Peace and Personal Responsibility.

We are all living a life searching for something. The pursuit of happiness, wealth, attention, love or whatever it is that is burning inside of you. We are all human and have human needs. I am pretty sure there is a point in time that we wished to be where we are now. Where we dreamed about having the relationship, dogs, kiddos, house or whatever it was that we have now. We imagined how we would be at peace once we could come home to xyz or if we just had xyz we would be able to just relax. The kicker is we ended up forgetting how much we wanted it shortly after we attained it. It might be a little foggy or hard to remember those older days. We, as humans, tend to focus on the future, not the past. Making it easier to focus on the things we don’t have vs the things we do. This is a normal part of our evolution. It allowed us to become the dominant species capable of building incredible infrastructures and developing technology that has transformed the world. It constantly pushes us to break records and set new expectations. Humans are emotionally and physically driven by an invisible force to succeed and push the boundaries. We are a product of generations of individuals building processes and patterns to meet the basic needs of the group. We have focused entire centuries of time to developing better ways of meeting people's basic needs. We have figured out how to meet basic needs so efficiently that we have begun to mix the wants into the needs category. We now think they are one and the same. 

Take a step back and look at your life. When was the last time we were hungry and had no food? When was the last time we were cold and didn’t have an extra blanket to keep warm? When was the last time we weren't able to talk to someone when you were lonely? We are surrounded by stimuli that keep us fulfilled not just with our basic needs, food, shelter, health and security, but we are able to fulfill most of our wants as well. I am sure most of us have two or more televisions in our house or apartment. We have a vehicle, if not two, and several appliances in our kitchen. We have a closet with coats, blankets and a machine in our kitchen that makes coffee with the press of a button. We are NOT in a world that goes without. However, we are in a time where mental illness, lonelyness, suicide and depression are more abundant then ever. If you look at our current global status as a nation shouldn't we all be at peace? Shouldn't we be celebrating the accomplishments of those before us and living at ease with all of our basic needs met with little to no involvement of our time or energy? If we took a poll of just our neighborhood, based on our nation's economic dominance, shouldn't we all be happier then the generations before? The answer is yes, but the reality is the exact opposite. We have allowed the ease to become the new stressor. We have so much that we are not able to see the forest through the trees. 

Peace is defined as: “Freedom from disturbance, tranquility.”

Tranquility is defined as: “The quality or state of being tranquil, calm.”

Why is it so hard, with all that we have and have access too, to find peace? I am a firm believer it is because we have lost sight of who we are as individuals and whose responsibility it is to find and maintain our individual peace. We have become so reliant on others to give us our basic needs that finding our own internal peace is something we, based on our experiences, expect others to provide. “If so and so would just not do x then I will be happy”, “If work would just do it the way I told them to we would all be better off”. This, and other expressions like this, are all based on the expectation that someone else is going to do something that will make you happier. It is like we have decided that our personal happiness and peace is solely dictated by outside forces. We then become subject to the rollercoaster of emotions throwing us around constantly. You see it daily on the news where people are lying in the street screaming at presidential candidates, or driving through a city in a tank yelling about how the world is ending through a bullhorn. We use others' emotions and reactions to validate our happiness instead of understanding that peace, happiness, that wholeness is totally and completely up to us.

This concept is something I had to spend years working on. I still struggle with the amount of my happiness I allow others to be in control of. Being social creatures we need others to live a healthy and happy life. We are not built to be without others, out on our own without that connection. The best demonstration of emotional connection to people and the breakdown without it, is in the story of a boat race around the world. The goal of circumnavigating the globe alone, on a sailboat, is a fascinating endeavor. This story starts with teams of individuals plotting, planning and charting the sailors course around the world. One individual, Donald Crowhurst, was touting the most advanced boat capable of beating all others' time at each checkpoint by weeks. The entire event turned into one of the most elaborate hoaxes ever created. Donald sent false reports of time to specific coordinance making him twice or three times as fast as everyone else. He was “on pace” to break every record of that time. In the end Donald never showed up with the other sailors. They found his boat, not too far away from the starting point adrift without him in it. He came nowhere near circumnavigating the globe, he never even left the Atlantic ocean. The most faceating part about this race wasn’t the fact that most of these individuals actually sailed the entire fucking globe on a boat, alone. Nor was it the fact that Donald Crowhurst lied to the world about his record times. The most amazing part of this story was the information in the journal that Donald left behind.

