According to Seneca, anger and frustration arises from certain rationally held ideas about the world; ideas that are far too optimistic. Such that when we are too hopeful and optimistic about something, when things don’t go our way, we feel self-pity and injustice, and tend to get angry (shit hits the fan). So basically, we get angry because we have this nice little notion that things should always go our way, and when they inevitably do not, we get pissy.
Seneca suggested two things to stop this from happening: be more pessimistic and lower your expectations.
“What makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like.” Whence “our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground rules of existence”. Seneca faults our thinking for this by assuring us that it is better to be prepared for the worst, for the worst is surely possible. Yes, yes it is Seneca.
Seneca, what are you looking at and why are you naked?
It sounds like a pretty negative way to live your life right? Wake up and straight away tell yourself, “The world fucking sucks. I am going to have a shit day with a capital S, and H just for good measure. My friends are definitely not going to message me back when I text them today, my rabbit is definitely going to bite me, and my morning coffee is going to taste like burnt dog balls.”
Luckily, I don’t think that was quite Seneca’s intention though when giving out his advice. I am naturally a very optimistic person, but I can definitely see the advantages to incorporating some pessimistic outlook into my life. Basically, what he was trying to say is that we should always be prepared for the worst, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hope for the best. It just means that when things don’t go our way, we will be prepared for that and having already realised it was a likely outcome, know that in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal… resulting in HAPPY people, rather than ANGRY people! [I totally made ‘happy’ high and pleasant sounding in my head, and ‘angry’ low and evil sounding in my head when I wrote those words – I hope you did the same thing when you read it, if not, go back and read it again].
Imagine this… You are walking into work and walk past a coffee shop and notice a cute guy serving. You tell yourself that you must have your morning coffee that very instant and so even though you have no idea how the coffee will be, you go in. It has nothing to do with the cute guy you noticed.
Scenario 1: You expect the coffee to be great, because it should be and anyone serving you coffee should know that you deserve nothing less than fantastic coffee. Cute guy hands you your coffee and you wink (or in my case cute guy now thinks I have Tourette’s) as you leave with your morning coffee. You take a sip. “What is this shit!” “This tastes like my beans were roasted in dog shit in a flaming house, full of pigs, because pigs stink, and so does this coffee!” Queue anger and frustration – “I hate the fucking world!”
Scenario 2: You hope the coffee will be great, but you realise that you are trying a new place and not everywhere makes good coffee, so you will be taking a bit of a risk. The risk is worth it because there is still a chance you will get good coffee and either way you can see the cute guy up close and work some magic. Cute guy hands you your coffee etc. “Grose. As it goes, this coffee is pretty bad.” You put your coffee in the bin and think, “Oh well, I will just get another one at the usual place and at least I was able to practice my sweet moves on the cute guy.” Queue getting on with life and still being happy – listen to new Brodinski song, Let the Beat Control Your Body, and bop your head away down the street.
I hope that helps clarify things for you. But now that you are on the same page, let me take you to the next one…
Seneca draws our attention to our ability as human beings to reason; it is reason that gives us the advantage to see what we can change and what we can’t. We may be unable to alter certain events but we’re always able to change our attitude towards them. Our ability to change our attitude equates to freedom by allowing us to not have to fight against something we can’t change anyway, and to be able to just go along with life, no matter what curve balls are thrown our way.
I personally don’t actually have a problem with anger. But what I do have a problem with is fear, and after a little session of thinking and philosophising (naturally with a glass of red wine and a cigarette after I had turned down socialising to be alone on my balcony) I decided that Seneca’s advice could equally be applied to situations involving fear, and not letting said fear ‘hold you back’. I’m a genius right!?
Well, as it goes [sorry for all the “as it goes” references, I’ve been watching too much Gavin and Stacey], my theory only worked for some fears and not others. And what I worked out is that I can group my fears under two different types, what I will creatively call Fear Types No.1 and Fear Types No.2.
Fear Types No.1 (FTN1): fear induced by a perceived threat to the safety of your physical body; basic survival mechanism type responses to specific stimuli. For example, fear of big fuck off Australian spiders, unnaturally legless and wretched snakes, and Chucky (the antagonist of the Child’s Play series and the world’s most evil villain ever).
