It’s easy to get caught up in drama and outrage addiction. Drama and outrage strike a cord. We have opinions. Our
egos love drama and outrage. But are drama and outrage good and healthy for us?
Absolutely not.
Think about what happens to our chi, our life force energy, when drama and outrage take over our peace and serenity. Our blood pressure goes up, we get out of balance, we can even get caught up in the emotion of it all and not know how to stop it.
There is a time to stand up for our beliefs, and vote our conscience. Good conversations that influence and inspire groups of people are necessary in this world. That is just and right, and liberating. Drama and outrage addiction are something else altogether. It is easy to recognize this when insults fly as opposed to intelligent conversation, with fact-finding in place of alternate realities including lies presented as truth.
The onus is on you and me to find out if what others tell us is the truth. It is important not to go by just one side of an issue. We have a duty in our personal, civil and religious lives to find out the truth for ourselves, not just swallow hook, line and sinker what others tell us as truth. It is not that hard to find out in these days of video and audio capturing every moment of our lives.
Often we do not give ourselves enough credit for getting to the bottom of an issue, as if news reporters and political leaders themselves know more than we do on any given subject. If we get our news from television, we at least owe it to ourselves to watch channels with different points of view.
What hurts democracies across the globe is the propagation of news from only one source. That is the sign that government is no longer a democracy.
Whether it’s religion, education, or politics, one side of an issue says a point of view, often meant not just to say their point, but with the intention of ruffling the feathers of the opposition. After a while the spiral of drama and outrage is so out of control, the point is lost to the spin.
Don Miguel Ruiz, author of “The Four Agreements,” has one of his four points on which the book is based, “Be impeccable with your word.” That is a fantastic point. If we simply and consciously say what we mean, rather than use our words to attack, we are better heard by the people we want to hear it. Another point he makes, “Don’t take things personally,” is one that personally changed my life. No matter what issue is being discussed, if we do not choose to take things personally, the drama and outrage drop away, and clarity of topic remains and solutions can be found.
But solutions are far away when drama and outrage keep going around and around. Where is the end of the circle?
“Don’t make assumptions,” is another agreement Ruiz suggests. Understanding gets a whole lot better when we actualy listen to the other point of view without the hair raising up on the back of our neck like a cat just before it attacks something.
Imagine a world, a country, a state, a neighborhood, a family, where we attentively listened to what was being said before we stopped listening and verbally (and sometimes physically and emotionally and spiritually) attacked the other person, group, country, religion, or army. What would happen to the drama and outrage of the situation?
Before we can heal our minds, our issues, our families, our countries and the world at large, we need to acknowledge we have drama and outrage addiction. Without acknowledging drama and outrage addition, like every other addiction we have, we cannot begin to heal it, and pave the way to peace.
Imagine what it would be like to have world peace.
Namaste