We have spent a lot of time talking about the complexity of poop as it relates to life, but so far we have focused our discussion on the physicality of human existence and how it inevitably involves a great many other subjects relating to human existence. There is a striking curiosity, though, in what we tend to mean when we refer to how poopy or how crappy life is, and that is the fact that we are seldom complaining about the materiality of human life when we do so. Few people, at least in my own experience, are full of complaints and resentment about the physical aspects of human existence that could be classified, even in the broader sense, as poop. We may not like to sweat, we may not be overly interested in hearing how our female friends and relatives are dealing with their time of the month, nor may we relish hearing some old person talk about how regular they feel (or not). Yet at the same time, we tend to accept that the physical aspects of our life, by and large, are what they are. We do not enjoy them but we have to deal with them and do not allow them to trouble us. We accept that babies and old people poop, that senile presidents may fight losing battles with their chairs, and that it can be hard to communicate with those who stare with a vacant expression, whether or not something is going on inside. Why, then, do we refer to our existence (often) as poopy or crappy. What are we really complaining about when we do so?

It may be obvious to you, dear reader, that we have spent a lot of time talking about poop as relating to externalities. Poop, whether physical or metaphorical, is what is inside of us that finds its way outside. At times it does so in an orderly and regular fashion that we are able to handle appropriately and privately, and at times it happens unexpectedly and in an embarrassing or unpleasant manner that other people have to deal with. While everyone has to deal within themselves with the same physical processes relating to poop, there is a marked asymmetry in how we deal with metaphorical poop that creates a large percentage of our problems with other people (and, incidentally enough, a great many of the grievances that others have against us). That asymmetry is, as follows, once we have extruded poop from ourselves, we no longer think about it, but we cannot stop thinking about or resenting the poop that other people extrude and make us deal with. There is a saying that creditors have better memories than debtors, and that springs from a related asymmetry, in that people who feel as if they are owed something are far more interested in remembering what they are owed and in trying to be repaid for their hassles than those who have acquired debts and desired (understandably) to forget them as fast as they are able. The same is true with poop. Once it is outside of us, we no longer care about it, as it is no longer negatively affecting us, is no longer something we have to hide or cover or restrain. Once it is out, it is out, and we do not have to deal with it anymore. Unfortunately, other people do have to deal with the external ramifications of what we say and do, and they do not like having to deal with our crap.

And that is exactly how people put it as well. If others are acting out of the frustrations that they feel, we are tired of putting up with their crap. As beings, we struggle to put ourselves in the place of others on a regular basis. We all know ourselves to be people who are very sensitive to the slights that other people give towards us. We can hold onto petty resentments about being socially cut or being excluded from parties subjected to some sort of raillery or abuse for years, decades, our whole lives even. Yet we can casually act in ways that hurt others and never think a second about it ever again. We care deeply if other people are doing things in ways that we feel comfortable with but may not even inquire as to how others would prefer for us to deal with things as it regards to them. We relish in opportunities to tell others that facts do not care about feelings and give people hard and unpleasant truths, told unkindly, and yet the instant that someone does the same to us we rise up in self-righteous indignation and anger at their cruelty and meanness for daring to treat us in such a disrespectful manner, for our feelings do not care about the facts. It is not merely that we have a hard time in being empathetic with others, even though every human being knows what it is like to have to deal with the problems that other people force on us, and we resent it every day of our lives, but we have just as difficult a time being just. We can see the double standards and hypocrisy of others extremely easily, but bristle when other people accuse us of preaching standards we do not practice and of telling people to do what we say and not what we do.

This affects us in all areas of life. Parents get angry at their children for developing the same bad habits that they model to their families. Bosses treat their employees in ways that they would never accept to be treated back. People around us demand our time to listen to their stories and hear their complaints about the state of the world but no one has time for our own complaints and struggles. Given that we know and care so much about our feelings and our perspective and are very attentive to whether other people give us the love and respect that we feel and know ourselves to deserve, why is it so hard to treat others as they deserve? I do not speak of this problem as one who does not struggle with it. I know myself to be a person who has been thoughtless and flippant, fond of biting and sarcastic and offensive humor, and yet with a great store of resentment towards the wrongs that I have suffered at the hands of others. I know the hypocrisy of others because I first know it within myself. I know the struggle to live according to my ideals, to be a good model of the way of life I would enforce on others. If I see that gap as yawning and wide with others, it is because I have contemplated that gap within me as well. The same should be true of everyone else. If we really understood and reflected on our behavior towards others, we would all find many reasons to feel a great deal of remorse and contrition and a desire not to be judged according to our sins. If we understood the extent to which we needed to be forgiven and extended grace, perhaps we might be more willing to extend that grace to others.

When we reflect on the materiality of life, we tend to philosophically view it as inevitable that physical life is messy, and so we do not appear to be bothered to an extreme degree over the physical messiness of our lives. From childhood I have dealt with a marked tendency to have a bloody nose, and despite its occasional inconveniences, I tend to view having a safety valve that keeps the blood pressure in my head from getting to high as, all things considered, a helpful thing in reducing stress that could otherwise be fatal. Similarly, I do not lose any sleep at night over the fact that I find it necessary to go to the bathroom in a regular fashion, and neither does anyone else that I know, given that we all know that the food we eat must be eliminated and pass out of us as waste that we trust others to deal with. The task, then, is to understand that messiness of a metaphorical kind is just as “natural” and just as inevitable as the physical messiness that we have to deal with. We are beings who cannot hold things inside of us. We must get things out. How do we do this? We can try to seek power to do unto others as others have done unto us. We can write about our struggles, talk about them, use them as fuel for compassion and a heartfelt desire to see righteousness spread throughout the world. When others come to us and call to our attention the messiness of our behavior, we are quick to justify ourselves by pointing to what we have had to deal with, the difficulties in our conditions, the traumas of our childhood, the oppression our peoples have suffered over the generations, and so on. But where did that come from? It’s turtles all the way down. Everyone can repeat the same stories of struggles and difficulties that have to be dealt with that shape and affect our behavior. No one is immune from the poopiness of human existence, whether in physical or metaphorical form. We can only ask ourselves what we are going to do about it.