I think far too much. In a bad, unproductive way.
Analytical, critical, hypothetical, wistful, regretful...all in ways that complicate or confuse whatever actually exists in the present. This is something that I've picked up from my recent yoga practice. I only started about 2.5 months ago, but I really enjoy it so far. It's the one activity in which I cannot be competitive with myself or anyone else; I can only do what feels right in the moment. If I don't, well, I'll hurt myself.
One thing I'd like to try to counteract the pessimism, fear, and critical eye that I attach to so many of my experiences, thoughts, and feelings, is to enjoy some of the beautiful or the moving things that I find. In this context, it will be internet content, I guess.
So, here's an attempt:
LIGHT.
Light in movement.
Light at dawn when we wake up in the morning.
Light in sound.
Monday, July 15, 2013
mental health (orig. Feb 5, 2013)
I often find myself unable to articulate what I'm thinking -- if my eyes could follow my thought process, they would dart around a space, a room, the world at lightning speed, making connections between a sound and a song and a phrase and a book and a talk and a person and a place...there'd be invisible threads connecting virtually everything. It's perhaps for this reason that I find data, statistics, analyses so interesting; they create connections and ties between things in a way that's understandable.
Well, here's another link, another connection:
Our country seems to like to use mental health as a scape goat. An easy way out to a more deeply-seeded policy, societal, legal, or structural issue that we don't want to face.
Take, for example, the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. We were so quick to talk about keeping those deemed mentally ill away from weapons, of the mental health of the shooter. Certainly, this is an issue. I personally don't see why people need guns at all, but that is just my personal opinion. But this nagging, blind focus on mental health...just a distraction, an easy way out compared to examining gun policies, putting up the good fight against the National Rifle Association, to re-evaluating what we mean in our interpretation and protection of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. We seem quick to demonize those suffering from schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and all sorts of other mental health challenges, quick to rule out the possibility that bad policies and crazed protection of gun rights might be somewhat at fault.
Take, for example, the tragedy and the unflagging pursuit of Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, technology genius, my friend's partner in life and love. The media and some others are so fixated on Aaron's supposed battle with depression as the cause of his death (I say "supposed" only because I did not know him well enough to presume that I would know anything about his health). Out of fear of the work and constant pressure and persistence that real change requires, we run to blame the deceased, we run to blame those who are not here to defend or explain themselves. Instead of asking ourselves the deeper questions: should education be free, do we need reform to our mechanisms of legal prosecution, do we need more checks on the judicial system...instead of asking ourselves these important things, we flit our eyes away and point at whatever moves first.
Let us not presume to know what once plagued those who walked the Earth yesterday -- let us embrace and support those among us who grapple with mental illness and mental health, and let us be brave and step forward, seeking to make laws, systems, rules, the world, better in earnest.
Well, here's another link, another connection:
Our country seems to like to use mental health as a scape goat. An easy way out to a more deeply-seeded policy, societal, legal, or structural issue that we don't want to face.
Take, for example, the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. We were so quick to talk about keeping those deemed mentally ill away from weapons, of the mental health of the shooter. Certainly, this is an issue. I personally don't see why people need guns at all, but that is just my personal opinion. But this nagging, blind focus on mental health...just a distraction, an easy way out compared to examining gun policies, putting up the good fight against the National Rifle Association, to re-evaluating what we mean in our interpretation and protection of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. We seem quick to demonize those suffering from schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and all sorts of other mental health challenges, quick to rule out the possibility that bad policies and crazed protection of gun rights might be somewhat at fault.
Take, for example, the tragedy and the unflagging pursuit of Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, technology genius, my friend's partner in life and love. The media and some others are so fixated on Aaron's supposed battle with depression as the cause of his death (I say "supposed" only because I did not know him well enough to presume that I would know anything about his health). Out of fear of the work and constant pressure and persistence that real change requires, we run to blame the deceased, we run to blame those who are not here to defend or explain themselves. Instead of asking ourselves the deeper questions: should education be free, do we need reform to our mechanisms of legal prosecution, do we need more checks on the judicial system...instead of asking ourselves these important things, we flit our eyes away and point at whatever moves first.
