The Struggle is Real

What is the struggle these days?  

I struggle with my own reactions to raging ego, the ineffective and humiliating mechanisms I go through to dampen the intensity or consequences of a rager's self-centered explosiveness.  Typically I just play along with the false premise that the source of the outrage is a big deal, just to quiet a mother fucker down. 

The mother fucker is an entity who stalks me, wearing different masks, not always a man's mask, in fact just as often a woman's.  Don't assume I'm talking about my husband, my boss, my employee, my mother, my father, or my best friend.  It could be one, all, or none of those entities on any given day over the last 50 years or so.

To be clear, though, it's never been my son.  He's consistently kind and forgiving, like me, god bless him.  We two shall inherit whatever's left of the earth.

It is not and never will be, by any objective measure, a big deal, this editor's disagreement with your correction, the fact that someone drives too slow in the left lane, the fifth telemarketer not honoring the no-call list, the dishes piling up in the sink, the car not starting, the cat shitting outside of the box. 

Here's the thing.

IT'S NOT PERSONAL.  NOBODY IS TRYING TO MAKE YOU FEEL DISRESPECTED. 

Can we be mildly annoyed?  Rational?  Solution-oriented?  Generous?  

An inauthentic self arises in me when I pretend that the thing you're raging about is as important as a nuclear disaster.  It's like I'm acting in a play, and I'm somehow getting paid for it, but I haven't figured out my motivation so I'm just delivering lines I've rehearsed and am relieved when the scene ends.  I learned as a child that you just agree with a rager and things calm down sooner.  I'm learning as an adult that there's no end to it, just no fucking end to it, unless I learn to do something different.

I just don't know yet what that something different is.