What is Real?

Every now and then I have a light bulb moment; in a flash, everything seems clear. I know exactly what I should do and how to do it, or I just suddenly understand something that has seemed beyond my grasp previously. We all have those moments right? Problem with my mind is that just as soon as there is clarity it is surrounded by mud, or at the least, fogginess. The moment is irrevocably lost.

It happened again this week. I had the television on in the background, as I so often do (and know I shouldn't) and there was a segment on a current affairs program about behavioural psychology. Specifically it was about people who intermittently cannot control their temper; apparently this is now a behavioural disorder, seriously. I couldn't get my head around that; how can it be that a person can control their temper most of the time but intermittently, randomly even, they lose that ability? It seems the whole world has gone mad in assigning every personality flaw a behavioural/mood disorder denying people the power of personal responsibility. Where is the line between "I screwed up and now I have to pay the price" and "I have a behavioural disorder and cannot control this"? Is there such a line? How can you tell if a person has "intermittent outburst disorder" or is just an abusive asshole who loses their temper?

This line of thinking, of course, led me to thinking about how I would then be judging myself. Post Natal Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Severe Generalised Depression, Insomnia, etc, etc, etc, yes, you could say I'm a bit of a fruit loop. (You could, you don't have to!)

What if all these disorders weren't real? What if they'd never been labelled, if I'd never been diagnosed? Well, of course, the reality is they would all still exist, I would still have to deal with all of them but what if I could just change my thinking? What if I could just decide that I would not suffer from these disorders any longer? What if I pretended, "fake it 'til I make it" until I just didn't have any of those disorders anymore?

In that moment I really believed it to be possible; if I just "went to bed earlier", if I just "got more organised", if I just "stopped worrying". Then I could be me, the real me, me to my full potential. So I decided I would do it, the next day. The next day hasn't come yet, it probably won't come, maybe if I just take baby steps I'll find that day somewhere down the track... maybe I won't.

(It is worth noting that even though I didn't end up taking the "fake it 'til you make it" approach, I did a couple of days later hear a news article stating that researchers have found that there is a gene variant leading some people to be predisposed to depression. This seemed to blow my whole "pretending" theory into chaos. A (Dr) Google search however will quickly show that as with most medical research there are no firm answers, one study shows genetic variants another dismisses that theory just as readily. Here comes that fog again...)

Start Doing Things You Love...

Things I love...

• reading
• gardening
• photography
• bicycling
• writing
• letters
• learning
• friends and family
• dancing
• singing
• walking, hiking and camping
• flower arranging and selling
• crafting

These are the things I need to do more of to find my balance and ensure my happiness. They're not necessarily things I'm good at but things that bring me joy. I need to consciously act to make more time in my life for these things.

If you don't have enough time, watch less tv.  

I don't think I watch too much tv but this line of the Holstee manifesto is a reminder in any case, that the things we place importance on may not be important after all. Many a time I have the tv on for background noise (what bad company!) and get distracted from what I really want to be doing by whatever brain suck is currently on the box. Facebook offers similar torment in the form of all the mind numbingly easy to get drawn into games that are offered therein. I need to make a conscious decision to reduce the impact of those things on my life. Television and facebook; time drains extraordinaire.

Meant to be?

You could almost be forgiven for believing that news.com.au had signed up for google advertising with the look of this advertisement (on the right) posted next to this news story.

The advertisement is actually for a health fund offering 100% more dental cover...

Spiritual Home

It's been a long time now since I've set foot in a Church for anything other than the wedding, christening or funeral of a friend or relative, around 20 years in fact.

A long time that I've rejected Christianity and tried to fill the gap with a variety of other theories and systems.

My siblings and I were raised in the Church of England, Anglicans, by the time that I made my first communion however my parents had long since left the Church, well at least physically they had. I would've been around 14 at the time I think and was involved with the Church through assisting to operate their creche and Sunday School and also through a Friday evening Youth Group. I loved that Church, I loved the people I met there, yet eventually I drifted away from there, for what reason I cannot recall.

I've struggled ever since then with the ideals held in the Bible; what is real, what is an analogy, an idiom? Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction and is it really meant to be read literally anyway? I think my drifting away from the Church began at that age when I naturally began to question everything I knew and when things couldn't be explained I sought to find the answers elsewhere.

Strange then, isn't it, when I haven't been able to find the answers elsewhere that I've returned to the place from whence I began?

What am I seeking anyway?

I believe firmly in signs, that if you live your life in a fully aware state there are many indicators in our day to day travels which lead us in the right direction, confirm our paths or potentially, lead us astray. Many days pass I'm sure in which I'm surrounded by signs that I either do not see or fail to recognise for what they are.

There is a children’s television show, actually I don’t even know the name of it, all I know if the theme song “everything’s rosie, everything’s ro-ho-o-sie, everything’s rosie when your friend’s are around… everything’s ro-ho-o-osie-ee now…” (Okay, I just googled, the show is actually called “Everything’s Rosie”.) Monty Python sang “Always look on the bright side of life,” whistle, whistle, whistle.” Pollyanna learned to play the glad game and for many eons people have been saying “every cloud has a silver lining”.

These sentiments, whilst mostly true, fall under another old saying “easier said than done”, however another quote I read recently was “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything” had me thinking on the theory of always looking “on the bright side” all over again. What if it really is possible to change your life just by changing your perception of the events in your life? It’s worth a try isn’t it?

These are the signs that have been thrust upon me of late; genuine silver linings around real clouds as I drive home exhausted from work, the theme song of that children's tv show, the Monty Python troupe singing to themselves randomly in my head a friend mentioning the Pollyanna game. I must start putting more effort into noticing the positives in my life, being thankful for them and emphasising them.