F*ck Feelings (19 page)

The due diligence list for checking out uplifting opportunities isn't endless or complicated, but it does make it hard to maintain your enthusiasm and virtuous feelings if it leads you to discover that many programs don't measure up or will cost you too much. When it comes to giving, it pays to give a shit about the details.

Being a good person doesn't mean you have to be charitable as an occupation or lifestyle. Being a good person means doing right by friends and family and working hard and honestly to support yourself. If you can keep those standards in mind while also trying to do good in the larger world, you'll come up with rules for giving that allow you to do some beneficial things without becoming a jerk to those who know you, or even those who do your shit work.

Here's what you wish for and can't have:

• Enough resources to prevent a deserving group from being deprived of benefits you happened to give another group

• Advance assurance that people won't misuse what you've given them

• Confidence that giving to people from a much less-affluent culture won't cause envy or otherwise hurt that culture

• Assurance that you won't give or receive undesirable new bacteria

Here's what you can aim for and actually achieve:

• Prevent harmful or ineffective giving by doing a thorough assessment

• Avoid repeating previous, unsuccessful attempts to help

• Make a huge difference to a large number of people

• Learn how to maximize your impact without wasting resources

• Minimize harm and unintended consequences

Here's how you can do it:

• Decide what's needed most

• Identify those who don't have it and can't get it

• Define an amount that's necessary and enough, rather than what's best

• Maximize the number who get it

• Measure the bang per buck

• Look for unintended harm

Here's what to say when you or a loved one wishes to donate services to reduce human misery.

Dear [Self/Spouse/Desperate Beggar/Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free],

I am willing to sacrifice [lots of time/money/my DVD collection] to making the world a better place, but I won't be satisfied by intense gratitude from a small group of people who maybe [didn't need my or your help in the first place/deserve help but offer repayment in the form of rare amoebae/weren't worth losing a marriage or bank account or foot over]. I will take time to assess need and will not be distracted by [loud begging/sob stories/disheveled appearances]. I will learn how to ration resources, assess impact, and take pride in providing what's necessary and otherwise unavailable to the greatest number for the least negative impact.

The wish to help others is a powerful motivator and source of self-esteem that can be realized on many different levels of human interaction, from helping a relative be happy to ending conflict between those we love to improving the world. At each level, the desire to help can easily backfire if what we wish isn't realistic and if we don't think carefully about risks and consequences. If you accept the fact that helping others is sometimes impossible, you'll become more helpful, even if the most helpful thing you let yourself do, at times, is nothing. True helpfulness often isn't satisfying, but if you've taken the time to evaluate what you're doing, and your values put a higher premium on being helpful than feeling helpful, then you have a right to feel you're living up to your ideals and doing the correct thing.

For those not in the medical field, knowledge of what's good and bad for our health can usually be found in the center of a Venn diagram involving “factual scientific knowledge,” “pop culture,” and “total bullshit.” That's where you'll find such statements as “kale is God's personal salad,” “deodorant gives you Alzheimer's (or something),” and in bold letters “stress KILLS.”

Therefore, many people feel they should be able to reduce or eliminate stress, along with anger and fear, and achieve more serenity in their lives, both as an end in itself and to promote physical and mental wellness. They regard anger and fear as feelings that can be cleansed through meditation, or the practice of peaceful, giving philosophies, or sweaty yoga, or drinking vegetables, etc.

Unfortunately, like all of life's unpleasantries, stress, fear, and anger are unavoidable, at least sometimes. In some ways, they're beneficial—fear and aggression are basic primal defenses—but whether stress is a force for good or bad in your life, or even both, trying to do
away with it is futile, harmful, and a way to set yourself against your basic nature.

If you really want to dedicate yourself to a serene existence, then accept a life absorbed in therapeutic and religious exercises while you either succeed in self-lobotomy or feel like a failure because you can't. The model of such laid-back living is probably Jeffery “The Dude” Lebowski, the fictional character from the Coen brothers' 1998 film, whose keys to a carefree lifestyle appear to be lots of weed, no self-awareness, and not bathing with marmots.

