big difference between being nice and being good. By contemporary standards, if Jesus had gone around being "nice," he never would have confronted anyone or accused them of sinning.

Jesus certainly did get angry sometimes, but his anger was justified, and he did not lose self-control.

You can't separate Christianity or Christ from God. Think about this: if Jesus was not who he claimed to be--the son of the living God--then he was surely crazy, because he got himself killed for nothing. He could have avoided all that suffering and death by just being nice and non-confrontational, and going to a place where people didn't want to kill him.

[dvt]

I'm a Christian and I love this post, but this part:

> There is often a big difference between being nice and being good.

... made me all giddy as a philosophy major :)

[alphapapa]

:) Studying some philosophy myself right now. Fun stuff if taught well.

[chc]

As described in the Bible, Jesus went around challenging and insulting the religious leaders of the day. He literally went around the temple with a whip overturning people's stalls because he objected to their presence. He did say to be nice sometimes as well, but that was not really what made people angry.