Bad Habits

Quite a bunch of years ago, a friend of mine told me about how it was to attend as a young kid a school owned and ran by the Opus Dei.

She said that most teachers were OK-crazy, just as one would expect them to be in a religious school, but that there were also a few of them quite scary-crazy. One in particular would remind them now and then the beneficial effects of self-flagellation.

And I think, friendies, that that that the teacher taught, is true. (sorry for that, it just wanted to come out)

Let's talk about self-flagellation.

Every morning, when I stand up, I put on the slippers, and, still in pyjamas and sleepy, I take the flail and go to the shower. There, after locking the door, I proceed to flail myself for about 15 minutes until the pain threatens with blacking me out. The pain is purifying and refreshing.

No, are YOU crazy?!? Of course I do not flail myself! You are nuts.

I want to talk about a different kind of flagellation, because believe it or kick me, we do flagellate ourselves daily in obscure and devious ways, for reasons still not clear to me, your therapist or anyone for that matter.

I will start myself, putting an example out of many.

My primary email account, which I have been using since connecting to Internet involved SWAT night operations and stealth, originally assumed that I was from the USA, and later on, when the possibility to change that appeared, I didn't bother to tell them the truth. ("Yea, whatever.")

As a result of that, every time I log into my email to read some spam, I also get to see the news headlines aimed for the American audience.

Invariably, they annoy, offend and/or disturb me, in no special order.

Mind you, I think it would annoy me even more if they were news aimed for the regional audience to which I theoretically belong to, being its stupidity, pettiness and despondency (these being qualities of mainstream media news outlets, always), in a way, more familiar to me.

But the true flagellation part, that one of sweat and blood, comes when I, more often than I would like to, end clicking here or there to read the whole dimension of the news' foolishness, specially those of the politics or international section. Not having enough, sometimes I decide to go on flailing myself and with great decisiveness I get into the soul-withering experience of reading user comments on news sites... specially from the USA.

There is something terrible in watching from the first row gun control advocacy people and Second Amendment people clashing with their rantings, or Liberal Vs. Conservative people go restlessly with their dead, superficial and newspeak-arian discourse, repeated over and over and over again... or, well, the whole nonsense of the extraordinary sectarianism and confrontation that for some reason thrives with such passion and polarity in the USA.

Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with the general views those people represent, that superlative version of the sectarianism which I find everywhere and from which I run away in terror and repulsion, is one of the most painful, discouraging and despicable things I have so far found in life. It clearly ranks among the top 5 things which I dislike the most in the world.

I was never good at feeling part of bigger groups of people, so perhaps that makes it worse.

Because it aches me. These legions of people choosing beforehand their affiliations, flocking together and putting such affiliations over reason and justice, throwing themselves with great passion to repeat the discourse they heard in their circles and to confront with hateful eyes the opposition, the enemy, the others, without ever listening, or considering others' views and values, depriving human interaction of any reason and of the possibility for understanding and reconciliation.

Could these people ever listen to and understand each other?

Could the world possibly stop bullshitting around?

It downcasts me to the depths of heartlessness. I feel hopeless, shrugging miserably alone in the middle of a world to which I don't feel I belong.

Nevertheless, sooner or later, I go back to reading such crap, and, as usual, flail in hand, I end needing serious doses of good vibes that make me feel like hugging people again.