A Disease Called Happiness

By Ken Silva

This is the first in a series about wellness. Individuals can eat well, sleep and exercise but if they hold anger; it will undue it and destroy them. Part of individual wellness is societal wellness and in this tumultuous year, we need to be reminded of societal wellness. The main intent of this first article is to invite prominent and vocal people of equal number both lefties and righties to spend an hour with each other over Zoom in early April. The idea is to gather and talk independent of politics. Details below.  

There is a story of a father who was working at home and he had a young boy to care for on this day. The dad would try to keep working to meet a deadline and the boy would innocently interrupt him as he was looking for something to do. The dad having a magazine with a picture of the world globe, thought he would cut up the picture into a puzzle and give it to his son to complete; hoping it would let him focus. The boy took the puzzle pieces and went off to make the globe picture like a puzzle. In a very surprising little amount of time the boy returned with the globe complete. Even for an older person with an education this would have taken longer, and the dad was surprised. The dad asked, “How did you do this so fast?”. The boy answered “It was easy. There is a picture of a couple of people on the other side and all I had to do is put the people together. The dad laughed and said “That’s right. If you can put people together; you can put the world together”.

If our society is a collection of people and based on the entirety of the individual’s collective wellness state; would you say we are well? This forum is about politics, but this article is about having opposites meet to “put the world together”. Today a door opens or closes. It is the beginning of a journey one way or the other. The conveyor belt of life continues undisturbed by our wants or needs and our time on this belt can feel short and filled with conflict or long and filled with experiences of love. When done, what is the mark of our legacy? Make no mistake, each one of us like Ebenezer Scrooge is right now building a legacy.

We are mired in a disease. Not the pandemic, but a disease of our own creation. If you are over focused on politics just be honest. Is there a better way to live? The intensity you experience is just a way the brain works. Intensity leads to a spiral in thinking about positions and that pushes people to extremes. This is how we get the extreme sides. You would NEVER start by taking an extreme, but it is the way the brain works, and it can be great as in creating self-altruistic behavior or destructive with creating intolerance and disdain. When has extremism ever worked? When has it destroyed people? Most of the time. Look at the political spectrum on a line from the center (moderates) moving to the far sides. Being closer to the end is being closer to the end. Extremism requires fervor and fervor demands control and capitulation.

We are NOT supposed to live this way. There is a connection between political fixation and reduced wellness. Knowledge is power and you should make the decision about what you are willing to pay. This is about inner peace. If you choose to focus on politics, there is none. It is a war of ignorance through self-deception demanding others buy your lie. It is the manifestation of being unwell.  

The ways of light bring us to love, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, non-judgement, humility, and wisdom. We need the honesty to know whether we are in light or do politics own us. Is everything filtered through politics? The ways of darkness make us contorted and grotesque (ever see a person in anger – your face shows your insides – frown lines and angry lines). They lead to judgement, comparison, need to control, manipulation, selfishness and all the destruction that goes with it. Since this is a wellness column, political ideology makes us intolerant which creates hate and hate is a poison which releases high levels of dangerous hormones. Above politics is the choice to make: health or ideology?

EVERY spiritual practice speaks of this, like the practitioners of Zen. Sengcan said “To set up what you like against what you dislike; this is the disease of the mind”. If this is radical thinking, then why? Another Zen saying is “A fixed mind is diseased”. Many people are so engrained in their behaviors that they are incapable of knowing the darkness they create (once more see Scrooge).

To judge people, put them in boxes and cast them out simply for politics is an expression of evil and darkness. Find examples of profound love and compare it to the practice of dividing people. One is the divine and the other the bestial. It is playing selective compassion. If a person can select who deserves compassion, then there is a problem. If you stir division by pitting people against each other then you are harming humanity and sewing your legacy in darkness. There are ZERO justifications based on political differences. The bill is coming.

Dehumanization is CENTRAL to evil against another. No regime or person anywhere can hurt a person they have humanized. In fact, a social scientist has said that the only way to hurt a person is if we categorize them as something so bad or insignificant, our conscience is clear to attack them without any reservation. This by the way is what narcissists do. Be very leery of labels. If you are human, then so are they.  Dehumanization is a component of a disorder and you can get it by being predisposed or by thinking and actions. Choose it but be aware. Do you generalize about millions being evil just because of politics? Do you find it impossible to not be that way? Do you change how you treat a person based on political party?

This political over-identification is not victimless. Who in our life has been cheated while we toil time fixating on political rants and closed-off thinking? Do we give our best moments to our kids or spouse or friends or are we consumed in a perpetual war? We can give our love away but instead; we fixate on conflict and division like we are hypnotized. Who wants to live with those who are wide-eyed political activists with needs to control and dominate? What does despising a neighbor because of a different political sign say about that person. Politics should be something we do by voting and then we go back to normal lives. Give the time we fixate on politics to good causes.

Be open to put down the political weapon used to hurt others and walk off the battlefield. Resign your post, retire and be a civilian again. Go home to give your light, your attention, and your life to people. You are living your legacy and politics is petty. You are living how you will be seen at the end of your days. Is it worth this for elevated blood pressure and shortened life? Maybe this happened but unlike Scrooge’s boss Marley; we can return to factory settings. Do we want to be like Scrooge on Christmas morning or the Scrooge who saw his life spent in the pursuit of the bestial?

The way out of this is NOT for one side to win but for each one of us to see ourselves actually choose what is good and filled with light. When more people step away or act in light, we can actually see the size of the sick who cause the problems. We are not as bad as they want us to believe. They need us to be at war to justify sick pursuits. The way out (unless this is a fixation) is not to destroy the other side but for the soldiers to realize that they were pulled into this without knowing, choose light and DECIDE what they will be: not who they were manipulated into becoming. Return to who you were before the war and live out your lives in the light. Do not waste your lives in this. With whatever time we have, we can’t get it back. Don’t waste it.

I welcome democrats and republicans who come here to join me for a conversation on Zoom where we can just be people. No pressure, no recorded meeting and absolutely no political shots. We can set a better example and have societal wellness. Simply send me an email at pleasehumanizeme@gmail.com Put people above politics, reduce the animosity and grow in better health and wellness. This is a Disease Called Happiness.      

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