I believe expression is good and healthy. Especially for men, it is a challenge to find a method to express and still be strong, sane, and secure. However, without a method, I think people end up without resolution. There are few things I hate more than cyclical issues. A cyclical thought will drive me crazy until I can just break that cycle. On a larger scale, cyclical problems, or bad habits are something that I believe everyone deals with. Some excuse them as part of being their nature and work around it. To me this is a cop-out; while we still are breathing, can we not improve? Most certainly, some obstacles can never be overcome, but I would suggest they should not be in our path to begin with. The obstacles in our path, and self-created obstacles, are manageable by the simple fact that we have ownership over it.

So, with external obstacles, or self-inflicted ones, when we bump into them and it hurts, or surprises us, we might say “ouch” or “whoa”, “ah”. Some form of expression to acknowledge its existence. If you say “ouch”, and yet continue doing that activity, there may be two reasons for that. One may be a calculated plan for eventual good, or one may be stubborn idiocy. If you DONT say “ouch”, then perhaps it didn’t really hurt, or its not really a problem to resolve and it is “easier” to tolerate. You can choose to live in a house with broken glass on the floor, dead rats in the corner, and land-mines with warnings over them if you really want to play hopscotch in your own life. It isn’t fun to acknowledge problems, and it takes sometimes significant amount of work and courage to deal with them. Welcome to life on earth.

Start by saying “ouch”.