the philosophy of integrity

I wonder if you have to reach a certain age first before you start learning more from the actions of others than what you learn from your own? Is there a point in time where the bulk of our learning switches from “ok, I did that wrong” to, “ok, he’s doing that wrong. Note to self: don’t do that”.

 

Maybe that’s what this ‘older and wiser’ thing I keep hearing about, is about?

 

It seems easier now to observe another person’s actions and see right through to the core of it; from their action I know how to – or not to, behave. I don’t even need to be the recipient of their behaviour to feel how wrong it is.

 

In this case though, I am the recipient, and I have learned this: at all times act with integrity. Be straightforward and honest. Don’t be a dick. Don’t give out an illusion, give the truth. Make sure everyone’s on the same page. Make sure anyone else you have entangled knows what’s going on. If all you want is to scratch an itch then fucking come out and say it. Don’t use and abuse and then be a prick about it.

 

Dishonesty is not becoming.

the philosophy of friendship

It’s only been over the last three of four years that I have had friendships physically dissolve in front of my eyes. Before then friends just drifted away to lead other lives in other places; not ending a friendship, just suspending it due to distance, and then time.

 

No, lately I’ve had friendships die in the arse because damaging situations – irreparable, or so I assume; I’m still not sure.

 

Every now and then I wonder if anything can be salvaged from the wreckage, or whether I just need to cut all cords for good and let the debris sink to the bottom of the dark and murky sea (to extend the metaphor too far).

 

How do you decide whether there’s anything left to hang a friendship on?

 

The closer someone is to me, the less I seem to be able to forgive them if they cross me. I know it should be the opposite, but I guess I just place too much of my sensitive self in the arms of my friends and lovers, meaning I’m hurt ten-fold if they do me wrong.

 

A bruise to the soul takes longer to heal.

I tend to shy away from show-downs unless I’m powered by aggression, and even then I would rather not let loose. I don’t like making people feel bad; it makes me too uncomfortable, even if they’re in the wrong.

 

Here’s a hint though: if you’ve wronged me, don’t wait for me to fix it. I’ll wait until the second coming and beyond before I’ll bring it up.

 

I don’t know. I thought starting this entry would bring everything into focus and I’d suddenly discover a solution. Perhaps I need to remember that people enter your lives to teach you something, and when the lesson’s finished, they leave.

30day challenge: 28.

Day 28: You, last year and this year – how have you changed?

---

 

This is supposed to be another photo post: me last year and this year. NO MORE PHOTOS. Anyway, physically there aren’t enough changes worth banging on about. The biggest change is that I look more worn out, my complexion is duller and my eyes less sparkly. In short, the blush of youth has retreated even further away and I just look consistently ill. Hardly worth mentioning, really.

 

I’d rather talk about an internal change I’ve noticed in myself from two years ago to now.

 

I spend a lot less time being negative and depressed. I’ve worked hard for this, making a conscious effort to monitor my moods and reactions by taking a step back from myself to observe as a third person.

 

I censor myself a lot more now. Normally that would be a bad thing – I’m not into self censorship, to a point, but in my case I realised that randomly ranting and raving about certain topics only fed my negativity until it was fat enough to crush me. Not productive at all. It’s good to let it out, but bang on and on about it and you don’t get anything done. You don’t change the situation and you don’t create anything better out of it.

 

That’s not to say I don’t still have the occasional online rant, but I don’t dwell on the bad as long as I used to. I’m moving along a lot faster now (probably to a lot of people’s relief…).

 

My happy blog has helped a lot in this regard – I’m training my mind to turn towards the good things in life rather than pick out the bad. I noticed this happening even today. I had an awful walk to work (for no other reason than it just seemed like everything and everyone was getting in my way) and nearly posted a rant-tweet but pulled myself up and said if I wanted to post a rant, I had to first post a positive. Then, if I still felt like having a whinge I could. Sure enough, after I commented on how awesome the warm breeze felt early in the morning I didn’t feel like complaining at all.

 

I’ll always be a work in progress. Now I just have to try and work out what I’m progressing towards.

the philosophy of grammar nazis

There’s nothing like seeing someone do something similar to what I have done in the past to teach me important lessons in life.

