Friday, October 24, 2025

Has it been unpacked yet? by Annette Weir

 




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.