Fake it, Make it, or Just Let it Be?
For the last week or so, I seem to have the sense that something is not right. Almost an impending feeling of something that is just about to go wrong. I find myself annoyed and quite melancholy. When I feel this way, usually I just meditate, feel it, spend a little time trying to figure out if it is a state of mind, and then I just go about my life with it. I tell myself that it will be here until it is not and that is about all I can do. But yesterday I saw a segment on an early morning talk show about “Changing your bad mood.” The basic premise was that we always have the ability to change our moods, and if we don’t…then “fake it.” Really? I am not very good at faking anything, but even if I was…is that really the answer. I heard words like selfish, arrogant, and self-centered to describe someone who does not choose to “fake it.” Are we really that fragile of a society that we cannot tolerate the normal human vacillations of mood? Must we walk around like Stepford wives, just to keep everyone comfortable? I refuse to believe that we are not capable of some compassion, EMPATHY in fact, towards others who are experiencing a mood that we ourselves must be all to familiar with. Why are we told over and over to pretend? I am not saying that I would deliberately harm someone just because I am in a bad mood, but neither would I choose to suppress it or dissociate from it. I am cranky. So what? I choose to believe that those around me actually have the ability to understand, relate, and let it be. Perhaps it is because it is easier to tell others to change (fake it) than to ask ourselves to make an adjustment (extending a bit of human empathy.) Isn’t it just much easier to judge someone else, tell ourselves we would never feel that way, and move on? Easier, perhaps…but at what cost?
So for now…I will just be melancholy. If I figure out a good reason why, perhaps I can work with it. If not, I will just be with it until it passes. That is not selfish, or arrogant, THAT is human. I am comfortable just letting myself be a human being, and feel a human emotion, for now. And I will make an attempt, when I encounter others in a bad mood, to remember feeling this way and extend a little bit of understanding their way.
sometimesihatemycat 
I’m with you. I think there’s a general sense in society that people are obliged to advertise themselves, and those who do (meaning: those who don’t convey honestly what they’re feeling), are then held accountable because they show others up to be fakes. And fakery has become socially acceptable, even perhaps a predominant form of exchange in a world which is increasingly reverent of commercial everything. People tell you what they want you to believe about them in order to believe that thing about their self, so they can feel socially acceptable, and then hold you accountable as a social pariah if you happen to see through it. This is very general, and hard to prove.
The sense of impending doom I feel too, I think Freud called it Thanatos, after the Greek for the personification of death. He observed a shift in people’s desire to live at any cost after the First World War. Until then, it was presumed that the instinct to survive was ultimate, but the developed consciousness of man in the early 20th century suddenly witnessed “man’s horror to man” and discovered that there are worse things to see, endure and do, than die. Ad to this the atomic bomb, large scale genocide a couple of decades later, and there was an huge shift consciousness; one which manifested as the secret belief that the individual is not valued if people are so quick to wipe out their own. Simply put, people devalued themselves, their own life, because it was one of the ways in which they could go on living. My guess is this has also contributed to the general lack of conscience which seems to be growing in groups, nations and many individuals. If people stop caring about themselves, how can they care about others.
And that’s my useless, convoluted two cents’ worth.
Really, I don’t know much more. Most of these thoughts are my own, speculative, and only partially informed. But the intuitive mind counts for something, I intuit. Isn’t intuition designed to be accurate where reason isn’t enough?
Beautifully said! I make that point (about compassion) all the time. The point being that, in my humble opinion, me must develop compassion towards our own human condition before we can have the true capacity to extend that compassion to others. If we can’t even acknowledge our actual human condition, how do we EVER stand the chance of truly helping others. When people look at me and expect me to be this unfeeling, non aggressive, always compassionate person because I meditate…I always correct them. Meditation does not change who you are, it simply reveals it to you. The next step is how you work with it. Developing compassion towards the “you” that you become aware of is invaluable. Then naturally you start to see that we are all in the same boat and human empathy is born. Anyway…there’s my additional few cents. Thanks for being involved in my blog. I really enjoy your thoughtful comments.
I’m all about the human condition. That’s why I have no heroes anymore. The more honestly I looked at myself, the more I understood about artifice, and then found that in order to be accepting of my flaws, which are numerous and treasured, I had to accept the flaws of others. To do that, I had to learn to see. But there are still things I don’t accept. I don’t accept bullying and cruelty: both designed to give people or systems power over others. And other things. I take poisons to meditate, and I’ll pay for that, but I’m content to do so.
Nietzsche writes something like: “A love of one is barbarous, for it happens at the expense of all others, a love of god also.”
Oh, yea, and I’m enjoying participating here. Down the rabbit hole is where I’m home.