Strength

Strength By Alex Roumanidakis What is mental strength? In my short life I’ve found two basic opinions on the true meaning of a strong mind. One party of thought will say it is to endure. The ability to walk on hot coals embodies strength; keeping oneself from weeping openly can be seen as strength. The other party of thought, and the one I belong to, believes a strong mind exists not in endurance, but in acceptance. In this sense, refraining from crying is not an act of strength at all, while focusing on solving the issue that created the crying is that of a strong mind. In my eyes, mental pain and emotional pain draw a parallel. If one keeps physical pain from affecting a decision, one will not live very long. In the same respect, allowing emotional stimuli to come and go without the proper response will invariably lead to someone with a decaying mind. However, as much as it can be seen that truly happy and strong people are those that follow the latter mantra, cultures are usually the leading influence in the choice of a philosophy. Consider that the following are also stereotypes of the average denizens of an American-like culture. From birth, humans are struck with stereotypes. A man is supposed to be tough, strong, and non-emotional. Men act based on calculation, they consider what is effective, they are undeterred by their emotions, or those around them. If a boy cries, his father tells him that men don’t cry, to toughen up. Young boys look up to loner figures; they see people who apparently lack emotion as a hero. They strive to be looked up to in this sense. This causes men to be more emotionally distant. It causes a majority of the former and emotionally harmful philosophy. Girls, from birth, are hit with stereotypes such as gentle, delicate, beautiful. A woman is taught to feel. They are much more capable of happiness due to the violent nature of their emotion. When a woman feels sad, she feels a much higher intensity emotion than a man allows himself to, but when happy, the emotion is also more intense. Women are usually more emotionally intune. The majority follow the latter ideology. All humans are born emotionally equal, give or take a few hormones. It is societal demands which push us in one or the other direction. Humanity makes a fatal, almost non-detectable, and of course, irreversible flaw. Not only are we largely unaware of this occurring. We are unaware that the unconscious aims of society do not produce men with full emotional levels, and we produce women with heightened emotional levels. The grave problem with this is the extremes these ideologies can be taken to, due to excessive pride in a self image, and usually, is found in the sex opposite of the ideology. Identity itself can be the foundations of an unhealthy emotional life. A strong personal identity deep rooted to the extremes of these concepts can mean the destruction of any emotional thought emanating from the person. The thought then becomes more difficult to reverse as the belief is held for larger periods of time. A curious thing about identity is it is steadfastly held to, regardless of the logic behind it. The reason is identity establishes one as unique in their own mind, regardless of how little it does to separate them. An example which comes to mind is that of the Goth trend in adolescents.

Goth children dress in black clothing, wear cosmetics, pierce body parts, and act with a defiant attitude in order to be seen as, and to feel unique. They do this to fight conformity as a whole. The ironic thing is, there is a large group of kids who hold the same concept, who dress the same way, and act the same way, who are aware of each other, aware of the similarities. They aware they are not a unique identity, yet they cling to this identity, both because it makes them feel unique, and because it makes them feel part of a whole. However, there are few, if any, fully grown people who clique together, or seek an eccentric group in order to find a sense of self. This is for three concrete reasons. They have learned there is no identity within a group. Being a mindless fledgling does not make an identity. Second, they have found a sense of identity. This of course means that a sense of identity is almost inevitable, since there are few adults who are found within clique like groupings. Third, they have learned the hard way that people simply do not care. This can be inferred simply by looking at your own conscious thought. Everyday, all day, you want to be seen as something by somebody. You believe they think this way about you. You believe you know this. But it only takes a measurement of one’s own perception to realize something shocking. You do not care about the identity of those around you, except for a small minority of close friends and relatives. You don’t know the identity of most people, you honestly don’t care, and chances are, there are people who believe you do care, just as you believe there are people who care about your identity. Once you realize that the only people who care about your identity are those close enough to you to love you regardless of who you are or want to be, identity will be established. I’d like to give another example, one which I’ve been pondering for a while, and is infinitely complex. For the sake of argument there is a young girl of 18, her name is Betty. Betty places her identity in a group, the name of this group is unimportant, but let’s call them “The Abstainers”. The core belief of The Abstainers is to abstain from recreational, as well as minor pain relieving drugs. Betty is a perceptive girl. She spends a lot of time pondering her identity, she is not quite sure who she is, or who she wants to be. She has placed a considerable amount of her pondering on identity on this group’s facets, and, after much talk with her friend Ernie, who also believes in these concepts. She comes to a new conclusion based on the concept of The Abstainers. Already she denies the use of recreational drugs. This is positive; she knows this is a good thing, so she unquestioningly accepts the rest of the mantra. She also refuses painkillers. Betty has a kidney disease, which causes horrible stabs of pain on a regular basis. She still refuses to use the drugs, even though it is for their intended purpose. Betty, partially due to her own musing on the concepts, partly due to Ernie’s discussions with her, makes a link between physical and emotional pain. She sees that she can overcome physical pain through endurance, so why not emotional pain? They run many parallels, so treatment of emotional pain must fall in line with her ideals. So, like a needle piercing her arm, causing her to attempt to blot out all sensory perception. A wave of sorrow is dealt with by numbing all emotions. However, emotions, unlike one’s physical pain, and instill emotional pain in others.