Donald touted his new boat's design and its ability to break records everywhere he could. You can literally feel the vigor and excitement. He stirred up the media, hired a publicist and claimed to be the next world record holder. He was totally submerged in happiness based on the interactions with others. He was out to sea for only two months when he began to realize how the boat was not up to par. Not only was it not going to set any records, he was positive it wasn’t able to even complete the course. He lied about being ahead of his current position through multiple wires and radio snipits. After explaining how far ahead he was from the group at the end of month two, he went silent. Donald spent the next three months without making contact. Unknown to the public, Donald wasn't in the race at all, he was just floating around the Atlantic. He began to sink into a deep depression. He sailed around aimlessly and finally ended up in the Sargasso sea, radioing back that he was “on his way home”. Donalds journal entries went from storms, ocean life and the pace of his boat into ten thousand plus word entries talking about physics, emotions, god, his beliefs and “freeing the soul from the body”. Reading his entries is essentially watching a man deal with his own existence without any rational guidelines of other human interaction. Donalds existence out on his own, racked with guilt for a failed adventure, panic and fear of losing his life in rough unforgiving seas and never seeing his family again absolutely dominated his mind. He was not able to separate rational action and emotional reactions. There was no way he was going to be able to make the decision to pack it in, turn around and take one of the chin. The ability for him to find peace in the happiness that comes from his family, his loved ones, and the basic gift of life was totally overwhelmed with the fear of external humiliation. His peace, therefore his actions, were totally controlled by others.

What can we take from Donald's story and implement into our everyday lives? Based on his story, I think the best thing we can do is ask a question. 

Where are we headed or what actions are we taking that are so overwhelmingly consumed by the opinions of others that we can’t see that we are lost at sea and need to pack it in? 

What decisions are you making based on the opinions of others? Are you more concerned about them, than your own thought processes or values? This is a deep rabbit hole to go down because we are all surrounded by countless stimuli that are solely based on other opinions. Social media has thrust our opinions and thoughts into the limelight with every single comment and like. We are surrounded by other opinions and thoughts at such a high volume now that it seems like every decision, action and reaction we make is paramount. We are, depending on what we like or watch, trapped in a whirlwind algorithm that feeds you more of the things it thinks you want. We end up being so involved we neglect our own real, external lives to involve ourselves in a fake digital world. The same goes for who we surround ourselves with. As humans we play the game of defense unconsciously. We segregate ourselves, in order to not be the odd man out, without even thinking about it. We tend to only associate with those in the same political, social economic spectrum as us. Take a look at your closest friends. The ones you hang out with regularly. Are they mirror images of you? This is not rare, nor is it wrong. We want to be safe, it is a natural habit of humans to associate with those closest to our image. It helps us feel safe intrinsically and physically, it limits the unknown and the possibility of harm or shame. This world of mirror images only reinforces current ideas and skills; it doesn’t tend to lead us to any new ideas or processes. We become hyper focused on keeping with the status quo and intertwine our internal happiness with that of the group. The group now has the power to dictate your level of peace. Just like the group, the digital world will never be satisfied, it will never be full. We can easily end up like Donald, deep in the sea of others opinions, totally lost to what is actually happening. We are not in control of our happiness in this sea of white noise. Introspection and self evaluation is not possible because we are too concerned with the group. Paying that much attention to our needs means we ignore the needs of the social group, opening up ourselves to potential negative feedback. It ends up being scarier to ignore the group then it is to ignore yourself. Potential internal issues aren't as “loud” as external issues. 

