Suspicious minds

One of the greatest problems of the contemporary world is that we’ve grown too suspicious. Of everyone and everything. Kindness is seen with disbelief, as someone wanting to deceive us or seeking something (often more expensive) in return. If someone approaches you simply with the intention of having a friendly chat, it’s like a red alarm goes off in our brain signalling caution. Whatever anyone says or does anymore is automatically perceived with severe caution and distrust.

Even during a first encounter with any potential relationship, we’re distrustful and apprehensive of everything: the words they say, their body movements, the look in their eyes; every single thing. Perhaps it’s an upshot of having been burnt too many times in the past or simply the fact that fraud and deceit are so widespread in this world where anyone can claim to be anyone and anything without any proof.

So we try to take caution.

But as we get to know people, we slowly put our guard down. Sometimes it takes a comforting smile, an honest conversation, and finding that secret button of yours that let’s them in; making you laugh. It often doesn’t take much to feel secure with someone once they win over your trust.

But then you stop being so fearful of everything. Because you think you’ll get back that love you give out; that your attention, energy, and presence will all be reciprocated. And when you’re unexpectedly hurt, you turn to ‘anthems’ like Miley Cyrus’ latest song that you can do things better on your own and take care of yourself better than anyone else can.

The truth is, however, we’re not meant to be alone. Like Aristotle said, humans are social beings. We need the company of others to survive, to evolve, to be who we are. No matter how well we cope alone, we all secretly (or not) want someone to share our life with, someone to ramble on about when we’re facing bureaucratic nonsense and are having a bad day, but also when funny and oddly good things occur too. We want someone to cuddle up with to watch a movie (even if we’ll fall asleep in the first 20 minutes of it). Someone to go on long walks with and recount what we’ve been up to; our successes as well as the adversities that we’ve encountered. We want people next to us who will console our pain during the hard times but also share our joy during the happy ones.

Despite the vicious circle of suspicion that this society has led us into, we want someone who will love, respect, and care for us, to whom we can express our soul’s desires without the fear of regretting it, and to whom we can give it all and know it will be reciprocated without ever asking for it.

In this world of distrust, we want people whom we hug and they hug us right back even tighter because they can feel that is what we need to heal our troubled hearts.

Advertisement

Inner conflicts

It sounds like a cliché but it’s true: Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. You are not aware of what is going on in other people’s lives. You only know what they allow you to. If you are not at the receiving end of a heartfelt conversation, you’ll never know. You won’t realise the depth of the people around you if they don’t open up to you.

People long to share their emotions. It’s a way of maximising the joy of success and good news, and a means of alleviating the suffering of pain and sadness. It’s not about making you feel jealous or burdening you with additional problems. It’s about trusting you enough to confide in you their intimate details.

Secrecy breeds pain. In all aspects. If we keep things inside of us, we’re suffering so much on our own that we’re causing our own destruction. And no one knows.

We let people in whom we can trust. Whom we believe won’t scare away. Who’ll comprehend that what we want is someone to sit by us in silence while we share our version of the world.

True, we all have different viewpoints, but it is only when we are given another’s lens that we begin to see the world differently.

Icebergs have the extraordinary ability to be able to majestically float when the majority of them is underwater, hidden from the naked eye. We sort of do the same when something is wrong. We hide it under the carpet, hoping nobody will see it and pretending it will go away.

There is so much more to what we see in others. You can discern it in their eyes, in the authenticity of their smile, in the sincerity of their laugh. Happiness comes in waves. But it’s at the lowest points that we need help getting back up. Even if asking for assistance may seem like the hardest thing to do.

Every person you meet is going through things you will never know.

Just like you share in your head thoughts you will never speak of.

Reboot

Let’s take a week off. We’ll call it a mental health week. Because a day is just not enough.

It’ll be a week when you promise yourself you won’t stress about things you can’t control and you won’t pressure yourself to do things you don’t enjoy simply because you have to. You’re only to do things you choose, that brighten your mood and lift your spirits.

Sleep in, get up and be lazy, binge-watch Netflix and Disney+, go for long walks listening to podcasts or music, get on the train without a destination in mind. Do whatever. Anything other than what has been draining you of energy for so long.

Burnout symptoms are not that hard to identify: inexplicable anger outbursts, constant irritation, inability to focus, sleep deprivation, constant agitation, and many more. But most of all it’s exhaustion; not just tiredness, but physical and mental drainage. Have you ever been so consumed that you feel tired before you even get out of bed in the morning?

