Where Do We Find The Strength To Be Miserable?

Film critic Roger Ebert, writing in his Chicago Sun Times blog on November 12^th, 2010, noted that he knows people who have volunteered to answer Alcoholics Anonymous phone numbers in Chicago. Ebert wrote that one person “after doing this for a time, wondered where people found the strength to keep on drinking despite the misery it was causing them.”

Strength??? How odd…until I thought about it. Then I wondered where any of us find the strength to maintain our misery.

I remember spending years being angry at my mother. Until I made peace with her, I didn’t realize how much strength it took to maintain that anger.

I had a friend who called his ex wife to apologize after years of not speaking. To his surprise, she was not happy to hear the apology. “I was prepared to hate you for the rest of my life,” she said. “What am I going to do now?”

Where did she find the strength to maintain her anger for all those years?

I’ve worked with many people who commit to changing a behavior that has frustrated them for years. Six months later, some of these same people have reverted to their old behavior, preferring instead to return to their misery.

Have you ever made a “commitment” to change and then failed to keep that commitment? How many say they’d like to be more patient and then blow up at the slightest delay? How many want to be more thankful but continue to complain? Who among us say they want to be a better listener, a better parent, a better anything and then…nothing changes?

Where do we find the strength to keep our misery in place?

We find the strength because, through repetition, we’ve become addicted to our misery. Or, put another way, feelings are produced when chemicals (neurotransmitters) are released in our bodies. When we try to change a behavior, what we’re really doing is trying to alter our body chemistry. When those chemicals we’ve been used to aren’t released, we miss them. That’s why people who change sometimes say, “I don’t feel right” or “I don’t feel like myself.” It’s the chemical “hit” that we’re missing, not the cigarette or the drink or the food or the anger or any other emotion.

This is really what my friend’s ex wife meant when she asked, “What do I do know?” In other words, what will replace my usual chemical addiction?

Perhaps you don’t think of these as addictions. But what else to call a behavior that we change for awhile and, then, revert to the way we always have done things in spite of our “misery?” The classic definition of insanity.

The difference between those who stop smoking, lose weight, begin an exercise program or change anger into compassion and those who don’t is the difference between those who are willing to put up with the discomfort of not getting their accustomed chemical hit.

Patience is not only a virtue. It’s the pathway to permanent change.