 

Example – I used to rant a lot online but now I try to temper it, because I've seen others be negative ALL the time, day after day, and I realise now how much it wears down the shiny on everyone who reads it. It becomes obvious it’s purely for attention and pity. They don’t want anyone to fix anything about their life, they don’t even want to try and fix it themselves, they just want everyone to feel their pain. They exist in their pain. It’s truly tiresome.

 

Yet, because I’ve been there myself, I can empathise, and hope that one day they too will see how damaging it becomes.

 

And so, tonight, in a perfect example of contradiction, I find myself outraged at the trivial things other people become outraged about. Like grammar and punctuation.

 

I can high-horse it with the best of them when it comes to misuse of the possessive apostrophe, the incorrect your/you’re, or there/their/they’re, and the very cringe worthy “should/could/would OF”, but I have now been shown the error of my ways. I will henceforth loosen my stance, having seen how ridiculous it makes a person look to be so petty.

 

Tonight’s lesson is brought to you by the ellipsis, commonly represented by a series of three dots […]. Until tonight, I had never known anyone to be upset by people perhaps using only two dots, or four, or more than four, instead of the standard (and apparently required at all times) three.

 

My first reaction was to try and understand why, out of all the horrible evil wrongs that occur in the world every minute of every day, someone would choose to be annoyed enough by this to mention it in a public forum.

 

I despair at the things people channel their energy towards when there are so many more worthwhile causes requiring our outrage and our help to fix.

 

People should be allowed to paint their sentences with whatever colours they wish. If they want to use more dots for effect, so be it! Less? Fine! Go for it. Who are we to constrict another’s sentence construction? If the great writers of the world all followed the rules to the letter our literature would all be dull beige today. e.e cummings would be raked over the coals, for sure.

 

So, out of my petty outrage at someone’s petty outrage, I’ve managed to learn another lesson: live and let live, write and let write. Let. It. Go.

 

Language is our putty to sculpt with as we wish, into whatever we wish, however we wish. Go forth and sculpt unencumbered.

the philosophy of hurt

I can feel a crisis coming on, another soul-scrape on the approach. I don’t like it.

 

It’s always triggered by being treated less than human; by another person stonewalling me, making me second-guess what’s going on, making my brain go into overdrive trying to work out if I’m being played like a first class fiddle.

 

It’s the same situation over and over – when I’m made to realise I once again pinned my happiness on another. I can’t do that. None of us can. People let you down. It’s as certain as death and taxes. They may not mean to, but eventually it happens; whether they fuck you over, or die on you, they let you down.

 

I have to learn to rely on myself. Only I can make me happy. Why do I still let external situations affect me? All they do is place me right back in the same spot – the bottom of the hole, where I once again have to work like buggery to climb my way out of it.

 

I am sick to death of crying into my sleeves.

 

If only there was a way to remove the person from the acts they do to you, life would be so much simpler. There would be no more hurt, no more retaliation, none of this “you hurt me so much I’m going to hurt you back”.

 

It’s such an automated response; we all do it, and we might not even want to. I know I do when I’m too weak to have restraint. I hate that about me. I want to be able to put what the person’s done behind me, and just start rediscovering my own happiness. I don’t want all this focus on the hurt and anger and pain.

the philosophy of anger

This could have turned into a rant of epic proportions, full of evisceration, vituperation, and other long words that demand to be spat out onomatopoeically. Castration. Yes, it could have been filled with the essence of castration. But it won’t be.

 

Instead, I’m just going to write about what I’ve learnt. After all, this is meant to be where I sift through the shit that happens to me on the search for kernels of philosophy (pardon the imagery).

 

An online news blog turned ugly when the blogger decided to get down and dirty regarding the death of a friend. He saw nothing wrong with laughing at jokes made at the dead person’s expense. He tore the people who mourned her to shreds and offered up their remains to his faithful followers to finish off. A blaze of belittlement.

 

It made me recognise what humanity is, by its very absence.

 

The argument was put forth that why should someone who didn’t know the deceased “give a toss” about her death. For all he knew the person didn’t really die, and only pretended to die to see what kind of reaction they could get and now they were just sitting back laughing. That is so void of compassion it sucks the air out of my lungs.

 

I went to bed seething, absolutely seething. Rage really is red.

