Perfectly Imperfect

In the course of my lifetime, I have managed to piss off a

number of people. Unfortunately, there isn’t any definitive

authority that measures this statistic to compare with, nor is

there a benchmark for people with this behavior pattern to

gauge against. Whenever I attend a large party, I can’t help but

look around and identify people who I am either at odds with or

I chose not to associate with due to some previous form of

altercation or argument. This disturbs me and in my journey of

healing my soul, I often introspect and find ways to understand

the root cause of the issue.

There are many afflictions in this world where one can relatively

easily understand if you are affected by it and perhaps some

concrete ways to address it! There are some interesting ones out

there. The Aboulomania for instance, it involves occasional

onset of crippling indecision, there is Boanthropy, a strange

delusional disorder whereby a person believes himself to be a

cow or an ox and then there is Mary Hart Syndrome, it turns

out that there are reported cases of people experiencing seizures

upon hearing Mary Hart’s voice on TV. I don’t know who she is

but it sounds frightening.

To my knowledge, pissing people off or being overly combative

has not been classified as a infliction, disorder or a syndrome so

far or at least to my knowledge. Jiddu Krishnamurti once wrote

“ I am born with a label. I see that, as a human being, I am the

result of innumerable influences, social compulsions, religious

impressions, and that if I try to find reality, truth, or God, that

very search will be based on the things I have been taught,

shaped by what I have known, conditioned by my education and

by the influences of the environment in which I live. So can I be

free of all that?” I am not invoking this paragraph as an

absolution for my past paroxysm’s but merely an attempt to

discover my conditioning as a child and as a youth. Invoking

Jiddu Krishnamurti once again, “ If I set about deliberately to

free myself from my conditioning, that desire creates its own

conditioning. Whereas, if there is an understanding of desire

itself, which includes the desire to be free, then that very

understanding destroys all conditioning”. I know, heavy stuff but

this is a crucial step towards freedom.

My development as a kid was normal, there were no

extraordinary circumstances surrounding my childhood. There

were occasional severe beatings meted out by my dad for inane

pranks or harmless mischiefs but I can’t say it was unusual for

that era. Looking back, I do sometimes think that some may

have been over the top but these alone could not be a

contributing factor to my aberrant behavior. What then could

cause this? Why am I so high strung? Why do trivial things set

me off? Why do I have a biological core related to

combativeness?

To understand this, one has to understand anger. Most folks

only associate anger with loss of control, which is true but at the

very core, anger is an emotion. It can result from a conspecific

threat, a perceived loss or a feeling of unjustness among many

other factors. A key component of anger involves ego. The loss

of an identity that you have created of your own, the beliefs

about your personalty, talents and abilities causes anger. This

type of loss could be perceived or real. Contrast this with a loss

of an object (inanimate or otherwise) which is dear to you, in

such a situation you feel an emotion of sadness. The difference

between anger and sadness is the existence of a “willful agent”,

someone who acts deliberately. Think death by natural cause vs Murder.

We as human beings are nothing but a collection of our past

experiences. I am unable to identify the reason for my

preferences other than the fact that we are all conditioned by

our environment. Questioning our beliefs, values, goals and

judgements is the right thing to do because these are things we

hold dearly and identify ourselves with and every time anyone

challenges these, we get angry. Who then needs to change? Our

impulse always tells us that it’s the other person who needs to

change, but ultimately it is us who needs to act to make the

change. We need to question the basis of our sense of justice.

Self esteem plays a big role in anger. Having a low self esteem or

a low sense of self worth can cause hypersensitivity to criticism or

disrespect. I clearly see where I vacillate on a daily basis from

weak and vulnerable to strong, capable and worthy. I think

therein lies my problem. Somewhere along the line, I developed

a sense of low self esteem. I am not going to blame anyone in

particular for this as it does me no good, in fact I can't say that I

even know how it developed. All I know is that it took years to

develop it and it will take years to overcome it. The book “I am

OK, you are OK” delves into this complex topic and has been

used for many years to address issues related to self worth.

As cliche as it may sound, personal growth is a journey not a

destination. We need to work on it cognitively every day and

forgive ourselves for relapses and be forgiving and respectful to

others. I am confident that I will be able to find peace and

harmony in this journey of mine. I am however, content in
knowing that I am perfectly, imperfect.