Where are you Matt?
What are you feeling?
Check in- what’s happening now?

This is the litany of questions that has gone through my head on repeat for the last few weeks. It’s one of the tools I use to ground and re-center myself when I catch my thoughts ruminating or spiraling.

You don’t “hate everything,” Matt. You are tired and sad. Hate and anger are easier to feel and parse than pain.

This is the other mantra I’ve found myself repeating over and over when I find myself slipping into depression. That’s been increasing over the last few months. The usual anxieties and tribulations of life seem to magnify themselves when you constantly poach yourself in a broth of bad news. It feels like everything hurts, and the world is too hard and painful to keep being kind in.

I insist on continuing to be kind, though.
My core values remain Patience and Compassion.
My “Way of the Floured Hand” dictates that “I choose love, I chose love, and I will always choose love.”
“It’s Chaos; Be Kind.”

I know that ideals like this will always be worth it in the end, always me– but that doesn’t mean it’ll always feel good.

Truth be told, it’s been hard to feel good lately.

I’m determined not to purposely numb myself- with games, social media, booze, anything- because you can’t numb selectively. You numb yourself to the bad things, the good things go with it. If the good things seem few and far between though, that can sound like a much better deal.

What do we numb ourselves to, though? Emotions and conflicts we don’t feel equipped to face.

Hate and anger are easy to feel and process- find a target (worthy or unworthy of it, the emotion doesn’t care) and vent your energy, wrath, and bile all over it. Proportionate? Relevant? Productive? Doesn’t matter- what’s important is the release, and how you feel afterward. It doesn’t solve what caused the hate and anger, but it sure makes you feel better for a minute.

We don’t numb ourselves to hate and anger though. We numb ourselves to deeper, harder emotions and placate them with Hate and Anger without ever actually solving them. You can guess where I’m going here. Go ahead, I’ll say them with you, and you say aloud the ones you’re afraid to feel.

Grief.
Shame.
Self-Loathing.
Disappointment.
Sorrow.
Hopelessness.
PAIN.

Writing this out reminded me of the Vidui prayer we Jews recite during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In the Vidui, we as a community confess to a list of sins perpetrated by the community- in alphabetical order no less. It didn’t matter if we individually didn’t “S is for Steal” or “L is for Lied.” We are there as a community, we confess as a community.

What you and I just did isn’t that kind of a confession though. We’re not confessing to a deity or trying to right a wrong- you and I confess to ourselves. We are owning that we feel these things that we’re afraid to face, and we’re getting right with our whole selves.

We feel the need to apologize for these feelings or justify them to others somehow. It’s bullshit, of course- but that’s how we’ve built our world and our culture. “If you’re not perfectly happy all the time forever, something’s wrong with you and you need to not be so down all the time. Buy some [product] so you’ll suck less.”

Screw that. Here’s my confession then:

I’m disappointed in our leaders and in people who should know better than to say and do the things they do.

I feel sorrowful and hopeless because Hate and Anger is so much easier to deal with than pain, and that’s why the world is so full of it.

I feel grief and pain for all the kind, decent, innocent people who are suffering while the people can only communicate through Hate, Anger, and Power please themselves at the cost of lives and a shared future.

And I am feeling Shame and Self-Loathing for the fact that I can do only so much about it, and that it would be so fucking easy to just give in to the Hate and Anger. Just decide that all my friends that are applauding people who wish for my death because I’m a Jew have always been monsters and that I was just a sucker for Being Kind and Loving and Believing in them.

That’s not me, though. I won’t let that be me. I CAN’T let that be me.

Boundaries need to be honored and respected. I will need to cut some ties- but I cannot give way to hating, or shame myself for feeling the need to. I cannot, will not, let monstrous times and monstrous actions and monstrous speech make a monster of me.

Be brave enough to feel what you are feeling without forcing others to feel it for you.
Be strong enough to not get swept up in the Hate and Anger that just feels easier.
Be loving enough to know who and what you are, without letting friends or foes make you act outside your values and integrity.

Stay Classy,