Is a Drama Free Life Possible?
Anger, hate, turmoil, conflict, backstabbing, conspiring, and losing it - what do all these words have in common? The answer is that they are all feelings that arise from drama. This drama is not the same kind as found in acting but rather the kind that arises from frustration and unhappiness. Some people who are naturally hot heads feel that drama is an inevitable reality of life and think that those who don’t have drama in their lives don’t care and don’t strive to be anything more than they are. On the other hand there are also those who are very calm and never take calculated risks in their lives to improve it because they dread drama to the point of backing down all the time and never defending themselves or the people who trust them. In fact, there is a happy medium between these two extremes. I believe there is a way to eliminate all the feelings that contribute to drama, stress and anxiety in one’s life. The trick is that you have to play your cards right and really get to know yourself and your emotional environment.
The Root Causes of Drama
From what I’ve seen, the primary contributor to a drama-riddled life is scarcity. Nothing polarizes people more and makes them go crazy than access to limited resources (e.g. money). When a person’s survival and/or ego are threatened, that will generate the most drama. In dysfunctional systems, whether they are families or communities, whenever there is scarcity drama quickly follows. Heated arguments can arise over determining which resources belong to whom and how the owner is entitled to those resources (i.e. earned, inherited, given by divine right etc.) In other cases, drama can be caused not only by disagreements over physical resources and wealth but also by a lack of attention, which in turn leads to a lack of positive feelings and/or belonging. Some people have grown up in very drama-rich environments and don’t understand how others don’t live like that. On the other hand, there are those who live in environments where there is hardly any drama at all and avoid drama like it’s a plague. You tend to see these phenomena regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status etc.
Stuck in the Middle
While popular culture thrives off of drama, we sadly tend to ignore the innocent bystanders who are caught up in it. There are those of us, such as myself, who are really turned off by drama and who want nothing to do with it but who were unfortunately born into drama-rich environments. We feel out of place and powerless, especially when we are under 18. Some of us who are born into an environment like that think that all other environments are like that too but are shocked to find out they really aren’t. Additionally, even if a person grows up in a drama less family environment, there are, of course, many other drama-rich environments they could be exposed to such as schools and workplaces. Then it comes as a shock to them that such drama rich environments exist because they aren’t used to it.
Overcoming Temptation
Having spent time with people who thrive on drama, I’ve come away with an understanding of how drama-rich environments are created. Competitive environments create a scarcity mindset, which can breed drama. From what I’ve seen, nothing creates drama more effectively than when you have dog-eat-dog mentalities running amok. Two people who got along swimmingly can become mortal enemies when you introduce some kind of challenge or competition with a reward at the end of it (even when that reward is intangible such as a title). Personally, I’ve seen this phenomenon at work when sales managers try to pit their employees against each other “all in good fun” but it breeds drama and ill will. Where I see less drama is in collaborative environments where people are working in their element and are each pulling their own weight. To make a pop culture analogy, what we see all too often is a Hunger Games / Lord of the Flies-like environment when we should be aiming towards a cooperative Star Trek / Jetsons environment. The smart thing to do in situations where people want to divide and conquer others isn’t to let those people seduce you with promises of accolades and recognition, but rather to refuse to fall prey to their influence and keep friendships with those who you’ve always gotten along with. Ways to reduce drama do exist, but unfortunately some people are too intellectually lazy to commit to them because it requires long term thinking, which is a rare trait given our culture of 30-second soundbites and endless distractions.
Used and Abused
In my previous post about finding home, I said “being a pawn isn’t fun”. Another way to phrase that is “being a drama proxy sucks.” Drama proxies find themselves in sticky situations because people who have power over them abuse their power to make the proxies do their dirty work. When those in power don’t want to directly get into a tussle, they tell their proxy to relay the message (usually an angry one) to said person. They’ll usually tell the proxy something like “Don’t tell them I told you to tell them x.” Then when the person who most likely didn’t want to be the proxy comes back and fails to tell the recipient about x then the perpetrator (usually a drama king/queen) gets angry, annoyed or withholds certain things from the person because they refused to be a proxy. It’s especially egregious in situations where the one being used as a proxy is a child, has no power and relies on the drama creator for support and/or love. A drama hostage situation occurs when this behavior becomes a repeated cycle, and for many drama hostages, life can put them through things they don’t deserve. On the other hand, it also can make them more resilient when they grow up.
