Moral No-Ground

Posted by fxckfeelings on January 18, 2010

People get demoralized when they feel they’re not getting what they deserve, be it pain relief or respect. It’s natural to go on strike and either A, start raging against the machine of injustice, or B, go the other way and surrender to a life on the couch in sweatpants and a snuggie. Of course, the resulting fall-out will feel like a side-effect of the original injustice, not a direct result of your tantrum, but you’ll be too high on rage/comforted by your snuggie to understand. Understand this now, before you protest; better to suffer the original injustice in peace than the further demoralization of unemployment, stiff drinks and a blanket with sleeves.
–Dr. Lastname

I have a dedicated husband, three teenagers, a nice house, a well-behaved dog—it’s not a bad life—but I’ve had a nagging sadness my entire life, and I still do, despite all the good things I’ve got. I deal with it, admittedly, by drinking a bit. I wouldn’t say I’m a drunk, and my drinking doesn’t interfere with my parenting or my marriage anymore than my mood does, but I know that what I’m doing is self-medicating. My husband wants me to see a shrink because he thinks I should take real medication for depression, but if my drinking doesn’t mess up my life, and if, despite all I have, I can’t be happy, anyway, then I don’t understand what makes one medication better than the other. My goal isn’t to be happy, just to withstand my misery, my way, right or wrong.

I understand that chronic depression, which is what we call “nagging sadness” in the biz, isn’t fun. It can make you grumpy, negative, unmotivated, scattered, and lousy at whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

All that’s excluding the pain, so no wonder it can demoralize you into seeing a negative future for yourself. It’s enough to make you want to turn “what the fuck” into words to live by.

If there was some way to relieve your pain that was risk-free and didn’t affect your other life priorities, that would be wonderful (for you—the aforementioned biz would probably dry up).

Sadly, said riskless, perfect painkiller, psychic or otherwise, hasn’t been invented yet, which is why depression relief requires hard choices and can’t be your only goal.

Clearly, you’ve got other goals than depression relief, or you wouldn’t have the good family you do. Good families take lots of work, so I suspect you’re good at putting the goals of work and family-raising first. Being strong about these goals can’t make your depression go away, but it can keep depression from affecting what’s important, and that’s an accomplishment to be proud of.

Drinking hasn’t done you any apparent harm, but your decision-making method is dangerous. You didn’t weigh risks and benefits, and you didn’t mention the fact that drinking, in the long run, tends to make depression and anxiety worse, and doesn’t protect your brain from the risk of long term damage that depression is now known to cause.

Don’t tell yourself there’s no point in giving up your only source of happiness for the sake of a future that will never be happy. You don’t make most of your decisions that way, and it’s a bad example for your kids.

Do what’s right in the long run, even when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, or at least consider doing what’s right, even when the long run doesn’t feel worth it, but you know it is.

You might feel like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but that’s your damned feelings talking, not your values.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to guide your drinking decisions. “Alcohol gives me relief from depression and hasn’t done me any harm. But I know the risks from using alcohol increase over time and my future matters, (even if I don’t feel like it does), so I will keep looking for and considering lower-risk alternatives and try to make whatever decision is best for me and my family.”

I’m conscientious and hard-working and I don’t need a lot of praise from the boss—I’ve been in my line of work for a long time—but the thing that’s gotten me in trouble in the past, and what’s threatening my position at my current office, is that I hate it when someone acts like they’re doing more work than I do and the boss agrees. I need this job and I’m good at it, but I don’t want to lie down and roll over when someone says I’m a slacker and deprives me of respect I deserve. My goal is to keep my job and that means not letting anyone ruin my good reputation.

In a fair world, we’d all get respected for the hard work we do. The need to get respected is basic: most large companies do elaborate reviews, wasting tons of time, to make sure it happens; it gets most married couples fighting, sooner or later; it got Rodney Dangerfield to stretch his collar for decades.

So of course you know that the right to get the respect you deserve…doesn’t actually exist. That’s a fact of life, and it really hurts, but the best thing you can do is do what you think is right and hope that someone notices. That, and maybe hire someone good at PR (and acquire a taste for shit, since, sooner or later, at some point in your career, you’re going to be eating it, buffet-style).

I know, your friends tell you to stand up for yourself, and your company assures you that their HR department is there to help anyone who has been treated unfairly.

As your e-doctor, however, I’m telling you, bullshit. If you’re complaining to me, chances are that you’ve tried to speak up and it hasn’t worked. Worse, it’s drawing fire.

Yup, that’s what often happens, and it’s not because bosses and HR staff are insincere and evil, or at least not usually. People aren’t evil, they’re stupid; they speak different languages, then look at the same thing and come to opposite conclusions neither side can understand.

If you’re really good at describing someone else’s evil abuse of power and your abuser can’t see the abuse, but understands how you see him, you know what will happen—it’s the law of conservation of victimhood—it will come right back at you.

He’ll work harder to compile new instances of your slacking and you’ll have new fodder for outrage, less job security, and more reason to see a lawyer, thus making worker-boss divorce almost inevitable.

You want justice, you’ll get unemployment. The real injustice is that conscientious people often hurt the most over this issue, while a real slacker wouldn’t care.

Your goal should never be justice, but making the best of a shitty situation and keeping your job, if you have to, for as long as necessary. That means eating shit, smiling, and not letting moral outrage and helplessness stop you from searching for better work (or gathering evidence of mistreatment in case you can use it some day).

See a lawyer, by all means, to see what it takes to make a good case. Your goal, though, is to maintain your steady diet of shit and smile until the legal case is in place, if it ever is. In the meantime, stay strong, quiet, and well-stocked with tic-tacs.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for quittin’ time. “I do a good day’s work for no respect and it hurts. I can’t change it and I can’t find another job. But the reason I work isn’t to get respect, but to make a living, and if I do that under difficult circumstances, I deserve more respect from the person who knows what’s going on, and that’s me.”