 

There’s no way to sleep when the body’s in full fight mode, so I tried to calm myself down by recognising what was happening in my body and brain – turning inward in order to turn off.

 

It suddenly struck me how hot the top of my head felt. It was so hot I pictured a flame sitting atop it, just like a candle.

 

That’s when I realised – rage and anger will just burn a person down like a candle until there’s nothing left but a waxy stub and a charred piece of wick.

 

I don’t want to become a wax puddle. Especially not over the uninformed ramblings of a so-called writer.

 

So now all he gets from me is my pity. He’s lost his humanity and god knows how a writer can write anything without that.

easter energy

I always forget that every day is the first day of the rest of my life. Today – Easter Sunday, I’m reminded, thanks to this tweet from @rashasman:

 

“Happy easter. For those not caring about the religious side we can take the 'new beginnings' message and run with that.”

 

I love it when the world brings me something right when I need it.

 

This long weekend has been spent in a sallow funk with my usual ‘why me’ whine as I wonder what I have to do in this world to get a break.

 

Today is the right time for my new beginning, painful as childbirth as it is. I need to do something different starting from now, because so far all I’ve managed to do is get bogged in the middle of the mud pond of life without knowing the secret of how to get to the other side. I’m sick of pulling myself through mud. It’s tiring and unproductive.

 

I’m not defective, not that awful to look at, don’t have any debilitating quirks that make people run screaming from me, I’m not mean, stuck up, or hard to handle. I’m open, wear my heart on my sleeve and take everyone as they are. So my new beginning for today is to let go of anything that makes me think otherwise.

 

World, I’ll no longer let you put me in situations where I’m taken for granted. I deserve more, and would rather frolic through this life alone than settle for less.

 

Yesterday I asked the world two questions: “do good men actually exist?” and “what next, world?”. In the middle of the night they were both answered by a chance meeting which gave me hope that something better is out there and sometime soon I’m going to find it. The world told me not to give up and I’m going to obey.

shampoo, cut and counsel

A funny thing happened to me on the weekend. I got a haircut.

 

Hairdressers, taxi drivers, bar keeps, all have one thing in common – they become our mini-therapists, an outlet for our ramblings. Only this time I listened while she unburdened, and it was nice.

 

She’s only a few years older than me, going through similar relationship problems, the same self-doubt, same race against the biological clock, same difficulty growing up and being nice to your body. All the same “why me”, “what else can go wrong” questions.

 

A great thing about spontaneous therapy sessions: it flows both ways. Both people benefit.

 

I’m not sure what she took from me, but I will take this piece of advice from her: you have to treat yourself as someone else you’ve been charged with the responsibility of caring for.

 

How many times will we drop everything for a friend in need, but when we’re the ones suffering, we brush it aside?

 

I’m totally guilty of neglecting myself and it’s one more thing my poor body has to deal with.  I need to be kinder to myself, feed me good food, take me for regular exercise, and make sure I have my play time. All things I don’t do.

 

I have to become my own observer and guide. I’ve spent too long looking outwards unsuccessfully trying to find some other person to take care of me.

 

So, here’s a thanks to random people we call strangers, but who are in fact close friends we didn’t know existed, here to help us on our journey.

baby steps (or: my neighbours suck)

I started a new blog space yesterday which you can check out here, if you so desire. I consider it the hyde to my jekyll, in that I’m attempting to make it a space where only the happyjoy moments in my day make it through.

 

It may be a very sparse blog indeed.

 

I am compelled to try the positive thing though. For too long I have been feeding the awful horrible stressful painful moments of my life. It’s time to balance things out, refocus my eyes and see the other side.

 

This is day two. I’ve hit struggletown.

 

I’m tired, and I can’t go to sleep because the neighbours, the idiotic geriatric psychopathic turdfaces who really need to move the hell back to Koondoola or whatever other bogan hole they crawled out of, decided they suddenly wanted to listen to music very loudly, at 1130 at night. No, not until 1130 at night, from 1130 at night. God knows when they’ll decide to turn it off and go to bed. Midnight’s been and gone. Could be a while.

