Easing The Pressure In The Perfect World

essay

Jay Leno has a feature on the Tonight Show called Jaywalking where he interviews people on the street and asks them easy questions, hoping for the wrong answer. I have to admit, when people don't even know the name of their sitting vice-president it's a little funny, and even funnier when they THINK they do... but are hysterically wrong!

I bring it up because I went on a little walking tour myself recently, to try and get a feel for what is stressing out people in America, or at least in my little corner of it. I started off from my apartment and spoke to the first person I came to, an elderly latina woman.

"Hola, senora! Como estas?" I began.

She was less than impressed. "Hey, why you tink I speak Spanish? I'm 1/16 Cherokee on my padre's side; and Ecuadorian, Costa Rican and Mexican en mi madre's!"

That made no sense but I continued, "Oh, sorry! I have a question. What makes you stressed?"

She glared at me. "YOU, ese! Now move, puta, before I stick you." And off she went. Boy, she was adorable! But I could tell I was going to have to try another location-- grandmamita was already assembling her grandson's cholo troops for a frontal assault on my position.

My home area being a little TOO confrontational, I thought I'd try somewhere else. So I moved somewhere a bit less territorial-- the mall. And I picked up a bottle of perfume to disguise myself as one of those department store samplers. I try again, this time with a young man. "Chanel Number 5?"

"That's a woman's perfume, you dumbass!"

"Oops, sorry! I have a question... what makes you stressed?"

"You do! Now get out of my way." Off he went. This was getting nowhere. I tried a woman. "Chanel Number 5?"

"What, you want me to smell like my grandmother's grandmother? That stuff is ancient."

"What, besides me, stresses you out?"

"Salesmen... like you." She hurried past and bumped into me, and I dropped the sampler, which splashed all over me. I left the confines of Nordstroms and tried walking the mall proper.

"Hi, what stresses you out?" I asked a man holding a lady's purse.

"Shopping," he growled, "and you smell like a lunch lady." Okay, that's one. I tried another.

"What stresses you out?" "Prices." Now I'm getting somewhere! "What makes you stressed?"

"The economy."

"Gang violence."

"Yeah, me too," I responded, as I thought back to my earlier interview, trembling. I kept asking people. "What is irritating to you?"

"The war."

"My tattooed freak of a boyfriend."

"Republicans."

"Thongs. Especially the one I'm wearing right now." Oh! Too much information, sir! I slinked away, with a sideways glance. I printed up a sign that said, "What bothers you in the world today?" and stood by it, pencil in hand. Now people were coming up to me!

"Loss of freedom."

"Rising prices."

"My daughter's Clockwork Orange boyfriend."

"Paperwork."

"Taxes."

"Parking. And meters. And meter readers. And cops in general. And judges. And lawyers."

"The lying media."

I asked a guy who was mostly tattoos and eye makeup. "My girlfriend and her judgmental mother." Oh, it was him!

"The loss of intelligent thought."

"Democrats."

"Fast food."

Whew! The answers kept shooting at me, and my pencil was getting dull. I stopped in a Circuit City (oops.. I meant a Good Guys... oops... I meant a Mom and Pop electronics store... damn this economy) and picked up a digital recorder. "What disturbs you?"

"Divorce."

"Marriage."

"Sexual inadequacy." All three answers were from the same guy (!)...

"The pressure placed upon people for gift giving."

"Housing prices."

"The scam of insurance."

"Hospitals."

"Guys with nose rings or ear loops." (Me too!)

"Superstars."

"Doctors thinking they're gods."

"DMV workers thinking they're gods." And the list went on...

Late charges. Deadlines. Bouncers. Foreign cab drivers who don't know their way around. 'Choosy' doormen at clubs. Snotty minimum wage clerks. Expiration dates on salt. Finance charges. Required donations. Private streets. Gated communities. Foreign laws. Crooks. Killers. Bullies. Beautiful people who know it. The fucking rich...