Let us not presume to know what once plagued those who walked the Earth yesterday -- let us embrace and support those among us who grapple with mental illness and mental health, and let us be brave and step forward, seeking to make laws, systems, rules, the world, better in earnest.
death and laws of physics (orig. Jan 17, 2013)
I do not observe any religion.
I was not raised in a praying household.
I do not currently believe in any deities.
It is not that I reject religion; I am simply unable to find understanding or comfort in a system with which I am not familiar.
In times of loss, however, I find myself grasping for an explanation, or at least some sort of intellectual poultice or tourniquet to quell the endless tear-stained streams of thoughts and errant analyses that emerge in the night. They always seem most active in times of stillness: upon waking and opening our eyes in the morning, when we first contextualize what we see and hear and feel, remembering what has happened, remembering what is or is not; before drifting into the unconscious, as the mind often runs through what has changed in our understanding of the world that day.
But I have found something familiar and scientific to explain it all, to tell me where the breaths go, where the spirits go, what comes next:
Conservation of energy.
It explains why our love for someone can still hurt so badly years after they are gone, why a memory can still bring tears to our eyes decades after it has taken place, why someone may leave us but never quite seem to disappear completely.
That emptiness we feel, the way we turn into ourselves to see if we are doing enough and if we are enough, the refocusing of our eyes on the priorities we now find hold a renewed importance...these are all manifestations of this conservation of energy, the transformation of the magnificent and powerful force that a beautiful and full life contains into yet another force, unnamed, unperceived, that changes us all and thus changes the world, forever.
In some cases, as one we have lost now rests in peace, millions, perhaps billions, of us walking these grounds have woken to a blinding truth, a white light that exposes what he has seen all along. His light has not been extinguished; it has only exploded and multiplied into millions, perhaps billions, of lights around the world, changing and passing through bodies that will manifest this one person's force in a million, perhaps a billion ways.
Yet in other cases, the one we lose may leave us with a discrete aching of the heart that burns more acutely some times more than others, reminding us to be good to one another, and to reach out to those we feel are slipping away. His heart has not stopped, it has merely passed on its warm and generous drumbeat to those who carry his life in the form of a message of friendship and love.
As time passes and as we age, we lose more people who we loved or held near to our hearts, and no matter how stoic we are, such losses stab us in the gut. The cancers, the suicides, the accidents, and the years; we can know it's coming all our lives and still, with the last breath, we feel only shock and sudden cold.
It is not that I need confirmation of an afterlife or a reincarnation, but I refuse to accept that a life force, any life, beautiful, vibrant, full of experiences, lessons, stories, and character, can simply disappear into thin air.
I know where we go now.
I was not raised in a praying household.
I do not currently believe in any deities.
It is not that I reject religion; I am simply unable to find understanding or comfort in a system with which I am not familiar.
In times of loss, however, I find myself grasping for an explanation, or at least some sort of intellectual poultice or tourniquet to quell the endless tear-stained streams of thoughts and errant analyses that emerge in the night. They always seem most active in times of stillness: upon waking and opening our eyes in the morning, when we first contextualize what we see and hear and feel, remembering what has happened, remembering what is or is not; before drifting into the unconscious, as the mind often runs through what has changed in our understanding of the world that day.
But I have found something familiar and scientific to explain it all, to tell me where the breaths go, where the spirits go, what comes next:
Conservation of energy.
It explains why our love for someone can still hurt so badly years after they are gone, why a memory can still bring tears to our eyes decades after it has taken place, why someone may leave us but never quite seem to disappear completely.
That emptiness we feel, the way we turn into ourselves to see if we are doing enough and if we are enough, the refocusing of our eyes on the priorities we now find hold a renewed importance...these are all manifestations of this conservation of energy, the transformation of the magnificent and powerful force that a beautiful and full life contains into yet another force, unnamed, unperceived, that changes us all and thus changes the world, forever.