Fear Types No.2 (FTN2): fear induced by a perceived threat to our emotional stability and/or ego. For example, fear of rejection by a crush or potential employer, being embarrassed for saying something stupid, and no one laughing at my really funny jokes.
Seneca’s advice works for FTN2, but not for FTN1. And not because I think people reading my blog must be stupid, let me give you a couple of examples to prove my point. I love examples.
Fear of rejection by a crush
In my last blog post I wrote about the cute waiter I gave my number to (yes, the one I ruined things with by telling him that I like crocodile jerky – but clearly I’m too cool for him). He was the first (and so far, only) guy I had ever handed my number out to. In the past, I was never able to make such confident driven actions, for fear that the whole thing would go down something like this… I walk up to a nice guy, give him my number and try and act all cute and shit, maybe say something funny to make him want more. He takes the coaster with my number, looks at it, looks at me, laughs and says, “I’m sorry, but are you serious?! See you later alligator.” (And I would be all sad, because clearly he likes alligators so would have probably been impressed by the fact that I like crocodile jerky. I should have written that down next to my number). Or simply that he takes the number and never calls back.
However, insert a little bit of Seneca into the situation and all of a sudden, handing out my number isn’t prevented by fear anymore! I tell myself, before I have given it out, what is the worst thing that can happen? [see above]. I then tell myself, “Well if that is the worst that can happen, can I handle that? YES – because you’re a strong mofo who gets on with life no matter what!” Therefore, I go into the situation prepared for rejection (which isn’t even that bad after all) because the reality is that I will very likely be rejected. But big woop! – There is nothing to lose! That is how I managed to hand out my number.
So basically, if you are prepared for the worst case scenario, and realise it isn’t actually the end of the world if worst case scenario happens anyway, then if in fact said worst case scenario happens, you will be OK, get on with life and try again next time. High five!
Fear of big fuck off Australian spiders
A couple of weeks ago, McBestie and I were at home putting our faces on and getting ready to go out for a night of partying. I can’t remember why, but I left the safe haven that was my bathroom and merrily skipped along to the beat of the music into the lounge room. What I saw to my left, only a few meters away was the following…
Yes that is a real spider and yes that is my lounge room in the background (OK, so maybe I just don’t want to poison my blog with a picture of a real spider)
The picture may be depicting a slightly larger spider to that of the one that was actually in my lounge room, but only slightly.
My body literally leapt sideways into the wall and I frantically ran towards McBestie’s room in a panic and informed her of our situation that was inevitably going to lead to impending doom. Either the spider was going to eat her guinea pigs, my rabbits, McBestie and myself (and since it would have been the spider that swallowed us, and not the other way around, swallowing a bird to swallow the spider would have done f’ all, hence we were going to die); or we were going to have to quickly grab a few precious items and get the hell out of there and let the spider become the new possessor of our awesome apartment (McBestie is also terrified of spiders – because she is a normal human being).
I rang a friend who I knew wasn’t scared of spiders (so must not be a normal human being) that I thought would be close by and asked her if she could come over and deal with the spider and save our lives. McI’mtoobusytoosaveyourlife wasn’t able to come over, but told me all I needed to do was grab a plastic container, put it over the spider, drag a lid underneath and then take the spider outside and free it.
That is where I tried to insert a bit of Seneca into the situation. I told myself, “OK, what is the worst thing that can happen – I will approach the spider and it will leap off the wall, onto my head and bite it off and I will die.” I tell myself, “Well, if that is the worst thing that can happen, THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY I AM GOING NEAR THAT SPIDER!” I try again, “What is the second worst thing that can happen – I will approach the spider and manage to put the container over it, the spider will move underneath, I will freak out and pass out, causing the container and the spider to fall on top of me and the spider will land on my boob and eat it off and I will have one boob for the rest of my life.” I tell myself, “THERE IS STILL NO FUCKING WAY I AM GOING NEAR THAT SPIDER!”
In the end, Seneca’s advice didn’t help me in that situation, but instead the random neighbour whose door we knocked on came over and saved the day.
No matter what, when your fear is totally justified and exists as a survival tool, preparing yourself for the worst will not help you overcome the fear, because the worst is DEATH!
So, no, I will not stop leaping from the toilet and charging out of the bathroom every time I flush, because there is no way in hell I am hanging around to be brutally murdered by Chucky when he climbs out of the toilet after being disturbed by my poo being flushed his way.
Sanity and Cigarettes 