What is all this nonsense about control?

[clyrc]

For the second time today ( and it is only 7:30 am now) I have seen someone instruct someone else that they can control their reactions to anything that happens. What I want to know is, is this really true for anyone? Because I can't control my emotions, and it takes a long time for me to be able to control my actions. My first reaction to anything sad or maddening is to get sad or maddened. I can talk myself down, usually, if I have the time to do it, but more and more I face the fact that some things just suck, and pretending otherwise is just stupid. Can the rest of the people in the world really see something maddening, pause briefly and then change their anger to something else? Is there some great secret to doing this that I have missed out on?

I will admit that the older I get, the more conventional wisdom seems like nonsense. I could write a book on how the phrases I grew up hearing now just seem beyond ludicrous. Living outside of the US hasn't helped much- I've got a whole new set of conventional nuggets of wisdom I find absurd. Just a few random examples- I've heard many times that trust is essential to love. And yet I have loved dearly many people I couldn't trust. I might have felt other things for them, too, but love was definitely there. My grandma, my brother, and some boyfriends, they weren't trustworthy, but I loved them.

Here in the Middle East, I've heard tons of conventional wisdom that I simply can not agree with, mostly concerned with women. I don't agree that a man deserves a second wife if his first wife can't give him a son. I don't agree that a woman can not be a child's most important first teacher because she is too weak intellectually and morally. I don't agree that women can't be witnesses in court because they are untrustworthy.

Every once in a while, someone asks me how I handle living in the Middle East. My answer is that I learned how to deal with life int he Middle East by living in the US. In a way the scale is different, but on a personal level, I don't run into so much more I find nonsensical than I did living in the States. In both places I hear things that don't make sense to me and don't seem to apply to me.

[Dr Morbius]

1. The great secret is patience.

Patience solves almost any problem related to individuals. I've heard that 90% of one's life is how one reacts to one's life; I believe this. It isn't easy. Ever notice that older folks are less likely to freak out? We learn patience.

The middle east seems to believe women are inferior to men, or at least were created as baby factories for men. This is indeed nonsense. "Conventional wisdom" isn't wisdom at all if it isn't defensible.