Emotional
baggage has a host of pieces to it. If you travel and get on a plane, for
example, there will be a chance that you will see a person boarding with a
puppy, cat, or whatever other animal is permitted to give that person a sense
of comfort. However, when another passenger boarding has had a “few too
many” to support their comfort, that’s when they proceed to unpack that host of
emotional baggage that they’ve been carrying for so long, creating havoc for
everyone else. This is not to say that there aren’t people that need
emotional support, because I saw firsthand an example of how this works when
the district attorney in our town decided to use a German Shepherd that was
trained to comfort people in the courtroom, when a witness had to
testify. The results were overwhelmingly positive. So yes, there
are times when some comfort is necessary to keep things stress free.
The
recent videos of people breaking out in fights over dumb things like food while
on a cruise have led me to believe that these people were just looking for an
excuse to unpack their baggage of annoyances onto everyone else. We even
see it in restaurants, fast food places, car washes, and yes, on
flights. Then of course, there are the fights that break out in the
streets at night for no apparent reason other than one person who didn’t like
the way the other one looked at them. What is going on?
It
is my contention that, (aside from the feeling that much of this is
orchestrated), with the onset of social media there are people that hide behind
a screen in the dark of their basement typing away at anything they feel gives
them satisfaction, while they become emotional cripples maintaining a sense of
comfort in anonymity. We don’t speak to anyone face-to-face because we
have texting or emails to take care of that annoying chore. We don’t face
each other in restaurants because we need to check our “smart phones” – (an
interesting name for something that makes some of us numb) - and if we happen
to get into a confrontation with someone on the outside, we ignore them. After
all, they’ve encroached into our safe space. And of course, we have our phones
ready and waiting to video anything we deem as newsworthy as long as we’re not
the ones being videoed. Then there’s TikTok to highlight these actions
repeatedly like its pure entertainment. No wonder there are people
seeking some sort of emotional support.
We
are experiencing a new generation of people that are devoid of the ability to
control, or want to control, their emotions. Just look at the labels we
put on children in school whenever they act out. They’re labeled as
students that have emotional issues that can only be controlled by
medication. Once they’re off that med, well, then we must pay the price
for their erratic behavior repeatedly. This isn’t to say that there
aren’t children, and some adults, who don’t need help with medications, but it
sure seems like we’re seeing more of these behaviors that are uncontrollable
lately, making me wonder where it all started. We have become a society
that believes in the right to say and do what you want regardless of how it may
impact anyone else so that we can feel comfortable. In other words, we
have the right to unload our emotions regardless of who it may offend.
The
abuse of drugs has contributed to this world of emotional cripples whereby
anyone that feels down can always get something to make them feel up.
Then there are those people that don’t feel that work is necessary, therefore,
they live with their parents and do absolutely nothing to improve their lot in
life. Once they get out into the real world, they face what they find
uncomfortable and must find a way to cope. College campuses are loaded with
professional students who just go there to party and protest whatever flavor of
the week is available. Then, when they finish their “education,” they find
that the party atmosphere doesn’t succeed in a mature work environment. That’s
when they seek some form of special accommodation, or safe spaces at work to
make them feel secure and help with their emotions.
Of course, there will always be generations that claim that they were living in much tougher times than we are. Thinking back to the 20’s, when the gangs were picking each other off to gain turf and push their booze, it seemed like that time would have been considered the worst to live in and the only way to control your emotions was to keep it to yourself. When you go on to the 30’s and the depression, - talk about emotional struggles at that time of poverty - and you see a generation of people that were devastated with their losses, and nowhere to turn for comfort. As we moved on to the 40’s we were in a war where some of our troops came home with what we call PTSD today, and bodily injuries that made them unable to function properly, making their situations extremely stressful without any place to go for assistance.
This led to many of them taking their lives with suicide. The 50’s brought
about race issues that were difficult to even imagine today, and it left the
country with mixed emotions about what they were experiencing at that time.
What was acceptable at that time showed the ugliness of our society, and one
can only imagine how black people dealt with their emotions. The 60’s started
to mess up the minds of people to the extreme. Those were the days of
living your life the way you wanted, doing LSD and getting high, while abandoning
right and wrong as long as it made you feel good.
I
think the 70’s on up have seen many changes too; some for the better, and some
not so hot. We began to see the rise of the BLM movement that was
promoted by a former president, fanning the flames of hatred. From
there things started to explode and we saw more and more people toss out their
emotional baggage on the rest of society, trying to make us all feel
responsible for their lack of control, or willingness to do something
constructive, other than rioting and burning down cities.
With
the constant protests against law and order coming to various cities, it seems
like the people that were comfortable with the chaos will always find a way to
try and infect the rest of the population. After all, many of them are getting
paid to be disruptive.
Humans will always have to deal
with stressful situations, that’s just a fact of life; however, how we manage
our emotional baggage, either through thoughtful prayers asking for guidance,
helping others without thinking about our own plight, or finding productive
ways of channeling our thoughts, we will soon discover that it’s far better to
be on the positive track, than to go negative.