I am not going to be the guy who says social media is evil or from the devil, nor am I going to say that your neighbors can go to hell. I think social media has done amazing things for us in opening communication and workflow and your neighbors and close friends are there for a reason. However, based on the fact that we have given our creation of internal happiness over to others, it was easy for social media (as well as other people, places, things and stimulus) to fill that “other” category quickly. We have to be extremely intentional about how we spend our time on social media, in the digital world and around certain people so we don't end up giving our intrinsic happiness over to them. The biggest question now is how to regain the power over our happiness, our inner peace. I would love to say that all it took was for me to understand that I was guilty of giving the power away. The saying “The first step to change is awareness” is true, you can’t fix something you refuse to acknowledge exists. However, it takes a few more steps then that. I accepted my responsibility in this equation, I was giving the power of my happiness to others, situations, devices and social media. I was, however, lost with how to actually do something about it. To be totally transparent it was more than a little overwhelming to come to the conclusion that I was the issue. My thought patterns were leading me down a path of self doubt, frustration, depression and guilt. I felt as though I was never enough and therefore not worthy of being happy. Not worthy of being happy because I was not able to keep everyone as happy as they could possibly be in every moment possible. Which is not too far off from most people that I have worked with. A harsh truth I had to learn was that we will never be able to keep others happy in more than a few unique circumstances for a few fleeting seconds. This will undoubtedly lead to depression and feelings of unworthiness. We are relinquishing control of a vital part of our individual freedom to others that don't want it and couldn't do anything with it if they wanted to. Take your children and spouse as an example, are you able to love them enough that they don't need to love themselves? Are you able to be peaceful for them? Of course not. Your love does fulfill a need. It does amazing things to know you are loved, but because it is not intrinsic people that are loved still commit suicide, people that are loved still leave their families. Peace has to come from oneself for oneself. Trying to do this for someone only ends up becoming an overbearing, smothering version of control. We need to know we are worth something. We need to know that we have the capability to love and be loved, that we are important in the grand scheme of things and that we have value. All of these things have to come from within. 

This is where I think journaling comes into play big time. I spent months writing everyday about how I felt when I was around certain people, what I did to numb the pain or ignore it. How I felt the next day after specific situations and how impulsive action entered my life. I am a firm believer that there is no way to find internal happiness or peace without journaling or for more intense cases, therapy. Without being able to look back at yourself and see what roads you went down and what paths lead to where you are, you will undoubtedly become lost on any ideas of how to change things. You won't be able to see the point at which the action was triggered. Once you see that data point you can make a decision with confidence. You are no longer walking blind hoping that you won't fall off another cliff. You can see what stimuli bring out specific reactions and how to better respond or which ones to flat out avoid. Drinking was a stimulus I just needed out of my life all together. That specific stimulus gave way to very emotionally based, impulse driven decisions. In turn it opened up the door for more guilt, shame and frustration with myself. It systematically robbed me of my happiness. Because it was clear alcohol was a consistent factor, it was easy for me to remove it. A cool thing started to happen once I made that choice. I felt like I had “won” some control back. It then became a little easier for me to be more introspective and confident in my abilities to do better. Step by step, I removed people and situations from my life. Every decision made me feel more empowered, loved, strong, and more at peace. Eventually I was able to see the detrimental situations in advance. I was able to see how my actions affect those I loved and how I was the one who was in ultimate control. Being in control is scary at first. You are out of control when you are consumed with the group and their thoughts. You are out of control when social media is dictating your emotions. But because it is normal it is easier to work with. Taking control means you have to limit interactions, piss some people off and even sever some ties. This seems like a brutal step, however the more steps you take to remove toxic people and negativity from your life the easier it becomes. All it takes is a few wins for you to start the landslide. The more you understand about how much control you actually have over your happiness the more confidence you have in yourself to make the best decisions. 

This isn’t a simple yellow brick road. We have made thousands of decisions for years on end trying to feel safe, protected and involved. Being social creatures it's easy for us to bypass our intrinsic happiness to fit in. In the end you won't be able to override this internal defense mechanism all together. Because it is built in us to fit in we will always have to monitor it. You will be able to understand what emotions are involved, what type of interactions stimulate certain feelings and you will be able to make better decisions on who and what to involve yourself with. Taking control is understanding that you are the deciding factor in your personal peace and happiness, not others. Understanding that you need to take care of yourself first to be able to be present, open, honest, loving, caring and available for others. This is the only path to the true authentic version of you. I think of journaling as building my own yellow brick road. Each day you journal you give yourself a brick to look back on, part of the path is built and set in stone. You are literally building yourself a guide to…yourself.  

Our peace is ultimately up to us, it is literally impossible for others to give it to us.