In some cases, as one we have lost now rests in peace, millions, perhaps billions, of us walking these grounds have woken to a blinding truth, a white light that exposes what he has seen all along. His light has not been extinguished; it has only exploded and multiplied into millions, perhaps billions, of lights around the world, changing and passing through bodies that will manifest this one person's force in a million, perhaps a billion ways.
Yet in other cases, the one we lose may leave us with a discrete aching of the heart that burns more acutely some times more than others, reminding us to be good to one another, and to reach out to those we feel are slipping away. His heart has not stopped, it has merely passed on its warm and generous drumbeat to those who carry his life in the form of a message of friendship and love.
As time passes and as we age, we lose more people who we loved or held near to our hearts, and no matter how stoic we are, such losses stab us in the gut. The cancers, the suicides, the accidents, and the years; we can know it's coming all our lives and still, with the last breath, we feel only shock and sudden cold.
It is not that I need confirmation of an afterlife or a reincarnation, but I refuse to accept that a life force, any life, beautiful, vibrant, full of experiences, lessons, stories, and character, can simply disappear into thin air.
I know where we go now.
fear (orig. Jan 16, 2013)
I am generally anxious person, a worrywart of sorts. I follow most rules and get nervous when I don't, and I am often concerned about how others might perceive me and think a lot about the implications of my behavior or my decisions, often to a fault.
My thinking of late has made me consider deeply this notion of fear, fear as a driver of action.
My conclusion is as follows:
Fear cannot drive us. Actions and decisions coming from places of deep-seeded, irrational, or uninformed fear lead only to bad things.
I ask you to consider the following events and pieces of information. All things discussed or things that occurred in what I feel is quite recent:
We cannot operate on fear, swinging wildly from one disproportionate reaction to an extreme solution, from a bulging funhouse-mirror reflection of an interpretation of a situation or another person to an oversimplified blanket response that leads to nothing but further confusion, further pain, further insecurity, and more destruction.
Instead, a quest for truth, a search for clarity. A desire to understand and an intent to listen. We cannot operate on fear.
I am having difficulty being as eloquent as I would like, so I will leave some quotes about fear to close this entry.
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeeed." - Albert Einstein
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril." - Harry S. Truman
My thinking of late has made me consider deeply this notion of fear, fear as a driver of action.
My conclusion is as follows:
Fear cannot drive us. Actions and decisions coming from places of deep-seeded, irrational, or uninformed fear lead only to bad things.
I ask you to consider the following events and pieces of information. All things discussed or things that occurred in what I feel is quite recent:
- The death of Aaron Swartz, computing genius and internet freedom activist. With the charges filed against him and the massive sentence that awaited, he was pushed to take his own life. It is out of fear of Aaron's message about free sharing of information and knowledge, a misguided and disproportionate fear for the implications of his movement on intellectual property, and a fear of losing control and reach in this "white collar crime" space that it seems that the judicial officials in question
- The killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old African American boy. An innocent, unarmed teenager was killedfrom fear of a stereotype, fears based on lies and suspicions that draw from a history of racism and criminalization of an entire subgroup of the American population.
- The gang-rapes of women in India. The subjugation and violent and ruthless attacks on women in India, which sadly also happen all around the world on a daily basis, stem often from a place of fear of losing control, a fear of feeling weak or emasculated.
We cannot operate on fear, swinging wildly from one disproportionate reaction to an extreme solution, from a bulging funhouse-mirror reflection of an interpretation of a situation or another person to an oversimplified blanket response that leads to nothing but further confusion, further pain, further insecurity, and more destruction.
Instead, a quest for truth, a search for clarity. A desire to understand and an intent to listen. We cannot operate on fear.
I am having difficulty being as eloquent as I would like, so I will leave some quotes about fear to close this entry.
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeeed." - Albert Einstein
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril." - Harry S. Truman
action v. balance (orig. Jan 14, 2013)
I do not think that these two are necessarily mutually exclusive or opposed, but I often find myself struggling between the two.
Action.