 

Thing is, I moved myself and my pillow out of my bedroom at the back of the house and onto the couch at the front of the house because they were out the back crapping on. With my positive bent I thought, ‘how exciting, breaking it up a bit, sleeping on the couch for the night! And yay, it’s so mild tonight I don’t even need a blanket’.

 

Now they’re pumping (shitarse) tunes in the lounge which shares a common wall with mine, while they sit out the back wasting perfectly good air that should be used for more worthwhile purposes than filling their lungs. Therefore, I can’t sleep anywhere in silence until they decide to shut the fuck up.

 

If someone hadn’t already started a fuck-my-life blog, I could have made a lot of money by now.

 

endrant. beginspin.

 

Every single situation has a seed of positive. What I’m trying to train myself to do with the new blog is notice the good seeds more. I know I’m going to have to be content with baby steps. I’m going to fall over on my face a lot. But at least I’m trying.

 

So, the good right now, right at this moment when my eyes are hanging out of my head and my own homespace is not my own, is that I’m writing. I started this blog to write, and haven’t done that for a while. This crappy situation has brought me back. Yays.

 

And it will be so fun at 6am tomorrow morning when I have to get up, to crank the drum and bass right next to their bedroom wall.

 

Oh yes, I think I’ll have a very positive grin on my face tomorrow morning.

symphonic understanding

I’ve been watching some of the WASO concerts online (West Australian Symphony Orchestra) and it’s taking me back to my days playing in the school concert band and singing in the choir during my music scholarship years - the shivers up the spine when the whole orchestra reaches the same level of passion for a massive crescendo, the joy of a perfectly harmonised moment in a favourite piece. Ah, good times.

 

I always preferred to sing and play the harmonies rather than the leads.  I preferred to be the flavouring rather than the main ingredient; be the counterpoint. I hated it when I was thrust into the first clarinet position (probably by default) and had to plod along in the main melodies.

 

I never wanted to stand out, never wanted to be the soprano in the limelight, or the acclaimed soloist getting the glory. I always thought the harmonies had the more interesting parts. Even now, humming along to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and yes that old chestnut, Handel’s Messiah, I’m singing the harmony instead of the tune.

 

I’ve only now realised the correlation between that and the rest of my life: I always thought I just didn’t like to lead, I liked to follow, but that’s not it at all. I just prefer the second fiddle because it’s so much more interesting.

 

The main melody on it’s own is ok, but with harmony behind it, it pops.

 

Lately I’ve been thinking I had a character flaw by not having the drive or urge to sit at the top of the tree, and now I realise it’s because I prefer the much more interesting life in the middle branches.

 

Missing out on a job for a higher position last week has made me question my whole character, and I’m so over it. There’s nothing at all wrong with me not wanting to take the lead. So there.

 

Alto for life.

the study of nothing happening

I need a good cry. You know the kind of cry you need to have not because something’s happened, but because nothing’s happened? I need one of those cries.

 

I didn’t get a job I applied for last week, and in a way I’m relieved, because the next step would have been to go through months of suffering and hard struggle – it would have been one tough slog I’m not sure I’m up for right now.

 

It would have also meant cancelling my long overdue holidays, working much longer hours, and taking a pay cut of at least $5K but most likely more. It would have meant leaving an office full of people I love, and a view to die for.

 

Among a shitload of other things.

 

So why with the crying?

 

I went for the job almost because I had to; I felt obliged. I looked at it as a possible fix for my malaise, and went for it almost as a way to let the universe fix everything for me.

 

I think a lot of people thought I was a definite for it. Except me. Heart wasn’t in it. Heart told brain. Brain turned off at crucial moment.

 

Now, I haven’t moved anywhere. Nothing’s fixed. Nothing happened.

 

The universe has given me a big “oh no you don’t”. I can’t take the easy way out of my general dissatisfaction with life. I still have to strip myself bare and study everything to find out what the hell is wrong with me. I have to fix it the long and hard way instead of trying the geographical approach.

 

I just wish it could have given me that message in a less humiliating way.

lost in translation

There are frequent moments when I question this online life; where I wonder what point there is in sharing my thoughts and ideas with people I can’t see, don’t know, and who don’t know me from Mother Mary.

 

Write anything in an online arena, like a news blog, or social networking site, and guaranteed there will be people who totally take it the wrong way, no matter what it is I’m trying to say.