There were more but I'll stop here. It's a pretty good-sized list, even if I cross myself off as a stress inducer-- I may have only mentioned it twice, but believe me, EVERYONE thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever thought up. Maybe it was true, sad to say.

Okay, so we now know without doubt this world is replete with stress-inducing factors. How will the Perfect World be any better? How can we flip our mindsets to feel calm instead?

Well, how do people do it now? I haven't mentioned until now, but a fair number of people I interviewed had a smile on their face and couldn't think of a single thing which stressed them out! By a fair number I mean under 10%... but it's a start. What goes on in their heads that nothing in this hardscrabble world bothers them? Curious? I sure was!

"Nothing bothers you? NOTHING?"

"No, not really."

"Not even annoying guys like me coming up to you and pressing your life for details?"

"No. I came up to you, remember?"

"Oh, right."

"I saw your sign and felt compelled to let you know that not everyone thinks life is a series of stress points."

"That's great! Now... why? How? What is in your life that ameliorates the negative?"

I had this conversation (or one like it) with quite a few people, and I have to say that I got a number of answers which surprised me. I really had come to expect all these unstressed, happy people to say 'God'. Well, there were plenty of those, don't get me wrong. They believed that when they gave their life over to god that it was now out of their hands, and anything which happened to them (for better or for worse) was god's will, with a purpose which was too great for them to comprehend. It was their specific choice to not try to understand, but rather simply to accept all the situations, negative or positive, as the hand of god moving in mysterious ways, with their lot in life to simply watch and learn and wait for their turn.

Wow.

This post will not be about those people. But in the future there will be an entire post (or more) dedicated to them. I don't have a title for it yet, but the word 'sheep' is banging about... or 'blindered', 'closed-minded', 'simplistic', 'brainwashed' or 'subservient'. You can already imagine the slant.

No, the first impressive answer I heard from those non-religious positive folks was 'Shit happens'. Why 'impressive', you ask? You think it sounds more like those people were just oversimplifying matters and handing their fate over to fate?

It is acceptance, that's true, but it is not of a religious kind. Those people came to understand that we are all here by chance, that our very coming into being itself was just 'shit happening'. They understood that although our knowledge is impressive and our curiosity is vast, the universe itself is so much more than we are as yet capable of understanding. They were comfortable with the knowledge that the human race is an infinitely small cog in an infinitely large machine. And like a machine, it runs completely oblivious to its own outcome, uncaring whether its actions may lead to its own demise.

In other words, these people have realized and acquiesced to their own powerlessness in the turning of the machine. They have come to know that their own place in this immense universe is of no consequence, and with this freeing knowledge can go about their lives with one purpose... intentionally making themselves happy. And in doing so, they realize that happiness cannot exist without sorrow-- one needs the other to exist. The feeling of sorrow makes the feeling of happiness that much sweeter, and what do humans have if not the ability to feel strong emotion?

On the opposite side were the people who answered "It doesn't matter... nothing matters at all. We're all just coasting to death, anyway. Regardless of what we learn or try, the end is as inevitable as sunrise-- we will all be dead. DEAD."

Well, I analyzed what those poor folk were going on about (after I had myself a good cry) and I think I understood. People who answered that way were focussing one one single point in their lives... the last moment. They were completely ignoring the full sum of their time on this green gem and setting their life's existence on one single fact... at some point the ride will be over.

I believe those people had never learned the truth of life, a secret I will share with you right now, because it's not my way to make you wait. Here it comes:

It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Or, it's not where you're going, it's how you get there.

If it's true that life is one long ride, wouldn't it make sense to savor every dizzying drop, every tantalizing turn, every unexpected twist?

So if a person's full existence were a roller coaster ride, WHO would enter the ride depressed because they know, with certainty, that at some point the excitement will end?

A pessimist, that's who. A pessimist looks at a glass of orange juice with an eyedropper of juice removed, and complains about the missing juice. Glass half empty, PAH! The extreme pessimist complains that his glass is the wrong shape, a bad color and in a terrible location.

Pessimists are complainers.

Complainers are unsatisfied.

