88 Rat In a Cage

My recent absence from the rant has been largely due to the subject of today's rant: all of the above. LOL, I know, you have to look at my wall on facebook to get that. Seriously, I have been occupied with preparations for college, regular job duties and my supervisory capacities with the Census. Yes, they pulled a regular government snafu and hired moi as a crew leader.

My rage at the confusion and unpreparedness of the people that are above me have in no small part, caused me much stress in preparing my employees for their duties. Whether I want to or not, I have also experienced jealousy at not having the job of Field Operations Supervisor. I was within tolerance of their testing(ahem, above;) )but I was about one college degree short. What a bummer.

Really? I was just trying to illustrate, however mildly, how we entwine some baser emotions in our everyday lives. I have said before that we are generally over-stressed as a society, but I find it somewhat fascinating that we often jump to extremes over minute issues. I have done it, you have done it and probably most of the people you know have done it.

We know people that are ignorant of a given situation or issue and they still insist on flying into a fit of rage, sometimes at the expense of family and/or friends. They will speak of things that they are only mildly aware of, or are making false assumptions of, and they wind up hurting those around them. I dont think I need to be specific or give examples, most of you have experienced this.

What about jealousy? We're all jealous of something. We get jealous of someone better looking, wealthier, more powerful or sometimes someone that is just plain luckier than we are. We want better, or at least what WE see as better. We want more. We want nicer. It's perfectly natural, what defines us is how we present it. We can think it, but if we act negatively on it, it compromises something. I get really jealous of the jackass that is driving what should be MY Dodge Challenger up and down the road, but I dont drag him out of the car, a-la Grand Theft Auto and beat the snot out of him. I may voice it inside the car and again at home and maybe again with my buddies, but I dont ACT on my jealousy.

Grief can often be so overwhelming, it causes people to over-react to a word, a gesture, an event. It twists us, crushes us and causes fits of rage, fits of jealousy and causes us to misconstrue things and hurt those around us. Grief must be dealt with but it is almost impossible to get some people to not use that grief as a weapon. I know for a fact we've ALL seen that.

Sometimes we use the best emotions in the worst way and the baser emotions are even more susceptible. I dont think we all have to be zombies. We are not Mr. Spock, we DO have emotions. That's part of what makes life interesting. Often, someone around us is twisted by rage, grief, ignorance, whatever and we hesitate to say something to them. We are afraid to cause more trouble, often knowing they will over-react and cause even more emotional pain and stress.

So, what do we do? I say: Say what's on your mind. Tell them they're over-reacting. Tell them they need to think about what they're saying, what they're doing and maybe consider what they're doing. If that fails, smack the bitch up. You'll feel better, because really, isnt there some satisfaction to be had from putting someone deserving, in their place? They're probably not going to listen to you or anyone else. They're at a point where they're too convoluted by emotions to be rational and are often leaning toward the violent anyway. They WANT confrontation. They WANT someone to rattle their cage because they WANT to feel SOMETHING. They're not going to listen to reason, so give it a go. Maybe they'll come around, maybe you'll get to smack a bitch down. Go curb-steppin. Get your Mojo workin'. Or maybe you'll get your ass handed to you. Either way, you'll both feel something. Isnt that what most of us want? To feel something? Right now I feel like sleep, so until I can post again: Dont smack anyone or anything that can get you put in jail, unless they deserve it. Oh, dont tug on Superman's cape, dont spit in the wind. You dont pull the Mask off the old Lone Ranger and you dont mess around with Jim........yada, yada, yada.