 

In a face-to-face situation, I have backup – subtle body language, intonation, eye contact – all able to help translate the words coming out of my mouth and sit them in the right context and setting.

 

Friends, with the added benefit of their intimate knowledge of me and the colours that make up me, are even more able to easily pinpoint the context of my words.

 

Lately I’m acutely aware that being misunderstood brings me major pain and discomfort. I don’t like it when things I say online are taken the wrong way; when I try to convey one thing, and someone sees something altogether unholy and foreign instead.

 

To be misunderstood – one of the greatest causes of human frustration, no?

 

I’m not talking about writing I put any kind of thought into – I’m talking about random rants, quick snatches from my brainstem, thoughts on the fly.

 

It has seriously got me thinking about my other writing though. Fuck, I aint nowhere near what anyone could class as ‘a writer’, but I’m definitely going to need to work on perfecting the art of threading context, tone, and subconscious meaning through the weave of my written words in the future, if I want to avoid the nasty business of feeling like I’m writing in Mandarin to an audience only fluent in Spanish.

marcus was a little lamb…

There’s an interesting story today about a school in London where the children helped rear a lamb from birth, then voted 13-1 to send him to the slaughterhouse.

 

He was part of a farm set up for the kids to help them learn the very important and very overlooked question of where our food comes from.

 

I think this is the most fantastically awesome thing I have read this week.

Marcus the lamb, in happier days…

 

Don’t get me wrong – I’d prefer it if little Marcus the lamb at least got to see out his first full year of life, and at most got to live a full and pampered life, but this is an important lesson I think everyone should be made to go through. If you want to eat meat, you really should understand where it comes from.

 

Growing up I was reared on the ‘meat and three veg’ diet. I never questioned how the food got to me; as far as I was concerned, chops came from the shop, on styrofoam trays, wrapped in plastic. I made no connection between the meat I ate, and the little baby cows and lambs I saw frolicking in the fields.

 

This is probably going to sound naff, but around the age of 16 or 17 (late in life, I admit), I had an epiphany while eating my obligatory chop for dinner – I suddenly tasted blood and nothing else, and in front of my eyes as clear as the 80’s wallpaper in the dining room, saw a cow with a chop-sized chunk out of its side.

 

Then it was just a matter of connect-the-dots.

 

My last meal of meat was silverside (my most hated of all the meat creations). I finished it, and turned to my mum to proclaim I was becoming vegetarian. I had had enough. I realised I only ever liked the taste of meat when it was masked by something else – a nice full bolognaise, or mushroom sauce, or a mound of mashed potato. Meat, by itself, was disgusting.

 

In my university years, I read more into the production of meat, joining animal rights newsgroups online, speaking to like-minded people, discovering the whole dirty secrets within the meat industry. My stance became ethical – I wanted to pull myself out of the meat production-line, reduce demand by one. Whatever impact it had, it was a kinder soul I found myself imbibed with.

 

Any argument on this goes round and round – yes, I still wear leather; yes, as of recently I’ve started eating the occasional fish due to health reasons (and now call myself a vegequarian); yes, I’m aware that even the shampoos I use may have animal products in them, but I’ve reduced demand for eating meat by one. My god, the stories I could tell. Cement, chemicals, hormones, cruelty – I won’t get into it. I don’t deny anyone the choice to eat meat if they so desire.

 

I’m not vegan, but by not consuming red or white meat I’ve at least reduced demand by one, and I’m happy with that. I can only make decisions for myself. Everyone else needs to sort themselves out personally.

 

I won’t get into the argument on fish but to say that my decision to eat fish is partly eastern religion-based: fish have less of a developed nervous system, and therefore slightly less of a karmic imprint (but one, nonetheless).

 

So this story really makes me smile. Parents are spitting and demanding the principal be lynched in front of a leering spitting vitriol-spewing crowd, but how many of them sit down to eat their pork, and lamb, and beef every night?

 

The hypocrisy is rife. “How dare you expose our children… to the… truth… about where the food they put in their mouths and therefore nourish their spirit, comes from…”

 

Give me a break. Let the kiddies know and understand, and make their own decision based on the full facts. Let them not become hypocrites like the rest of us.

being erica… or is it being me?

