The straw breaking the camel’s back

In a period dominated with too much fatigue on all levels, it doesn’t take much anymore to make you flip. There is so much aggregated exasperation mounting up inside that all it requires is one small thing for the entire situation to get out of hand and for your nerves to go rampant.

It’s like that Arabic proverb – the straw that broke the camel’s back – about how a camel is loaded beyond its capacity to move or stand. It is a reference to any process by which cataclysmic failure (a broken back) is achieved by a seemingly inconsequential addition, a single straw.

When you’ve gathered so much frustration, when you’ve tolerated too much beyond your capacity for patience, when you’ve exceeded your own limits too many times, it is the slightest of things that makes you erupt.

And remember, a volcano exploding has been accumulating its lava for long before it actually lets it all loose.

The good thing is that you do feel relieved after releasing all that pressure. But you also feel exhausted. Because this is neither normal nor healthy.

We know what we need to do to have better mental and physical health. Yet we so often allow circumstances to dominate over us.

That’s the real problem: we allow others to take control of how we react.

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The perfect white

© Dale Rogerson

When you have a blank page staring back at you, there is something wanting about it. If you consider it, it’s full of opportunities, prospects, potential. The possibilities and stories with which to fill it up are endless.

There is something intrinsic about the colour white. It has class, elegance, purity, authenticity. It is like a diamond in the rough. It can be anything.

Perhaps that’s why we associate white with beginnings. Because it stores so much hope.

That’s why snow makes everything look pretty. Because it covers life’s imperfections and makes even wilted flowers look full of life again.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

What we do with time

“If you were magically given more hours in a day, would you take them? Would you extend the same day, drawing it out for longer in the hope that you’d accomplish everything you aim for when you wake up in the morning?”

“But would you really?”

“Would you what?” he asked confused. She had hustled his hustle.

“Would you manage to accomplish everything? Because, if you think about it, do you fail to achieve more because of lack of time or because you don’t exploit the time you have effectively?”

It is a question we all pose to ourselves at some point or other.

It’s not the time that’s the problem. It’s how we waste it. Or rather, how we don’t take advantage of it as best as possible.

Drops of us

Water is the driving force of life. It is a known fact. Everything is composed of water in some form. Water and man made the planet as we know it today.

Perhaps that is why water is so powerful.

Why we turn to water in every form of it, seeking comfort, consolation, contentment.

Be it in a walk in a park with a water fountain, an excursion to high waterfalls, a playful day in the snow, a hot shower after a long and tiring day, water helps us regroup ourselves.

Perhaps most importantly, water is associated with emotion. It helps us with all stages of grief (a hot tea, a warm bath), of thirst (a cold drink, an ice cream), and it helps us heal, by reinforcing the sentiment of joy that is integral for our wellbeing. Water helps us rekindle our happiness, for without it –without that feeling of euphoria – we disintegrate and evaporate. Just like the water cycle that maintains life.

Water is a part of us. That is why we rejoice in seeing it around us, because it reminds us of a purity and authenticity that we lost. Because it proves that no matter how soft or fluid, it can patiently and persistently cut through hard rocks or form new paths to move forward.

Snow Day

©MCD

The best thing about snow, is that it makes everything prettier.

Even if just for a day, the white blanket that covers everything brings along a serenity and peace that is constantly lacking from our daily routines, even more so during a pandemic.

Even if the entire city or country paralyses for a day, because of half a metre (more or less) of snow, there is a tranquillity disbursed in the air.

Even if you take a day off work because it’s ‘snow day’, it turns out that you have the most fun when you become a child again. When you wake your friends up from the very early hours of the day so you can rejoice that it’s snowing in the midst of winter, but the flakes are huge and constant for hours. When you arrange to go make a snowman and play snowfights in the white-covered park, feeling as though you’ve retreated to a ski resort.

Even if just for a day, snow lifts up your mood regardless, makes you smile broadly for no apparent reason, and creates memories that last a lifetime.

Time

We think we possess time. But all we have is days.

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #196

Life’s wonder

©Alicia Jamtaas

But why now?

Because we don’t know what lies ahead. Because we can’t even be sure there is a future any more.

Because if not now, there will never be a better time.

If anything, life has shown us that we need to seize every single moment, each opportunity to do something different that may prove life-changing, to take a step that may lead to somewhere new and unexpected.

Things may seem broken and you may feel lost. But if you’re awake to life’s wonder, you’ll realise nothing truly happens by chance.

Just be open to the possibilities that await.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

The long hours of a day

When you wake up too early, you give yourself the chance to do a lot during the day. Things you otherwise complain you don’t have the time to do. Things you’ve been stalling, postponing or procrastinating in doing. You view the world differently when you see it from the first light of dawn to the last artificial light of night. You appreciate it more perhaps.

But – for there is always a but – having this abundant time in your hands also gives others the chance to irritate you more. Because just as easily as you find things to rejoice and be grateful for during the day, you also spot the negative (usually small) stuff that annoy you to the bone. And these are worse because they overturn every positive thought you try to create.

We allow ourselves too often to get affected by others. We enable them to push all the wrong buttons and then blame them for being who they are.

There are days when no matter how optimistic and creative you may want to be, something usually capsizes the entire process. These days are usually (but not restricted to) Mondays.

Regardless the surge of stress that overwhelms us; the incessant feeling that you’re constantly on edge; and that unwavering sentiment that you cannot bring yourself to relax, there is always a way. What you’re currently doing is obviously not it. You just need to find it.

It certainly helps to have people around you who can talk you out of a negative mood and help calm that storm that’s been brewing inside since that forced wake-up at dawn.

A gargantuan feat

We live in a world where if you fall, you’re more embarrassed about it than injured. Where everyone is disbelieving of one another for no apparent reason, but because everyone seems guilty until proven otherwise.

A world where “trust is good, but control is better”, and everyone is seeking to manipulate each other, to exploit each situation to their own benefits, to appear superior in every way.

Where money accounts for more than happiness. Knowledge counts for less than contacts. And kindness is viewed suspiciously.

Where it is a gargantuan feat to survive if you’re different.

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #195

The value of a life

How do you measure life? What is its value?
Is it by the things we accomplish during it?
Or by the memories we make?
The things we feel, or the other lives we affect?

Are some lives worth more than others?
And how can you tell?
Who is to decide, if, say a cat’s life is valued less than a human’s?

We remember lives lost,
Celebrate those that begin,
Commemorate those we deem worthy,
But what of the rest?
The unspoken ones, unseen, unheard?
Those that passed by at lightning speed,
Hardly able to have an impact,
Are those valued less?

Every life has a purpose,
No matter what it may be,
No matter how many it touches,
It is a life created for a reason
And is valued no less for being what it is.

Just remember:
“man was created alone to teach you that whoever kills one life kills the world entire,
And whoever saves one life saves the world entire”*.

*paraphrased from the Talmud

Also part of Daily Word Prompt