The not so Tenuous Connection Between Happiness and a Laundry Basket

There was very little sleep for me last night. Writing while tired is dangerous because I tend to go to the dark and twisty place where I dwell on things that are neither hopeful nor productive. I considered putting off writing this post until tomorrow, certain I would be exhausted tonight, sleep well, and able to compose an optimistic piece about how much I look forward to the future – on Tuesday. However, there is no guarantee that I will sleep well tonight, and I’m trying to stay on a disciplined path with my writing. Mondays are blog post days. Grit it out and get the gold star. Control what I can control and ultimately feel better myself. Today, I can write a blog post as determined by the schedule I created.

                Control is a strange concept. We have so little control of others, and yet, somehow, others exercise such incredible control over us. I can’t make you take up your laundry basket of clean clothes that I have washed and folded for you, yet, the longer you leave it in the family room, the angrier and more resentful I become. Have I given over control? Am I justified in my resentment? Why the hell won’t you just take up your laundry basket anyway?

                There is a phenomena I call “emotional over-lording.” Emotional over-lording is the effect that the person with the most volatile, negative attitude has on the environment. The angry person controls the room. The one we fear is the one who dominates. Bullies win through emotional intimidation. Why is that? Why are happy people the ones who are trampled? Moreover, why is that angry people want to dominate the happy, making everyone like them, rather than spreading the optimism? Are we programmed toward the negative?

                In my not-a-licensed-psychologist way, I have developed a theory that in fact; we are programmed to gravitate toward letting anger and negativity dominate our thinking, as a holdover from our earliest evolution when fight or flight was more important to survival than it is now. We simply haven’t evolved much and we’re still filtering our environment for threats. Negativity and volatility are threats. A happy person isn’t going to attack you or beat you up. A raving, furious person just might. Beatings lead to injury, potentially fatal injuries. You have to watch out for that. You have to protect yourself. Thanks for the warning, lizard brain.

                There are two ways to protect yourself: stay away from angry people, or pacify the anger by letting it dominate the environment. Anger loves control. Anger dictates, orders, and commands. Anger exhausts happiness into submission with volume and intensity. You simply cannot be happy in the face of someone yelling about how awful a person you are. Not possible; you’re too busy ducking and covering, at least emotionally. In order to preserve some sense of peace, you pacify the anger. You become what it is that anger wants – you become unhappy.  

                I wish it were possible to happy-yell. To be so loud and overbearing in happiness that anger is frightened into submission. Actually, I believe what I want we’ve labeled as insanity, and we medicate that. Isn’t that too bad? Seems to me the balance of accepted crazy is tilted excessively in favor of anger, not happiness. We need to start medicating the angry into submission. Ever see a happy person go on a shooting spree? Not me. Pretty sure anger is a common denominator in violence. Only Lennie pat the puppy to death in his overwhelming love for the dog. Now that I am reminded of Of Mice and Men, it does capture the dominance of anger over happiness, and how we, as a society have diminished happiness to the arena of mental defect. Huh, I never thought of it from that angle before. New found respect.

                Before I digress too far, I want to bring this back to the point: happiness needs to make a comeback. In my own life, at the very least, if not on a universal basis, the pendulum needs to swing back toward happiness. We need a culture shift away from anger. If our 2016 primary election cycle doesn’t underscore this, we may be hopelessly lost. I for one am going for happy in the future. I don’t think I can do otherwise and survive because my nature is that of a happy person. I know this not because of my past, but because of my present. Unhappiness feels so wrong for me. Unhappiness is an ill-fitting emotional suit that I cannot wear.

                Thus, I will choose happiness, even if that means I will be happily alone, and it means that for time being, I’ll bring that damn laundry basket up.