I love ABC iView. Doubly so since my ISP gives it to me quota free.

 

I hardly turn the TV on these days. Too depressing, too mind-numbing. Many more interesting things happening online, on demand.

 

So on a free and lazy Saturday I had a swim in the iView pool and discovered Being Erica, a show I swear is based on me: a 30-something, relatively attractive single childless female in an unfulfilling job, regretting the decisions made along her life path that have lead her to this point.

 

Erica meets Dr Tom, a therapist who is able to send her back in time to relive her regrets so she can do them differently.

 

I’m hoping the message that comes from this is that even if you could live your life again and change your regrettable moments, it will make no difference – things happened how they were meant to happen for a reason. That’s what I live by anyway, to keep myself sane; believing anything else will make me lose the plot.

 

I’m where I am, because I’m meant to be.

 

As Dr Tom says in episode one:

“You are where you need to be right now. And when you’re finished doing whatever it is that you’re meant to be doing, then you move on.”

 

 

At a couple of points in the first two episodes, I found myself getting teary – a sure sign it hits close to home.

 

It made me think: If I could go back and change things about my life, would I?

 

Knowing what I know now, would I waste 11 years in a relationship that goes nowhere? Or would I put the love aside and start years earlier on working on a relationship that gave me children, and a husband, and a pretty house in the ‘burbs?

 

Would I stick with my first love – film, and try harder to make a career out of it?

 

Would I have travelled more when I was younger – independently, experiencing more of life by experiencing me, alone, amongst it?

 

They are my major regrets. And the choices and decisions I’ve made regarding them have lead me to be here, at this point in time, thinking the way I do, living like this, doing this.

 

It’s a tough call. I don’t know how productive it is to live in ‘what if’ land, though thousands, including me, travel there often.

 

It’s a great show if you happen to catch it. Dr Tom’s character is fond of quotes to explain things; here’s a few of the gems that resonated with me from the first episode:

 

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”

-- Albert Einstein       

 

 

“Pressure makes diamonds”

-- General Patton       

 

 

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living”

-- Plato   

cathartic connections

Two current news stories have been rattling around in my head since I stumbled across them. I can’t shake them. I think I know why. I think I’m meant to gain some understanding from them to slot into my jigsaw-puzzle brain before I’m allowed to move on.

 

The first is a sad tale of a teen party gone wrong, a few suburbs away from me in West Perth. Kertisha Derschaw, 17, befriended a guy at a party, 24, who for reasons unknown, bashed her unconscious and leapt off a balcony. She later died a day before her 18th birthday and he strangled himself in jail.

 

Tragedy all round, really.

 

The second regards Rebekah Lawrence who in 2005, at the age of 34, reached the end of her workday, took all her clothes off and jumped out the second storey window to her death.

 

She’s in the news because there’s now a coroner’s inquiry into whether the intensive self-help course she took on the weekend had anything to do with her naked death leap the following Tuesday. Apparently, quite the possibility, since another guy threw himself out a window to his death while on the same course years earlier, and another guy got naked and stabbed himself to death three days after taking the course. Allegedly. Not for me to decide.

 

Here’s the resonance: I see myself in both of these incidents.

 

When I was 17 I too found myself at a random party in West Perth where there were a few older people I didn’t know (and here’s where mother has kittens..). There was no thought at all that I might have been in any danger, but what if I was? What if I was only two steps away from having danger come bash me in the head and I never knew it?

 

Also, at the age of 17 I hooked up with a 24 year old, which went on to work out perfectly fine (well, for 11 years anyway, before it went Pete Tong), but in the beginning, who was to know that for sure?

 

Now, at 34, I find myself battling inner demons probably much like Rebekah’s – a ticking biological clock, a strange sensation of floating between being a happy and productive member of society and being a packet of mixed nuts, and a job that at times drives me mad enough to think about throwing my computer out the 18th floor window and following it (disclaimer: I never ever would. Computers are expensive things).

 

I’m not making light of her situation; in reality, her story has hit me hard. The inner battles I’ve been going through have made me sometimes wonder whether some sort of structured professional help might be needed. I worry about my age and where my life’s heading (or not heading, more accurately).

