The mystery
Not very uncommon: there was this silly commercial I used to ran into every time I watched TV, a commercial that I particularly hated. I thought it was one of the silliest commercials of the decade, which is a lot to say, and every time I recognized it, I had this “oh no, here it comes again” sensation, knowing that I was going to waste the next twenty seconds of my life with an idiotic story that made me cringe. To make things even worse, I wasn’t by far a potential buyer for the product; generally, when you’re not the targeted consumer of a commercial, it causes nothing but indifference in you, but in this case I had become a sort of “collateral damage”.
I made up all kind of explanations to try to understand how could I hate so much this particular commercial: maybe because it was about cars (I need a break from them), because of the really cheap trick in the story to get the audience’s sympathy, or because it failed in its attempt to be funny and there is nothing more pathetic than that… I even thought that it could be because the ‘main character’ was ‘ugly’ (!).
In the meantime, to my despair, the commercial kept coming back to my mind time after time (would that stupid campaign ever end?). I don’t mean that I was obsessed to the extents of a ‘Close encounters of the third kind’ thing, but it certainly became too frequent sometimes; being in the middle of a sleepless night, for instance, one of those moments when all your troubles seem to be magnified, and then, suddenly and against your will, recalling those imbecile images once again, made you feel that human condition could be a really sad thing.
And then, all of a sudden, I understood it. It was oh so clear from the beginning… I had been pushing when all I had to do is pull: it took me some time to admit it but, in fact, the reason for that commercial hanging around so much with me was that I did like it, damn it.
What I learned
Only I can measure to what extent my solution was true. From that moment on, I stopped conceding so much importance to the commercial. Its mental visits became scarcer and shorter and, whenever it was on TV again, my natural reaction became laughing at it, or at myself, or at both of us, always in a tender way. There was something weird about liking such commercial, something slightly different to my idea of myself, and my conscious nature was struggling to accept it, but it was an innocent, nice process, that felt like growth. From my previous, judgmental stance (”cars are a cancer for the planet, those commercials keep yelling louder and louder without offering anything new, copywriters become more and more ignorant every year, they run out of ideas long ago”, etc…), I had evolved to simply enjoy the really simple story, and that was all.
Being told stories is a human need, and commercials are, among other things, micro-pills that fulfill such need. After showing some gratitude, after accepting what I was given without any judgment, the commercial soon lost the power it should never have had, all that power that, in a way, was maintained by me, to my own damage. There was a potential energy of admiration that could not find its way out, because I did not allow myself to have such feelings. So nature’s ‘replacement solution’ was letting it flow through a disproportionate sensation of dislike.
An immediate question arises: why didn’t I allow myself to feel admiration? Sadly, I think it was a matter of social conditioning. There is a certain set of emotions that our society (maybe all of them) forbids or simply ignores. One of them is the so called ‘love’, a term way too general to define a whole set of complex feelings, one of which is, as in my case, admiration. My childish side, my right brain hemisphere, which is not judgmental, simply watched the show and smiled (the left hemisphere would define such smile as “naive”, and we cannot blame it: it is its role to define things).
There was a rising amount of emotional energy yearning to be released with any tool at hand, and hatred was the handiest. Hatred is a mean of emotional participation, just the same as love, and opposites attract. That’s why I was so involved with that commercial. To reject is to embrace.
This ‘replacement response’ I’m talking about is present in a lot of people (you can see it a lot among older generations): people who use criticism, even insult, as a mean of participation, because a restrictive education has taught them that certain feelings must be repressed, and sometimes they have no better option to convey their interest. This kind of people is not easy to deal with but, once you get to know them better, you often discover a surprising second layer of sensitiveness, tenderness and very often, alas, suffering.
So be careful with that “crappy” action movie, with that “ridiculous” heavy metal band. Maybe behind all that mockery, there is a little child who would like to simply sit down and watch the show, no further questions asked. And now, as a sort of ‘discharge’, or a tribute to my relegated naive side, I’ll tell you what the commercial was about. A young guy dressed in a suit takes his car to the garage for reparation. The mechanics take charge of it. Then he goes outside the garage, looks around and, as he realizes that he has no mean to go back home, he unfolds his collar, as getting himself ready for a long and hard evening, and with a sigh, starts to hitchhike. Funny, isn’t it?
Have you ever had this kind of ‘parasite’ images? Do you know people with problems to express their positive feelings? What do you do to deal with them?
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