Let’s assume Betty goes through a rather traumatic time, she closes herself off completely. Her close friends, who have known her for a long time, accept her choice of numbing herself unquestioningly. However, she also has many other friends whom she does not talk to for long periods due to this. When questioned on what’s causing this change, she either offers no answer, or offers a vague and annoyed sounding response (However, it only sounds annoyed, she is not feeling anything), and in this manner, she alienates most of her looser acquaintances. So, she becomes isolated, which further fuels the bad times, but she still refuses to feel. Her boyfriend, with a vague understanding of this reflex attempts to help, but sees absolutely no improvement in her attitude. He sticks with her, due to his love, devotion, and the hope that things will improve. But things do not improve; they do not improve for a long time. The boyfriend, we’ll call him Alan, grows depressed. He feels a combination of horrid emotions, helplessness towards her situation, a sorrow due to her unhappiness, and, a lack of affection and love, due to her current inability to feel. Eventually, after it has grown obvious that things will not improve before his optimistic mental state collapses, many months after the start of the trauma. Alan leaves Betty, stating that he will return once she is able to be in a relationship. She remains numb, but is heartbroken underneath. Eventually, she will give; she lets flow all the emotion she has held in. She has effectively hurt everyone around her to withhold her image of strength. Out of everyone, she has hurt herself the worst, she has removed part of what makes her human, and continues to feel a dim beat of emotional pain in her heart, even when all returns the way it was once she has regained emotion, she has negatively effected everyone by dealing with her trauma the way she did. Betty will one day become miserable to the core, it isn’t a question of how, it’s a question of when. This is due to a simple fact of emotion. You need the bad for the good. The bad emotions act as a reference point for the good, just as the good acts like a reference point for the bad. So, if we remove all bad emotion, good emotion splits into good and bad so there are reference points. Content becomes Miserable, and Ecstatic becomes Content. This theory can be seen in action in spoiled child millionaires, who have no bad emotions to reflect on, and therefore set levels of their positive emotions. When they receive a car, they are disappointed by the fact it isn’t the color they originally wanted. Since they are used to a high level of happiness, they grow miserable because of a small and unperceivable negativity. Bad emotions ground us in reality, while good emotions bring about motivation and happiness. This is where bottling up an emotion comes into play. By not admitting a feeling, and by holding it in, you are effectively causing your mind to decay. Bottling an emotion up does not remove it. The emotion is trapped within and stagnates. It becomes insoluble, and malignantly refuses positives to enter the mind. However, by venting an emotion out at healthy intervals, and never shutting down the need to feel, tension is relieved in the body. The emotion diminishes and eventually vanishes, and while at its worst, nothing can be seen as good, as time goes on, and as the negatives decay, the good will slowly shine through and help remove the negative emotion. Thus not only making a time of depression shorter, but effectively reducing the straining effects it has on everyday life, and the damage on others.

