Your Neighbor Didn’t Cause This Fiasco

 These little guys' minds are not poisoned yet, they
just want to be able to have their little space, and
they probably don't look for people to be mad at.
Whatever you do will affect their future and their world.

Anger is a perfectly natural emotion.  I say again, it’s not a good idea to deny your emotions.  The problem with anger is that it is often misdirected.  We all have things to be angry about – the life we were robbed of, the economic fiasco that we are all paying for, the person at work who is just not happy unless he or she is causing grief for others, the bullying driver who does something crappy to you in traffic, then flips YOU the bird, and many others.  If you ask me, we should be angry, but we should be angry at the right people, the right things.  There are people way up at the top of the food chain whose greed and lust for power has caused the worst depression in the history of the world – yes, of course most deny it, pretend it’s not as bad as it is, but if you just take a good, honest look around you, you’ll see how many people have lost their businesses, their jobs, their families, and you may read (when the media graces you with the information) about some who have lost their lives because of it.  There are people living with family members, friends, acquaintances, in hostels, and in doorways – not by any fault of their own.  We should be mad as hell about this.  BUT, we need to be angry at the people who caused this.  Your neighbor had nothing to do with any of this, the driver in the car in front of you – nothing to do with it, the woman in the grocery store who takes more than five seconds to decide which can of soup she wants to buy – nothing to do with it.  There are ways to deal with this anger, but one of the ways is not to go out and look for people to cause grief for.  Instead of being mad at the person upstairs whose 5 year old kid likes to run around, how about you call your congressperson, let them know you want some kind of regulation on how many franchises can be within a certain area (there are no laws to regulate this, but we need some).  Thing is, the huge corporations have squeezed out the mom and pop businesses, forcing all of us to work for minimum wage or slightly above, making it impossible to afford the cost of living.  While we struggle to stay afloat, with our miniscule paychecks buying less and less every day, these corporate monsters are profiting billions per year – at our expense.  There are other ways you can contribute to slowing down the mega corporations’ hurricane of taking your money.  You can make the extra effort to support the few small businesses that are in existence.  Yes, it takes some amount of effort, and you may think you’re paying more, but if you look at the big picture, you’re enabling these giants to put more true small businesses out of business, subsequently forcing more people, including yourself, to work for minimum wage.  In the days when small business was the backbone of America, the American people were doing well, the country was doing well.  I don’t want to spend a lot of space here explaining why, but basically, it’s math.  A small business owner would just be right there in his neighborhood, with no franchises, which means no extra money sent to a main corporate office, he not only made a good living for himself, but he created jobs for the people in that neighborhood, treated them with respect, and in turn, he had loyal customers who shopped at his store, ate at his restaurant – because they wanted to, not because it was the only game in town, or the most convenient, or because he saw endless TV ads all his life.  In high finance, there is always a “fee” taken out every time money changes hands, that money sits in foreign bank accounts and “investments”, which means that money is taken out of the economy.  SO, if you want to be mad at somebody be mad at those greedy parasites who have drained the economy so bad that people can’t even keep their homes – with more losing their homes every day; and please don’t buy into all those bogus statistics and news reports that give the illusion that our economy is getting better.  With all of this in mind (and this is only a tiny tip of the proverbial iceberg), we need to quit trying to cause grief for the people around us, and do whatever little we can to support small businesses, boycott mega corporations, and quit taking out our anger on people who had nothing to do with any of this.  Again, your next door neighbor didn’t have anything to do with you paying $60 - $150 to fill up your gas tank.  And, on that, prices are down right now, but have no fear, they only did that so that people would buy more gas guzzlers, then be strapped paying obscene amounts of money for gas by this time next year – which, by the way, you think you’re mad now, just wait till your already minimal paycheck buys even less by that time than it does now.

One of the traits of humans is that most will pick an easy target to fire at when we are angry or frustrated about something.  This is the thing we must learn not to do.  You would be amazed at the feeling you get when you are truly contributing to bettering the world – not necessarily people, but the world.  Instead of growling at the person in front of you in the checkout line, and slamming your groceries onto the counter, try giving that person some space, if they look back at you, try smiling or making a joke instead of snarling, again, you would be amazed.  It’s difficult at first, but just like anything else with the human mind, and the human body, once something is set in motion, it’s easier to keep moving in that direction (Newton’s law of motion).  If you’re used to tailgating any person in front of you in the street, it’s easy to keep doing that.  But, if you spend just a few outings keeping your distance, letting somebody in when they’re trying to get out of a driveway or road (providing you don’t have to slam on your brakes), again, amazed at how you’ll feel.  Of course, there will always be the angry driver who drives around with his eyes bugged out, vein popping out of his head, weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating, and whatever else, but when you see how ridiculous that person looks, tell yourself that that LAST thing you want to do is look like that.

One of the things I was fortunate enough to learn fairly young, was that when we don’t feel cheated, lied to, exploited, or bullied, we tend to feel strong, confident, and not so easily angered.  In today’s world, it’s difficult to arrive at that, but, if you know you’re contributing to bettering the world – using my earlier mentioned suggestions and ideas, you’ll know that you’re doing something good – and, you’ll know that you’re doing it because you want to, because it’s the right thing to do, and not because you fear punishment or vilification.  If the only reason you do anything good is because you fear eternally roasting in some horrible, fiery place, then you’re no better than the people causing all the grief.  Being motivated by wanting to do good, by wanting to make the world better, by not being politically correct, those things will bring you joy, peace, and confidence, and you’ll notice that when you cross paths with an angry person who needs so badly to try to make you feel as bad as he or she does, it will have little or no effect on you, and when you arrive at that, that’s 3/4s of the battle.

So, know that your neighbor is in the same boat as you, and that he didn’t cause any of the damage.  Try to do constructive things, call government officials, boycott any person, business, or organization that you see as damaging to humanity – and do the best you can while still living in reality – nobody expects you to be totally and completely free of all the evils of the world.  The thing is, one thing at a time, and every little bit helps.  Tell your friends, spread this message any way you can, some will have a tiny place to do it, others may have a much bigger platform – just do what you are capable of doing.  Try to also keep this in mind – you giving a nickel when you have five bucks in your pocket is worth a hell of a lot more than a billionaire throwing ten thousand bucks at something – or course, this is speaking figuratively, and applies all across the board.  For whatever reasons, doing small but constructive things, honest things, will come back to you in the form of experiencing joy and peace.  I don’t know why it works that way, it just does.  At first it will be in small, mostly unnoticeable ways, but when you keep at it, start to see progress, start to feel better about ourselves, we can make progress.  One thing for sure, what we’ve been doing up until now is not working.

And this ain’t the half of it :D .

You’re welcome to cut and paste from here, anything that applies to you.  As I said, not gonna get it by reading it just once.