April 6, 2010

The Velocity of Emotion

I was annoyed. Then irritated. Then angry. Then furious. All in a matter of 15 seconds. I couldn't help myself because I let my button to be pressed.
It was something about accidentally deleting contacts from an email contacts list. I was interrupted in the middle of a phone conversation to help out with that. The screen clearly said "You have no deleted contacts." The button above said "Contacts" where a normal person would click and find contacts, and the "You have no deleted contacts" doesn't mean that all your contacts have been erased.
I asked my mother to tell me what the screen said. She said "So?" I asked her again, what does the screen say. "I know." Can you please tell me what the screen says? "I'm not a stupid puppet to answer this." My point was to have her read the screen and understand that the answer was right there. She never tries to understand what's written in front of her face, no attempts to explore and figure out.
I left the computer, telling her I was upset because she never answered any questions straightforwardly. Never. She has "So?" "I understand," "I already know," "What's your point?" and such replies in her arsenal. No respect for my request to get the answer. Forget it. How can you ask for respect if you don't give it? I kept speaking but she wouldn't listen. She didn't care to hear me. All that mattered was her being right and getting her point across.
I went to bed with such fury that the tears couldn't restrain themselves. I was ready to blow up an entire house. Destroy everything that my eyes touched.
After a minute or two, I reminded myself that staying in such rage actually harmed me. Just recently I spoke about positive thinking and awareness of our negative, irrational thinking. I wondered if it was possible to make myself feel better and how long it would take.
Her opinion has nothing to do with my life. Her being whatever she was has nothing to do with my life. My reactions to her stupidity is my own fabrication. I'm allowing her to affect my life the way she does. In essence, it doesn't even matter. The fact that she's the most important person in my life doesn't mean that I should merge my soul with hers and let all of her go through me.
I noticed that trying to step aside and observe my rage did calm me down a bit. But just a bit. Emotions have their own velocity. With clear mind we can affect that velocity but we can't cancel it. Time is a prerequisite.
If I didn't take effort, I would contribute much more negativity and toxicity into the atmosphere and my own body. But it takes time to deliberately lead emotions where you want them to go.

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