Certainly, you can and should avoid stress if you're not also avoiding your responsibilities; it's good to avoid conflict when you can and hang out with people you get along with, rather than with those who set you on edge. We assume, however, that there are lots of conflicts and relationships that life dumps on you (or in your bathtub) without giving you a choice. Likewise, your temperament dumps feelings on you, like anger and anxiety, without asking your permission or necessarily responding to meditation, exercises, medication, and intensive psychotherapy.

Remember that the actual Serenity Prayer, which is central to twelve-step methodology, isn't a prayer to end stress and anger, but for the clarity of mind and the humility to deal with whatever life inevitably throws at you. You can usually tell when conflict, fear, and negative feelings are unavoidable; that's when you've honestly tried everything, asked for advice, and still feel stuck. And when you start looking for your second therapy and third medication.

Self
magazine may tell you that stress is deadly, but dedicating yourself to eliminating it will make you feel like you're not really living at all. Accept that peace of mind is rare, and that, without learning proper management of stress and fear, you can lose your mind entirely.

It's easier than most people think not to fall in love with the wrong person; Woody Allen's excuse was “the heart wants what it wants,” but so do toddlers, and you
don't give every four-year-old a pony.

On the other hand, it's almost impossible to stop loving someone, no matter how awful they are, when that someone is family, practically family, or a fellow survivor of hard times. They're not just friends or partners; they're part of your life.

Certain connections and experiences bond you to a person, so your love isn't a matter of choice and you can't turn it off. Unfortunately, you may also find yourself hating them or hating yourself for the way you respond to them. That, too, is seldom deliberate or easy to stop.

If you're lucky, your reasons for hate are temporary or hinge on a grudge you can give up or neutralize by lowering your expectations; for example, you may hate your parents until you're old enough to see their side of things or realize they couldn't help many of their faults and mistakes. Occasionally, other realizations can also put an end to hatred, like seeing that you have the right to decline an impossible responsibility and thus no longer have to hate the person you formerly felt responsible for or to.

These are the kind of hate-to-love transformations we celebrate and relive in stories because it feels so good to stop hating someone you love and stop feeling like a hateful person. Unfortunately, we also love to relive such moments because they are far too rare.

Most often, it's not in your power to stop hating someone you love, and your efforts to stop hating are likely to make hatred worse. You'll try to talk out issues that can't be resolved, or change character traits (yours and/or theirs), which is the best way to start a fight. You'll feel like a failure, which will make your hatred more acute and harder to keep inside, where it belongs.

If after much effort to resolve your negative feelings, you come to the conclusion that you can't stop hating someone you love, don't despair, because if it's really not in your power to stop hating, there's no point in blaming or hating yourself. Once you accept that anger is there to stay (and only bound to get worse the more you rage against it), you're now ready to think of ways to manage your perma-hate.

Please note, however, that accepting hate is not the same as accepting hateful behavior. It's a sad fact of life that many people can't help loving people they're
also bound to hate, but if you can live with hate without acting hateful, you're doing a good job.

Living with hate will never feel good, but anyone who knows how much combustible anger you're currently storing in your brain recognizes how much respect you deserve for your decent behavior. The heart wants what it wants, but the hate wants everything, and if you hate someone you also care about, you need our advice.

Among the wishes people express are:

• To feel less angry

• To get loved ones to stop the behavior they hate

• To figure out why they're so angry

• To discover the secret that allows them to love everyone, even the ones they love-hate

Here are three examples:

My seventeen-year-old kid is a fuckup, a liar, and generally an asshole, so even though I know it's my job to support him, I can't help but become infuriated by his bullshit, and then my anger helps no one. He's gotten expelled from school and he's not working, so you can guess where the money comes from when he buys drugs, which he's obviously using. Not that he always uses the money I have to
give him, because every now and then something disappears from the house. Of course, he admits to nothing and lies about everything. I yell at him, and he either looks defiant or scared, but it obviously does no good, and then my wife tells me it's all my fault. My goal is to help my son grow up and get off drugs, but I can't help him if I'm so angry—my wife is right about that—and that's what I need to stop first.