Your Salad of Emotion Is Your Responsibility

Salad! Who doesn’t like salad?

What salad do you like? Me, I love Greek salad. The olive oil dressing, the mix of lovely, ripe vegetables and some goat’s cheese..mate, I can chow on that every day and be a happy frog.

Unfortunately though, being in Japan means I have almost no access to Greek salad. Goat’s cheese isn’t really a thing here. It sucks, it enrages me, and I’m going to get mad at the Japanese people here about it because for fucks sake, why do you NOT HAVE GREEK SALAD?!

..Well, that would be me if I was irresponsible and irrational, but I’m not, because as much as I am disappointed and upset at the fact that I can barely get any of that good Greek salad, that emotional concoction is my problem, no one else’s. If I want to solve it, I need to have a think about what the requirements are for getting Greek salad over into Japan, and try to find a solution to quell my rage. Otherwise, I shut up and get on with my life, realizing that hey, if I want it that bad, I’ll go and get it – otherwise build a nice, sturdy proverbial stone bridge and get over it.

Analogies of salads aside, today’s topic is precisely about what you are responsible for – which is your emotions, your thoughts and your actions. Is anyone else responsible for these things? No. If you believe otherwise, you’d be wrong, and it’s not my problem that you believe otherwise.

Notice what I did there? I rejected your potential disagreement with me. Explicitly, I recognize that what you think and do isn’t actually my issue – how I react to what you think and do, is. I cannot change you, but I can persuade you to potentially change yourself.

Let’s dumb that down some more.

Everything I write here is my responsibility, because I am the one that crafts these streams of thought. I have a particular opinion about things, and I express them quite explicitly. That’s all on me. It isn’t your responsibility, my thoughts aren’t a problem for you, and how I feel about my own productivity is not your problem, either.

Conversely, everything you think about me, my blog, etc, are on you. If you get a rise out of my post, that is also on you, because your emotions are yours. I am not responsible for how you feel, but I can be a catalyst to it.

There’s a big difference there. If I say something that pisses you off, I am not responsible for what you do with whatever you’re feeling or thinking, or how much power you grant it – but I can be a catalyst for that feeling arising in the first place.

But beyond that, it’s on you to manage what you think and feel.

In other words, you’re entirely responsible for how you feel, think and act, and it’s never other people’s problem unless they choose to make it so.

The point here is that you cannot point the finger at others and tell them that they are the reason you feel X or think X. It is completely wrong. Perhaps they were catalysts to those reactions, but how seriously you take those rises is completely, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt – on you.

I’ve spoken about this before in regards to being judged via ice cream flavours, but it needs to be more explicitly detailed out. Culturally we are taught that what others think and feel matter. This isn’t necessarily true. People who are important to you, people you value, most certainly matter, but prior to that being the case you had to choose to value them, didn’t you?

And this is the crux and key thing you must understand: you decide who or what matters. You do not have to listen to everyone and accept all opinions and thoughts equally – and the way to discover that is to just ask yourself:

“How valuable is this person to me, really?”

Sit and think on it, and then be enlightened by the answer you get. You have to remove the rationalizations though – maybe you’ll justify others being important because you “feel bad” or whatever. But why? What do you feel bad about? If someone is a megaphone spewing a cacophony of asinine shit at you, why would you feel bad over telling them to get fucked?

Again, it’s conditioning. Kumabaya everyone matters is wrong. Existentially, human beings choose to make things matter. They choose life and living, and pick what is valuable to them, as individuals. We don’t just “matter” by default to everyone and everything. Existence has no agenda, it just is. People create agendas, and that’s via the choice to live and to pursue values.

That’s how it works, and that is vitally important to remember even in your own thoughts and emotions, and when you get a rise out of something.

So, my point is, your salad is yours alone, and the recipe is your responsibility. You got some rage in that salad? Cool, dingus over there didn’t put it in – you did, it’s your physiological response. Now take it for what it is, mix it in if you want, or throw it out and replace it with a better salad. It’s not my problem, nor is it dingus’ problem – it’s yours, and think of it this way: when you recognize it’s all on you, the power to change and live how you want is completely in your hands.

If anything, I consider that empowering as all fuck.

Now, let’s see if I can find goat’s cheese in Japan..