Poisoning Society
The realities of being a drama hostage can be quite grotesque. First of all, the person who is creating all the drama is the person who should really be in charge of diffusing it. These people are parents, teachers, and bosses. Any decent human being who holds a position of power over others should be thinking about how to enrich and nurture those people under them. Unfortunately, many times this isn’t the case. Sometimes power is acquired by being a hothead or a cutthroat who makes people’s lives miserable. These people likely adapted this behavior from a drama-filled environment they grew up in and thus are continuing a vicious cycle. It’s especially bad when society sinks into a mindset of apathy and despondency where people think this toxic behavior is normal. At this point, the drama hostage reaches out for help but is met with either indifference or, even worse, being told they deserve the drama they are going through and are too “soft.” Many of these drama hostages end up developing Stockholm syndrome and internalize this victim-blaming mentality. The saddest part is that it can turn into a chain of drama hostages with Stockholm Syndrome that passes from generation to generation. All it takes is for one drama hostage to break this cycle when the opportunity arises.
The Stranglehold of Power
If scarcity isn’t an issue and you’re living in a family or society of abundance but are still seeing or experiencing drama, then it’s likely a few drama kings/queens creating it. These drama kings/queens are generally filled with ego, pride and/or pain and choose to unload the drama from difficult situations in their lives unto others. They essentially spill their drama all over the place like a profusely bleeding, untreated flesh wound. This festering wound can quickly start to spread like a disease. Then the question becomes: Why do the people they are around sometimes gladly accept getting bled on? Likely many of them were born around drama and feel a sense of duty to embrace it. The other more nefarious reason is that the person being bled on has no choice unless they want to spend their lives living on the streets or in a shelter. These drama kings/queens have enough money, power, sensitive items etc. to make it so that their subjects/hostages can’t leave or they’ll risk being in dire straits (straits which can be even more dire than the drama they’re used to).
Vultures Circling Above
As we’ve established, being a drama hostage stinks and can put a person into uncomfortable situations. This person may feel hopeless until one day, someone promises a way out of the hostage situation and a path towards freedom. At this point, the hostage has to decide if the risk is worth it or not, and that risk is usually a financial one. For example, an internet guru comes along and offers an expensive course that he promises will lead you to the freedom you desire and the life you’ve always dreamed of. In a worst case scenario, the hostage comes to realize that it’s not an underground railroad to freedom but it’s really another hostage situation in the making. In this example, the internet guru is nothing but a fame money and attention-seeking celebrity that feeds off of people’s desperation. Sometimes these opportunists create their own drama in your life through backstabbing and manipulation, which means that you’re also a drama hostage to the person you thought would bring you your freedom. At some point too much drama becomes trauma and you feel like there is so much weight on your shoulders that you just want to go into a corner into the fetal position and take a break from dealing with life. I wish this position on no one but, I’ve seen it happen to so many decent people who don’t deserve the predicament that they are in.
Finding a Sanctuary
On a positive note, these drama hostages are often able to find drama free sanctuaries. They are the places where you find your flow and are in your element. They may be physical places or a connection with special friends. These are the types of friends they are very loyal, trustworthy, helpful and know your story through thick and thin. These are the friendships that should be cherished. Even if you only have one of them, don’t take it for granted. At the micro-level you know of these drama free sanctuaries and how good you can feel when you are in one of these places. The question then is: How would you make it so that these good feelings encompass more of your life?
A Path Towards a Brighter Future
What has to be done is to identify the drama kings/queens in your life and not be beholden to them. When the source of drama is a scarcity environment then it’s time to create abundance both physically and mentally. Abundance in this sense is thinking about ways of bringing in positive energy and growing your pool of close friends instead of just focusing on what's available at the moment. Don’t give into stupid ideas about drama being necessary and “good for you” - all that is bullshit and not proven. I’ve seen this awakening to how things can be better and how I can have the drama reduced in my life and society through the Yang campaign. Yang’s freedom dividend will be a lifeline to all of those drama hostages to finally be released from their situations. In fact, the ultimate dream I’ve had since growing up as a drama hostage is to free all the other hostages from their situations. I can only dream of how amazing things are going to be when, instead of being used as proxies and going through unnecessary trauma, these freed hostages can unleash their talent and potential upon the world. When we’re growing up, we’re often given a nonsensical narrative from people who don’t know any better that such misery is a fact of life. The more I dug into it from a bird’s-eye view, the more I realized that this mindset is a vestige from a bygone era being propped up by our “elders”, who we’re told to respect but who have failed to adapt to the new realities of an evolving world. They cling on to bad ideas and defend them for no other reason than to preserve what they are nostalgic for. It’s time to show such people a new way forward and take the next step into our emotional evolution. I believe that by knowing how to better understand our own psychology and treating society’s assumptions and expectations with a healthy dose of skepticism, we can create a life and a world worth living in instead of just something we have to put up with.