It is interesting to me that we focus so much of our energies on pushing and striving beyond our physical limitations as a means of achieving superficial perfection, and yet neglect the same sort of rigorous training for our emotional states.
We can run marathons, bench press hundreds of pounds of weights, claw our way through obstacle courses, go without sleep, water, and food. We want the perfect body, the best resume, and the flawless transcript. We want to have the most friends, the funniest jokes, and the coolest toys. We read more books than you; we put in more hours at work and the gym than you; we are well traveled; we are intelligent and analytical; we are perfect.
Yet, when it comes time to let go of someone we care about, we falter. We cling to things already gone. We devise clever excuses for our actions, especially those that indulge us in our self-centered desire for rotting stasis and soothe our burning fear of change.
When things don’t go our way, we shut down. We avoid processing our failures and tell ourselves and others we’ve moved forward. We cite our sporadic changes in behavior and claim them as little victories of progress, ignoring our failure to consider the value of our aims. What progress is it to venture randomly into the black darkness without first having illuminated fully a cause to light the way? Even directed hard work is no virtue when the direction of our endeavors points over a cliff.
We have fostered a culture of unreflectiveness. Whenever we are pushed to the brink of self-confrontation, we grasp hold of whatever is nearest and haphazardly barricade ourselves beneath our self-made rubble of possessions. When our failings persist in leaking through the cracks in our ill-assembled fortresses, we become enraged at the steady drip of our darkest suspicions that it has been nearly a lifetime and we perhaps have made no progress at all. We push these fears aside, label them as self-doubt and then treat that label as though it says “these fears are invalid.” We say that we’ve dammed the leak and again we push forward, this time with the weight of our wreckage surrounding us in feeble protective cover. But the leak persists because our doubts are founded and our dams assembled from misshapen superficiality and excuses; because inside, we know that we can’t bar the ocean’s entrance with a sieve.
These are only a few of what seem to be a rather prominent and pervasive group of symptoms evidencing the state human emotional anemia.
People, it seems, are severely obsessed with the material. We view our expenditures and our gains in this form. This is a fool’s gamble. It is only the immaterial things that we carry with us, everywhere we go. Not only is this view short-sighted and foolish, but it is also disingenuous in its assessment in its valuation of our humanity. If human life is valued only insomuch as it may manifest its efforts in the concrete, then we are little better than elaborate machines infected with a corrosive dose of self-importance.
If this is really the foundation upon which our value is built, then our strength is artificial, our progresses an illusion, and we are a far weaker people than I had hoped.