 

Here’s the lesson: But for the grace of god…

 

I stand here, at this place, in this time, doing these things, because it is meant to be. The universe has decreed I be here, doing what I’m doing, going through what I’m going through.

 

If it was meant to be any other way, it would be.

 

Perhaps on another parallel universe, I’m Kertisha, or Rebekah, and they’re me. Perhaps their lives continue, and mine’s ended prematurely.

 

It’s fatalistic, but I can’t help feeling that fate is a thread wound through more of my tapestry than I realise. Sure, I make decisions, I sit at the wheel pretending I’m a competent and licensed driver, but maybe my ever-hardworking guardian angels are the ones ensuring that I stay within the boundaries of my fate.

 

---

 

Now at the end of this thought process I realise how totally self-centred this sounds. Two young women have died in horrible circumstances, and all I can think about is how it affects me. Well it’s not entirely true – first thoughts were of the horror, the tragedy, and the families’ grief, but after that, doesn’t every tragic situation begin to rotate and work its way into our psyche through personal connection, to allow us to come to terms with it?

 

Maybe that word which for years I have had trouble grasping the definition of, is finally starting to make some sense to me – catharsis.

the philosophy of haha

When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried?

 

The last half a dozen years or so, I haven’t belly laughed anywhere near as much as I should.

 

Apparently seven hugs a day is the minimum requirement for a happy and healthy life; I would add to that at least three body-rocking tears-inducing belly laughs a week.

 

Two old friends, out of the blue, emailed me today about this blog. One was the most sweetest kindest praise I’m sure I don’t fully deserve (but will happily accept as awesome motivation), and the other was concern over the state of my mental health (“bloody hell, your blog’s a bit depressing.. are you ok?”) – made me chuckle.

 

The thing is, I used to be funny. I used to be able to write with a comedic bent. I used to make people laugh. When did that stop happening? When did I become so serious?

 

So now I’m trying to remember the last time I laughed until tears rolled down my face. I’m trying to rediscover the funny.

 

Oh, I’m in luck – I remember. At work, of all places. My alarm didn’t go off and I woke up five minutes before I was due to start. I threw myself out of bed so fast I was still half asleep and my right leg was still fully asleep, leading me to walk as though I had cerebral palsy, banging into every wall more than once as I stumbled sideways into the bathroom.

 

That, coupled with the shakes, made it.. let’s just say, entertaining, to try and get my legs into pants. I didn’t even try and attempt to wield a hairbrush.

 

I burst into work half an hour late, panting, pillow creases still adorning my face, hair like a madwoman, and started telling the story of my morning, giving a visual demonstration of my physically-challenged walk, which made me and thankfully my very understanding boss laugh so hard we cried.

 

Why can’t every morning start like that?

 

Have you ever been around someone with an attack of the giggles? How hard is it not to join in? In 1962 three schoolgirls in Tanzania got the giggles which spread to 2/3 of the school population before going on to infect another 14 schools and countless villages, only ending about two and a half years, and 1000 giggling people later. Now that’s contagious.

 

Let’s forget the fact that laughter reduces pain, releases endorphins, brings down stress levels, pumps oxygen through the body and increases blood flow; it’s just so damn fun – why don’t we do more of it?

 

And from now on I solemnly promise to try and throw in a couple of chuckles among the darkness.

 

 

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

-- ee cummings     

 

bug profundity

A bug spoke to me today.

 

He said I was miserable.

 

Still not sure how.

 

He was a small speckled dot on my desk. When I nudged him, he moved and started on an aimless trek. And said I was miserable.

 

He meandered slowly and placidly toward the keyboard then casually turned and headed for my desktop map of the world, and said look at this desk. Look at the misery formed at this desk. As I trudge across it, so you trudge through life sitting at it, directionless, dusty and dry as a desert.

 

He paused at New Zealand and rotated as though he was taking in the rest of the world. You should be out there. You should be walking the earth. You should be learning in the school of the world. Don’t you remember your dreams? Your yearnings?

 

Strange that he paused in the place where I started this life.

 

He walked the Pacific Ocean heading for Russia, and fell on his back, legs flailing. Ok, maybe Russia’s not for you.

 

He righted himself and headed back to me. Think about it. There’s nothing holding you here now. In this place. Now is the time to go.