Every machine once in a while needs to be switched off and on again to function properly, to declutter and reboot. Our bodies (and minds) work like that too. We need to reboot to revitalise ourselves to be able to serve our purpose better. If we cannot operate well – if we’re not even feeling well – we are of no benefit to neither ourselves nor to others.

We need those periods of taking a break from the world. Of deciding what we devote our attention to and to whom. Because life is short, and it’s a shame to waste days not feeling happy.

Moments of time

There are 86400 seconds in a day. But one is enough to change an entire life.

An instance is what you make of it – it can last entire minutes, losing track of time itself when you’re having fun; or it can be so small that it cannot even be measured when something tragic occurs.

It’s all a matter of perspective. And what we do with what we have.

William Penn had said that “time is what we want most, but what we use worst”.

Lao Tzu in turn uttered that “time is a created thing; to say ‘I don’t have time’ is to say ‘I don’t want to’”.

We often spend our days appearing busy, too much even for our own sake. We make lists, set schedules, post-its, reminders, afraid of missing something, of not having time to do everything we need to or want to. We miss calls from family and friends, postponing their return-call or desired meeting to a later time when we won’t be so pressed. We cram as much as we can in those 86400 seconds of the day, and we still feel they are not enough.

But when something happens – when those few seconds suffice to capsize everything, what matters the most? The clients we gained, the money we earned or the friends we lost and the moments we sacrificed along the way?

It only takes an instance to make us stop and reconsider everything we do. What is of true value, what is significant in those seconds we waste or exploit in our daily lives?

It is up to us to prioritise what we spend time on, how we organise the seconds we have to keep our minds and souls healthy and thriving.

Occasionally we have to make time; we have the way if there is the will to do so. Otherwise we will come to regret the time lost, the time we could have spent with loved ones, making memories and filling our days with joy; and that is something we cannot retrieve.

Remember: time is not measured by clocks, but by moments. Particularly those in which you feel happy to be alive.

It is what it is

©MCD_Budapest

“You know that nothing can kill you more than your own thoughts, right?” He looked at her sharply. Once again she was drowning herself, choking up on makeshift scenarios. He needed to be harsh to snap her out of it.

“We make up disasters in our heads, because we build too much expectation and then become devastated when it’s not fulfilled. Just let things be”.

“My grandma once said: The key to happiness is letting each situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be”.

“So live the moments; it’s what composes life and it’s what you will remember”.

They say happiness doubles when shared. But what about sadness? Does that halve in magnitude? Because we tend to keep our misery bottled up, especially when we consider that everyone has problems of their own, many of which are more serious than ours.

But what if we choose to live those fleeting moments – those phantom pleasures that last only a bit – and we keep them to ourselves and only share them with a few close confidants?

What if when we return to reality, they seem like a dream? What if all we have to account for them are the photos we took but never uploaded anywhere? What if the only documented evidence of our fun was how it made us feel? How long will it last? And how will we make it endure for longer?

Why is it that whenever something good arrives, we have an innate fear that it will overturn, and that something bad will come to upset it all? Why do we allow ourselves to fall into that spiralling circle that messes up our minds? What if we just send out the optimism and positiveness we hope to receive; would that make fortune return to us?

Life is what it is. But that’s not always easy to accept. No matter what anyone tells us to do.

Village air

©Sandra Crook

When he said he wanted to withdraw from the hectic routine his life had become, no one really imagined this is what he meant.

Months after being off-grid and out of range of all communication, his friends finally found him in a rural village driving a truck full of hay.

He had grown a beard that made him look somewhat more scruffy but in a charming way. But he seemed so much more relaxed and genuinely happy.

“I like it here,” he said, and for the first time he wasn’t pretending. It was true. The village air had rejuvenated him.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Mind games

Life, it is said, is a mind game; you’re limited only by your thoughts.

Consider this, how many times (even in a day) do you make up scenarios in your head about the development or outcome of a situation, forecasting what will happen without allowing time or evidence to play their part? How often do you jump to conclusions, lured by that pessimistic devil in your head? How soon do you judge without really knowing the facts?

We are subject to the tumultuous voices in our heads that speak only to us and highlight our greatest fears, concerns, and speculations.

