Buffering

What is buffering?

Buffering is the behavior that takes place when humans don’t want to experience negative emotions and will do anything to escape or avoid feeling them.

Instead of facing difficult emotions and willingly processing them, we hide, we procrastinate, or we never show up at all.

This isn’t because we are broken, flawed or unworthy, it’s because our human brain does not want to experience anything other than happiness and pleasure.

But life is 50/50.

50% positive. 50% negative.

And when we are constantly avoiding 50% of reality—we start buffering and suffering.

Eventually this leads us to avoid 100% of reality, where we are checked out and disconnected from ourselves and others entirely.

Our society encourages buffering because there’s a huge market for it.

We are quite literally brainwashed by the advertisements surrounding us that have us convinced we are entitled to experience pleasure all. of. the. time.

There’s pleasure in this fast food, there’s pleasure in this alcohol, there’s pleasure in this new car or home or outfit or computer. There’s pleasure in this destination, there’s pleasure in this video game, there’s pleasure in this pharmaceutical, there’s pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

Our attempts to buy, eat, travel, smoke, or drink away our uncomfortable negative emotions have never worked. And yet corporations and industries are still making billions off of the market that is human buffering.

It’s not because we are stupid and they aren’t. It’s simply because they are taking advantage of our brain’s natural inclination to seek pleasure—our primitive need for dopamine.

But we aren’t entitled to experience pleasure all of the time.

How do I know that? Because we don’t!

The human experience requires contrast. The yin and the yang. This contrast allows us to experience and recognize true pleasure, true happiness. But if we never allow the contrast and deny its existence, then we aren’t really experiencing true pleasure at all, we’re experiencing false pleasure.

There is real pleasure in eating incredible food and in buying a new car for example—there’s no need to judge our choice of buffer. It can’t be the choice of buffer’s fault after all, they’re inanimate.

But when they are used by us as a crutch, as a scapegoat for our own unwillingness to face the entire human experience—the good and the bad— then even these pleasurable activities morph into false pleasures.

False pleasures demolish any chance for experiencing the real pleasures that life has to offer. Because as they are being used we believe they are creating our pleasure, they are the only source of fulfillment. This isn’t correct.

We are our only source of fulfillment.

We must recognize first that true pleasure and fulfillment are states of being created by our own thoughts. If we mistakenly believe that the things outside of us create our positive (or negative) emotions, we will remain dependent and desperate for them always.

We will continue to over spend, overeat, over drink against our own will and begin to use these pleasures as a poison.

You could say fuck it, give me the poison, I’m just trying to pass the time here.

Just recognize there are consequences to our choices.

Our lives are not just our own.

They impact everyone and everything around us.

And maybe our experience isn’t all about just us?

Maybe our existence is so much bigger than that.

When we finally trade in the false pleasures for true wellbeing, we begin to build confidence. We begin to feel more empowered and in control of our experience. We begin to show up for our families and communities. We are finally contributing instead of mindlessly consuming. We suddenly stop taking, taking, taking and remember how to give.

And all that’s required is our decision to face the feelings.