 

And he went. Down the side of the desk. To where, I don’t know. I didn’t look. More mysterious that way.

 

He’s right. I’m miserable. There’s actually nothing holding me in this place. I should go. But to where? To do what? I feel useless not knowing how to answer that. Bug didn’t hang around long enough to enlighten me in that regard.

 

Could it be that my spirit guide is a nameless speckled bug? I always thought it was a gecko.

dear guardian angels,

Dear guardian angels,

 

Thankyou for pulling me out of crazy situations unscathed;

for keeping me safe in crowds of strange people while I’m drunk,

with no idea where I am;

for nudging my car out of harm’s way

while sliding out of control through the rain;

for stroking my hair

in my moments of despair;

for whispering calmness when I weep alone in bed;

for injections of cheekiness

right when I need to act the fool, and dance;

for dancing with me when I dance alone at home;

for the moments of piercing clarity

when intuition takes control and directs me

correctly,

out of danger;

for letting me run wild and waiting at the other end,

ready to forgive

when I don’t forgive myself;

for saving my arse time and time again with unwavering love,

patience, and the occasional upturned eyebrow,

Thankyou.

detach. float.

I spent today on the couch, under my doona, in my trackies. Holed up inside while the rain fell outside (and through my roof tapping on my ceiling). I had a pity party, and no one was invited except me. Was lovely, and very much required.

 

After I got bored with looking at the growing water stain on my ceiling I watched daytime tv instead. Horrors. Although I do have this to say about daytime tv: it certainly puts things into perspective.

 

Take Dr Phil: three married couples, early 20’s trying to work out why they can’t stand their spouse anymore, and why (for two of the couples at least) they put up with physical abuse from the other (the third couple were just into threats of calculated murder). Now that’s misery. Makes me think, why do I spend so much time wishing for ‘marriage’ and/or relationship if it can turn out like that?

 

Then Oprah: the science of attraction – why and how people are attracted to each other. Apparently it has to do with smell, and right timing of the month. Hmm, pretty small window. No wonder sniffing out ‘the one’ is like a game of darts in the dark.

 

However, like a butterlamp glowing in the corner, the ABC offered up a little piece on Buddhism, snuck in between programs, to remind me of the philosophy of detachment.

 

In Buddhism, the four noble truths centre around the idea that life produces suffering, and suffering is created when we become slaves to our senses. When we crave, yearn, expect, we suffer.

 

The idea of detachment is not one of turning your back on everything in the world, but rather of becoming unattached to any outcome. To love without expecting anything in return; to view good and bad as cut from the same cloth, and as transitory events; to try and dwell in that part of ourselves where we view our lives as a third person: it is happening, but only to my physical body, not to the essence of me.

 

It makes sense; the only absolute in life is that there will eventually be death. Everything else is uncertain. We attach ourselves to human beings, but it is inevitable that there will be a parting, whether through our own design, or through death.

 

And so, I’m going to try and imagine myself as the centre of a merry-go-round – still and observant, while the animals wheel around me, and while people come and go, riding for a while, then getting off.

 

Next ride starts in 10. Get your tickets here.

when will i take my own advice?

Seems I can give pretty good advice to others, just not to myself.

 

I just spent the last three hours convincing someone that something in their life was obviously not working, and trying to give them the strength and motivation to fix it. Do something about it and fix it. Just do it. Be brave. Take the step. Think of the positives. Think of yourself, your happiness. Time to be selfish. Make it happen. It’s hard, but you can do it. And here’s how you can start: try this, or this, or maybe this.

 

Why is it I can see so clearly what others need to do, and not myself, eh? Why can I life-coach others into making changes for the better, and not myself?

 

I have such clarity with others, but when it comes to me, it’s all fog and sandstorms. It’s all too hard. It seems I neglect myself. It seems I use myself as a warning to others. Take it from me, you don’t want to let it get to that. You need to try and do something about it before you let it get to that. Something I may have told myself, and ignored, on many occasions.

 

It is a strange phenomenon I’ve noticed more and more. When someone else needs help, the counselling issues forth from me, from god knows where. If I happen to step to one side and listen to myself talking, I suddenly realise “hey, that’s good advice. Where was advice like that when I needed it?”

 

‘Tis a great irony, no doubt.