Emotional outbursts
by Bob on July 7, 2007
We all have bad days. We all have harsh exchanges with others from time to time, unless we are very, very lucky indeed to avoid these pesky nitty nasty nuances of life and interpersonal behaviour. We all have spats, too. It's just part of life as we know it. It's not a perfect world or a harmonious aggregation of people. It's just life.
But I must say it still smarts when someone has a pointed and negative emotional outburst, especially when one is the target of it, and also when one doesn't know whence it came from or why. Or just simply why if someone suspects whence it came from.
Positive emotional outbursts can be a real boon to one's life. They can be loving, kind, joyous, zealous, rock-and-roll-ish, Rolling-Stones-ish, or maybe even just pure exhilaration. Not doubt, it too is powerful.
Knowing fully well that the extremes of anything in the universe converge, we see emotional outbursts as one phenomenom.
But nasty spikey emotional outbursts and assaults on us somehow get through our defenses if we are not looking and can hurt. The can break up a loving couple, best friends, relatives, a rock and roll band, a symphony orchestra, or even a classroom. They hurt if our defenses are down. They hardly matter if we don't simply care.
There is one other possibility, at least. When someone we love embarks on a tirade towards us, they are proving they are hurting first about something. And outcries are a form of non-verbal (even though it might be actually said and yelled verbally) communication. Because there's a lot of body and psyche language involved.
We can either return the outburst in kind, walk away temporarily, walk away forever, or just ignore it. Although we admit that, following R.D. Laing and his "Knots", ignoring it uses tremendous energy.
If it's someone we are about we must ask ourselves if it is a frequent pattern or an abnormality. If we know someone for a long time and in that time nothing ever happened, which might be unusual but we will hypothesise it, and then there is an outburst of anger towards us, we have an immediate choice: write it off in the bigger picture of things as a blip on the emotional radar screen and will go away and the relationship will continue; or we can walk away heatedly and break up the relationship. If we go by actuarial statistics, most outcomes are the latter which is sad. A twenty year friendship is broken up over one little spat.
The wiser thing to do is to be cool. Let it pass. See the greater good of the friendship. Let it slide. Get back in the groove. At least try to preserve the relationship if we can.
If we walk away from a relationship, in this world of computers and less human interaction, we had better be prepared for the cost. Friends are hard to find. Good friends are even harder to find again. And girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives are even more complicated to look for after a breakup.
It's one thing to get rid of an automobile which is a plain lemon and is just not working properly and it's beyond our control, patience, or desired finances to keep it.
People just aren't machines despite the AI researchers endeavouring to make them so in figuring out the human "interfaces" to the brain. We all get robotic sometimes but we are not machines. If we are, in the final ending, then the joke's on me as I pen this.
I remember the Beatles had a nice song which sang "Try to see it my way / Only time will tell / If I am right or I am wrong / Try to see it your way / At the risk of knowing / That our love might soon be gone". That's a lot of insight there. And the chorus was the title of the song and impressive "We Can Work It Out".
That's the meaning and intention of marriage vows: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and distress, and the like. Powerful promise.
We are the mutual glue of our relationships. Just as it takes two to tango, I used to say it takes two not to tango. One person can make it better by trying to repair it. Notice that word ? Re-PAIR. Make two together again.
And one is indeed the loneliest number as that song went. Unless one is into Zen or Tao which could be really cool. The rest of us have to sweat in the train, and clean out the bathrooms, and wait in rush hour. So we better have friends and not an image on the TV to keep us company. Real touchy feeling live friends.
One is reminded of a couple of songs by a brilliant group called The Cranberries. "Dying in the Sun" from their 1999 album "Bury the Hatchet" (one quickly gets the point) and their song "Dreams" from their brilliant album "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?". Make sense ? Of course. Music is inside us and outside us and is very relevant. We had better listen. Or take the admonition of Jim Morrison of The Doors, in their song "When the Music's Over": Jim said when the music's over, turn out the light. And Jim also said the music is our special friend until the end.
Relationships are all about making music.
* * *
Dying In The Sun by The Cranberries
Do you remember
The things we used to say?
I feel so nervous
When I think of yesterday
How could I let things
Get to me so bad?
How did I let things get to me?
Like dying in the sun
Like dying in the sun
Like dying in the sun
Like dying
Will you hold on to me
I am feeling frail
Will you hold on to me
We will never fail
I wanted to be so perfect you see
I wanted to be so perfect
Like dying in the sun
Like dying in the sun
Like dying in the sun
Like dying
* * *
And let's not forget the riveting, emotion packed painting by Edvard Munch, "The Scream" which defied Schopenhauer's challenge that only when a scream could be captured by a painting would art be seriously considered. Munch hit that spot on.