We fall victim to our own overthinking. We sabotage ourselves, often out of fear that if things go too well, there is some disaster lurking in the corner.

We’re afraid of allowing ourselves to find happiness because in effect we’re led to believe that it doesn’t truly exist or that it is too rare to find.

We play mind games on our own selves. And that is the hardest thing to overcome.

Chasing a perfect life

Do you ever wake up after a bad night’s sleep and you’re angry with the world and everything in it? There are certain moments during the day, week or month, when the slightest thing can make us snap and lose control. We need moments to alleviate the tension we’re building up inside by holding everything in so as to be ‘proper’ and sane. Or at least to appear to be calm and, well…’normal’. But what is normal, in a world that so forcefully tries to convince itself it is embracing difference, uniqueness and diversity?

People interpret words and circumstances differently. It is unavoidable. And it all comes down to how each of our minds functions.

We are so used to complaining and moaning about all the problems in our lives, most of which are created by our own negative thoughts. We fear of letting them go, of taking a risk and being happy, because we are unfamiliar with that sentiment. We have clenched such a strong grip on the unpleasantness in our lives that anything else seems too much of a leap into uncertainty.

It’s almost as if we persuade ourselves that this stance of misery is the norm. That this is how it should be and we inflict shame upon ourselves for not being someone else, for not being more or less of what we picture as an ideal, of what society illustrates as how people should be. And that shame brings numbness to every emotion. Because, as we try to block out our feelings of grief and embarrassment and irritation at not being perfect, we also numb those of joy, satisfaction and lightness. We refuse to accept our vulnerability, out of shame, and instead shut ourselves down from the inside, alienating everyone around us in the process.

In searching for meaning and purpose in our lives, we may turn to self-help. We think we can fix ourselves and be happy if we follow certain books of wisdom and guidance on how to live. It’s an industry worth $11 billion, but does it actually help? In her witty, poignant and inspiring book “Help Me!”, Marianne Power goes through a dozen self-help books in a quest for perfection and happiness. But she also goes through a breakdown – or ‘spiritual awakening’ – as she gets too close with the thoughts in her head. She discovers that humans have an innate need to love, be loved and belong, and rejection hurts because we rely on the approval of the group for our survival since our cave-men days. She notes that self-help creates “unrealistic standards about how great life should be, puts unrealistic pressure on yourself to change, and creates self-obsession”; but the more you try to improve who you are, the more you are aware of the flaws, and the more you chase happiness, the unhappier you become.

In “The Power of Now”, Eckhart Tolle reassures us that we all have a voice in our head, which is usually mean and talks us down. It is one that takes us away from the only thing that is real and will give us peace – being right here, right now. If we can quieten down the voice, we’ll realise we are perfectly happy in this very moment. And like British playwright Dennis Potter said: “We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense”.

In her very inspiring TED speech, Brené Brown explores the depth and source of human connection, understanding vulnerability, feeling empathy and confronting shame. She explains that we’re all constantly afraid of not being good enough, with the underlying fear that we won’t be loved, and so we strive harder to be perfect. But instead of chasing perfection, she says we should be seeking connection, to empathise and understand each other, to talk honestly and openly about our fears, insecurities and doubts. “Healing comes from sharing your story with someone who is worthy of hearing it”, she states. “Connection is why we’re here; it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”. And it all centres around this. For shame, is the fear of disconnection, of not being worthy enough; the “gremlin who says you’re not good enough”. But for connection to happen, we need to allow ourselves to truly be seen, to expose ourselves and be vulnerable. Those who achieve this are whole-hearted people, ones who are courageous enough to show their authentic selves (‘courage’, after all, derives from the Latin word ‘cor’=heart), who acknowledge they are imperfect and who demonstrate compassion by being kind to themselves first and then to others.

The path for a whole-hearted living, according to Dr. Brown’s research, is to be willing to let go of who we think we should be in order to be who we are. To be willing to plunge into something where there are no guarantees, to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out, to practice gratitude in times of terror, to believe we’re enough, and ultimately to simply stop controlling and predicting life and just…live it. She concludes that “joy comes to us in moments – ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary”.

And like Marianne Power eventually realizes – happiness depends on getting up in the morning and being a decent person. Or like her Irish mother, eloquently put it, just “do no harm”.

In the end, there is a truth that when we stop pursuing happiness and the ‘perfect’ life, we will encounter all that matters and we need.