How To Lose Friends and Irritate People
After a hundred and ninety-nine Coffin Talk interviews wherein I ask each guest, “What do you think happens when you die?”, I feel comfortable stating the following:
All humans believe in energy.
That’s it. Thank you. Have a great week!
…I’m kidding (about the essay ending). But I’m not kidding about humans, and energy. I really do think the only thing we can all agree on is that “energy is a thing.” So, I’d like to use that launching pad this week to stretch this notion further (farther?).
While most of us believe in energy, I’m not sure all would agree with my claim that energy has two categories, physical and mental. However, I think it’s an easy sell.
Our physical energy (PE) is our ability to move. On a low PE day, it’s hard to run at the gym, stairs feel more difficult, and we might even need a nap to replenish ourselves.
Mental energy (ME) is different. On a low ME day, it’s hard to face life. Everything (mentally) feels like a struggle. For example, those same stairs might not be physically demanding, but the thought of using them seems “hard” and perhaps “not worth it.”
This is where things get tricky, because sometimes we suffer from low PE and ME, so we’re not sure how the two are interacting and affecting us. For example, we might need a nap to restore our PE, but thanks to our low ME, we may also think that taking a rest is a cop out, “for losers,” so we ignore the obvious solution and struggle on.
I’m thus concerned with how often we mistake low PE for low ME, and vice-versa.
I got sick a lot when I was young . Now that I’m older, I’m sure this was mostly hypochondria. I hated school and loved TV, and staying home sick meant no school, more TV, and my mom would make me special food, to nourish me back to health.
My parents weren’t idiots. I was symptomatic in each case—I wasn’t some kid lying to get out of a test. I was a child lying to myself about my illness. I was depressed and had given up on school (and myself), and I was letting that low ME affect my PE.
Some call this the placebo effect, but I think that’s a term “experts” use to evade a fact they don’t want to address:
Our physical ailments are mental, and our mental ailments are physical. We are not a body with a brain, and we are not a brain with a body. We are something bigger, and that thing contains both.
So what is that thing? Some call it a soul, but I don’t. I only know that this thing wants high PE and ME, and when either gets low, it suffers, and I can tell this by the way my body feels and by the thoughts my brain produces.
So what’s your point, MikeyOpp?
Welp. I’m not glad you asked, but I’ll answer….
Did you know that there’s an election coming up in the good old US of A? Yup, there is. And if you asked me about it, friends, I’d say, “This one is a real doozy, if you understand PE and ME the way I do!”
This “election” is crazy because it’s not actually about people vying for a job. It’s really a contest between two Mental Energies that want to ignore the Basic Law of Energy!
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.
What I’m getting at, is that you can’t just “defeat” the energy you don’t like. If you hate ‘bigoted’ energy, you have to transform it. Actually, I went too far. If you hate, that’s low ME, which means you can only transform or transfer your hate.
With that in mind, here’s how I like to look at this election, and all the previous ones:
Candidate A is a human with quirks that some call flaws.
Candidate B is a human with quirks that some call flaws.
And Candidates C-Z? They are also humans with quirks that some call flaws, only they also do have one GLARING, real flaw: they’re running third party.
That last one was a joke. But seriously, if you are consumed with fear, hate, envy, anger, or any other compelling low ME, it’s your job to transform that energy. Pointing a finger at “him” “her” or “them” is lowering your own ME and PE, which means you’re literally hurting yourself to “make a point about how other people hurt people!”
It seems so pointless. All of this. And yet, we all see a point. Every single one of us who got out of bed today and drank water and ate so they could continue to breathe “sees a point” to life, which brings me back to my introduction, and Coffin Talk.
All of us are going to someday die, yet none of us actually know what’s going to happen when we do. For all we know, Hitler and Stalin run heaven and anyone who voted “against him” is going to a place called hell, which is run by Mother Teresa.
We just don’t know.
This is why it’s dangerous to goad our peers to do “what is morally right” when not a single one of us knows what that is. Most of us have strong intuitive feelings about “The right thing to do,” in any given situation, but no one has intuitive feelings that tell them, “It’s your job to judge how other people think and get angry about it.”
No matter what country you live in or where you are in your life, I am sure of one thing: There is someone you know who could use your help today. They might have low ME, low PE, or both, but they’re near you, desperate, and need help.
If you find that person and help them today, three things will happen:
1. You will positively affect their PE and ME.
2. You will raise your own PE and ME.
3. You will have transformed “bad energy” into “good energy” and changed your world.
Speaking of good people and good energy, this week I had the pleasure of interviewing Kat Jutras, the state advocacy director for Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona (DPAA), an organization that focuses on death penalty abolition and issues related to the criminal justice system in Arizona. I hope her wisdom and philosophy is contagious, and you receive as much compelling joy as I did when we discussed one of the hardest issues in criminology! It’s on all apps, or you can listen to it here.
very interesting. a lot to digest.
excellent peerspective.