Pain.
So, what do apologies truly say? Are you truly sorry and do you truly recognize all the pain you have caused with the things you have done? These questions and more seem to bog my mind in the past hour or so, and I’m really thinking hard about this.
If someone hurts you are you obligated to hurt them back (Stupid question, the answer is no, but some of us do say yes)? I’m not one of them people, but I can say that I am a hurt individual, and I have lost many in my life (Not just romantic interests, but family and friends) for stupid reasons and because inside I struggle to convey what I really want to say. I think it goes into my next word.
Scared
“Do You Really want to hurt me?” – Haddaway: What is love.
But, do you? I think in human nature we are scared of hurting someone else (even if it seems as though we aren’t), and the pain we experience is brought on by the idea of hurting someone you feel close to. I remember the second time I ever broke up with a girlfriend in my life (only not even a year ago or so) and I was crying for 4 or 5 hours afterwards and someone couldn’t understand why I was crying, but instead was angry because I was crying over hurting her. From my study of Early Humans and the Evolutionary Theory, I really want to depict the emotional and social concepts that these humans have. I say this because If, as a modern human, we can feel so deeply when we hurt another, then why can there be others in this world who can feel so deeply to want to hurt others?
Compassion
Have you ever felt like No matter what you did you wouldn’t win? yeah? Welcome to the world that we live in today. Everyone feels that, and it just hurts to believe that we have to live this way sometimes, but emotion is something of a guarded matter. Some of us live for others, some of us live through others, and some of us just live for ourselves, but all in all, we ALL have some level of compassion. We are socialized with this when we are younger and it only develops stronger as we get older (we are assumed to believe) but, our environment is so important that maybe we have developed the way we have for a reason.
Nature vs. Nurture?
The obvious heated debate in all Psychology, Sociology, and many other discipline classes, but which does influence us more? I know, this is going all over the board, but I’m thinking of a lot right now. I remember talking to my Mother and (already developed this Hypothesis) said my relationships with males in my life have been null and I some how don’t know how to act or something because they don’t formulate well. She responded with “it’s because of the relationship you had with your father”. I had this formulated before I even stated that, and that is where I can see the Nurture side of things. It makes a very fair amount of sense, and no matter what I do in my life I can’t take what I learned in that crucial time away because I was nurtured to be this way. But, on the other hand Nature plays many keys roles, or your environment. SW Detroit to Wyandotte, Michigan, to Allendale, Michigan. I have seen so many ways of life and have ventured out of the country to see other ways of life and tons of different churches to see different ways of thinking about God, and Overall, I don’t know what that has done for me. It has shaped me and made me believe many things and refuted others, but I’m not sure. I’m not saying your environment is not important (Actually the total opposite of what I am saying) but, I am saying for me, personally, I just believe that some of my growth has descended and affected me.
Round 2
So, As I just let my mind drift and put down the thoughts that are running through my mind, what do you think? Can we be socialized as males to innately do what we do to women? As in, we are often blamed for our infidelity, our disloyalty, our lies, ect. But, is that innate? I can say with full honesty, through some research, that some things are. As in, NPR does a radio show that is on the American Life and in that show they talked about a man with no Testosterone in his body and someone who went through a female to male operation. Thus, two opposites. The one with no Testosterone admitted to feeling like he had no want to do anything at all, and he often just sat in his bed and did nothing, no ambitions. This has no help to what I am saying, but the other does. The female to male had been given as much testosterone as “two linebackers” and he said it was very odd. Before the operation he was a Feminist and felt as though men were pigs for the things that they did (i.e staring at a woman’s breasts), but he found that he was walking down the street one day and was staring at this woman’s butt and then passed by her. Everything within him of the Feminist was saying “don’t turn around, you are disgusting”, but in the end, he turned around to stare at her breasts. He said that there was something within him that couldn’t help him but look and want to do many things to her. From that he also went on to say that he found much more compassion for males than what she had before that encounter. With this I am saying that maybe there are more innate things that sit inside our sexuality or not even that, within our gender specification (even if overall we have more than two, you still are attracted to what you are attracted to) that brings us to do what we do and hurt the people in our lives (yes, right now I am talking about men) but not mean to.
This is all that has bogged my mind in the past hour or two. I’m not sure, but I really believe the conclusion that, as a male, our innate urges (Not so much Freudian) ,but more environmentally affective and friendship affective urges, are a lot stronger than we think. Now, I’m not labeling all men with this because that is done enough and absurd because there are some great guys out there, but I’m saying at least inside of me, I think that I feel this. Sometimes I don’t have control and I just fail. And to elaborate more it comes from a feeling of being scared of hurting another individual and ending up crying like I was before, and yet I just hurt them more by being scared.
The more Psychology classes I take the more I am going to believe this. Next Semester I am taking Social Psychology, and I think my understanding will prevail even more and I want to study this closer. I feel like we aren’t always responsible for what we do, but at the end of the day we are…
If I hurt you in my past with my words, with my accidents, with my mess ups, I am truly sorry. I don’t understand, often I truly do not. I have yet to find myself I guess (some would argue different), but hopefully I can better this for myself and others in my life, and also understand that maybe my hypothesis is actually correct.
If you agree, if you refute,if you’re angry, Happy, I’m open to all, just post a comment and let me know how you feel. This is just an open ended discussion of what Is on my mind at the moment. It is not put together as well as it could be, but it is what it is supposed to be.
My Regards,
Erik V. Miller
Just Call Me... E 