The clenching in my gut, the stab to the heart, the fear and the fury that make us squeeze our eyes shut and furrow our brows hard, the rapid pounding in our chests, the wailing in the distance or across the water that makes us snap our heads in that direction, our eyes wide, wondering, scrambling to see if we can do something, anything to calm or eradicate the source of the pain that we empathize with but will never truly know ourselves. It is these sensations and feelings that spur me to action or the need to take action. I often feel and know that I am not doing anywhere near enough, not doing anything. It is not enough to feel sorry, to feel bad, to cry into a pillow at night holding to prayer beads for the well-being and the peace of another. It is not enough. And so we whirl ourselves into action, waving our arms, screaming, running, sprinting, jumping, drawing, writing, speaking, dancing, singing, fighting, hurling ourselves into action as if our lives depend on it.
The clenching in my gut, the stab to the heart, the fear and the fury that make us squeeze our eyes shut and furrow our brows hard, the rapid pounding in our chests, the wailing in the distance or across the water that makes us snap our heads in that direction, our eyes wide, wondering, scrambling to see if we can do something, anything to calm or eradicate the source of the pain that we empathize with but will never truly know ourselves. It is these sensations and feelings that spur me to action or the need to take action. I often feel and know that I am not doing anywhere near enough, not doing anything. It is not enough to feel sorry, to feel bad, to cry into a pillow at night holding to prayer beads for the well-being and the peace of another. It is not enough. And so we whirl ourselves into action, waving our arms, screaming, running, sprinting, jumping, drawing, writing, speaking, dancing, singing, fighting, hurling ourselves into action as if our lives depend on it.
And through all of the whirling, the spinning, the reaching, the pushing, the screaming, I at times find myself drained and exhausted and immeasurably sad and miniscule in this world of dark swelling waves that devour innocent people, this life in which there is inevitable loss of life, where the beauty, value, and joy of everything good are measured and detected only by their contrast against the evil, pain, and destruction that we humans seem so set on generating.
In these moments of feeling so infinitely tiny, I struggle to recover my stance, teetering at the edge of a perspective that once seemed so concrete and justifiably self-righteous.
Balance.
So, in the midst of fear and dizziness, I seek fresh air, a deluge of cold water, someone to set me upright and out of my cowering stance, heavy with unproductive thoughts and worries and sorrows and pains of others that I strap onto my own back out of guilt and a feeling of helplessness. It is difficult to relearn to breathe, to learn once again how to sleep, to draw our shoulders down from our ears, to keep our eyes directed forwards and stop them from darting around a room like skittish insects in the night. And in centering myself, I find my gaze turn inwards, losing my place in the hurry and the bustle of the things happening around me.
So, in the midst of fear and dizziness, I seek fresh air, a deluge of cold water, someone to set me upright and out of my cowering stance, heavy with unproductive thoughts and worries and sorrows and pains of others that I strap onto my own back out of guilt and a feeling of helplessness. It is difficult to relearn to breathe, to learn once again how to sleep, to draw our shoulders down from our ears, to keep our eyes directed forwards and stop them from darting around a room like skittish insects in the night. And in centering myself, I find my gaze turn inwards, losing my place in the hurry and the bustle of the things happening around me.
“You will find that it is necessary to let things go, simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.” ― C. JoyBell C.
But is it selfish to turn inwards? To let things go because they are heavy? To close my eyes and focus on the sound and depth of my breaths because I cannot swallow or stomach the terror and the gravity and the breadth of all there is in the world to change and solve and fix and question? Is it selfish?
After all, they do say that you have to be healthy yourself, help yourself, be well yourself, before you can help any other person, thing, anything get better. But is that true?
I meditate and pray for peace and solace. I try to wish away the murmurs in my heart and the endless connections and complications in my mind that leave me feeling so weary and tiny in the evenings. But it only leaves me feeling selfish, inadequate, petty, and wrong.
If someone could tell me how to forge ahead while standing tall, open my eyes without blurring my vision with hot tears, understand without then cowering under the heavy burden of new truths or knowledge, if someone could tell me how to act while maintaining balance...
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