Satisfaction fits wrong on a pessimist-- like a dog wearing a bra. Bizarre.

Okay, maybe not THAT bizarre, fella... calm down.

So how is the Perfect World going to ease the pressure and fear? In a series of steps:

We start by listing ALL the negative aspects of current society and interaction.

We analyze them to determine their source.

We carefully restructure society in small steps to gradually eliminate the source pressure.

At some soft date in the future, probably between 100 and 200 years, we will have weeded out most negative aspects of living and along with it, most of the negative situations and emotions.

It would be unrealistic to believe we could eliminate it ALL. There will always be circumstances beyond our control which would inspire negative reactions. The enormous difference is that because we will approach life from a completely different mindset, we will come to accept the inevitable, and even at some point, find positives amidst the negatives.

In the science fiction book Stranger In A Strange Land, Valentine Michael Smith taught that lesson. He was a human who was raised from infancy on Mars by Old Ones, the non-corporeal inhabitants of that planet. He was found as a young man during another human expedition and brought back to Earth, where over time his odd beliefs caught on and he began a religion wherein he taught people to lose their fear-- of pain, of illness, of death... and even of love and closeness. He accomplished that daunting task by revealing that death was not the end for humans, because death did not take the spirit. The spirit, he claimed, continues eternally, experiencing and influencing life as before, but in an angelic, benevolent manner. It was a pivotal statement in that book which changed everything for the humans of planet Earth.

I cannot make the same assertion, nor would I; and although it was admittedly a very powerful claim which made all the difference in Heinlein's jarring novel, I insist that we need to take our cues from the best of us humans, not try to create a mythical perfect race of angels in order to expand our influence in the world. In other words, I believe we can get there following the examples that have been laid out by the best among us.

Humorously, my own attempt to glean information was itself, an ironic effort. If I'm trying to better the world, how does it help if I ask people what is wrong with it? Talk about glass half empty! If I had truly embraced Perfect World Theory, I would be asking what is good with the world, what makes people happy!

Oops! Well, that just means we all have a long path to travel before we become those better humans.

However, in reviewing the many complaints I did receive, it seems most misery stems from people feeling they are living their life in irons, like a prisoner on a pirate ship. People feel trapped; trapped in socioeconomic conditions, trapped in state-sponsored partnerships, trapped in the rat race of their lives which forces them to continue down an immensely unsatisfying path, the only other choice being to leave and risk losing it all.

We obviously admire those people who have taken the risk-- there are hundreds of televised stories in which individuals who are sick of the rat race say "I am DONE!' and chuck it, looking for the better life. In those programs they always seem to achieve their goal, although they usually have to suffer and fight and defeat plenty of hardship along the way. And in a way, we admire that, too.

But we have better solutions available to us here in the Age of Information. We have the resources to feed every person, and to house them. Nobody should ever be homeless or hungry. Nobody should fear becoming sick or injured either. Nobody should be lording their positions of seniority over anyone else, nor pushing employees to work hard or else be fired. And nobody should have to spend a lifetime learning a career just to have it taken away because they made a mistake.

Today's society is designed for the people who do everything right. Where it falls short is in its treatment of the large majority with less. Less money, less education and less health means you are invisible to, or even a scourge of, society. Break a single law and you might as well tattoo the crime onto your forehead, because you are ostracized for life. The entire concept of dehumanizing large sections of population must end quickly, before the damage to society becomes irrevocable.

We are only as good as our treatment of the LEAST of us.

That's where it starts. But we can only be better people when we show respect and decency to every soul, at every juncture. And our huge corportations must change their core values:

They must stop fleecing the citizenry. Their goal must be people first, profit second. They must limit their top income. They need to remember humility.

And many individual concepts fuel the change:

Spread decency. See the good in things. Brush it off. Pay it forward. Be the better you. Do unto others. Welcome strangers. Take the leap of trust. Turn your cheek. Assume the best. Person up. Start with a smile. Meet someone daily.

Be an angel.

Copyright 2009 Bruce Ian Friedman