If Betty went about this entire situation once again, and with a healthy mentality towards her emotions. The results would be much different. Her close friends would invariably accept her choice of how to deal with her emotions, and stick with her. She would not see explaining her situation when asked to lesser friends as weakness, and in return, would receive their comfort, without them seeing any weakness in seeking help from friends. She would be just as upset, but happiness could still exist if it presented itself. Her boyfriend would attempt to comfort her, and achieve either a small amount of success, or a failure met with an affectionate gratitude. She would treat those who caused the trauma with the contempt they deserved, but would continue to treat her friends as though the situation had no effect on them. Though she would be harder to please, and at times emotional, she would be capable of putting the situation into perspective, and continue to treat those around her with very similar attitudes as she did before. The emotional trauma would cease in a shorter period, she would not have damaged any of her relationships unrelated to the trauma, and would emerge a happy person. In conclusion, I’d like to end my empirical discussion (I wouldn’t end my conclusion with “in conclusion” if my point was to be essay-like in the end). Becca, I am not an idiot. I am not blind to reality. And neither are you, I don’t date idiots. You know this is hurting you, you know this isn’t good for you. You also know this is killing me and probably countless others inside to see you killing yourself like this. An optimist does not refuse to see the bad, an optimist transcends the bad. The optimist feels it, knows it, and expects it. But the optimist knows that by blotting it out, bottling it up, and refusing to admit it exists will hurt him in the end. An optimist feels bad feelings, but with a constant feeling good things will come, regardless if they are visible now. Realize something, whoever it is who put this value of emotional “strength” in your head, whoever it is who you believe will even acknowledge your efforts to numb your mind, realize they will not be disappointed in you if you decide you’d rather be happy than a strong person who walks alone. If it is you who believes this is the proper way of doing this, that this somehow will make you happier in the end, wake up a bit. Keeping this up will push people out of your life. You’re hurting those around you by doing this, whether you admit to it or not. The reason I’m so hurt isn’t because you’re upset, or you’re not paying attention to me, it is entirely in the fact that you have not felt anything in several weeks. If you were upset in the correct sense of the word, this wouldn’t be hurting anyone. If you were depressed around me instead of bottling up your feelings and being generally a depressingly emotionless person, it wouldn’t upset me like this. I’d be upset of course, I’d try my best to help, and I’d give you as much time alone as you needed. It’s the fact you can throw any emotions, no matter how passionate, completely out of your head. Because if you can do that, and you can throw your sadness out so easily, but along with it, you throw out all your positive emotions, including your love for me. It feels as though you are completely incapable of caring about anyone around you, and that’s the reason I’m upset. Because if you are capable of throwing all emotions out of your mind, than you don’t love me. Becca, I don’t plan to leave you, I don’t believe you don’t love me or those around you, I don’t plan to try to extort you to think in a healthy way. I just want you to listen to everything I just said to you, I want you to just try to find it in yourself to push out this horrendous mentality. You do care about those around you, you do care about a lot. And I believe in you, I believe you can find that your identity doesn’t depend

on eccentricities such as these, that your identity not only has been there all along, but it is much more unique than most of those around you. You’re going through a hard time; this gives you no right to treat everyone around you like crap because two people dealt with a problem the wrong way. There’s no logic to that concept. No one is denying how hard it is for you, no one is saying you deserve this, and no one is saying they are angry with you, or that they blame you for how you’ve been acting. But that doesn’t mean you should act in this way. You’re literally chopping your support pillars down one by one. Emotion is beautiful Becca, everything about it. The sorrow inspires beauty which brings happiness to others. If all emotion is dealt with properly, it causes nothing but happiness. But almost no emotion is properly dealt with in our world, and almost no one is happy. Venting an emotion makes one feel alive, while dwelling on it makes one feel dead. I love you babe, I always will, your friends always will, your family always will. I can survive the emotional pain, but what I can’t survive is seeing you hurt yourself so badly, and so permanently. Things will get better, but only if you can open your heart to feel. If you don’t open your heart to everything there is to feel, I can’t promise you’ll ever feel better, you’re at the mercy of the world, and if it decides to keep you down for 5 years of your life, you won’t get up until that 5 years has past.