Sleep on it

There are many reasons to list as to what keeps you up at night. Environmental factors, too much stress, over-exposure to screens, jet lag, heavy food, medicine, or uncomfortable conditions are among them.

Romanticists claim you lie awake because you appear in someone else’s dream.

But in essence, we can’t sleep because we subconsciously burden ourselves with too many thoughts. We won’t allow ourselves to let go of everything that troubles our brains during the day. Consequently, we can’t find that much required peace to relax, to breathe out and alleviate the pressure we exert on ourselves.

We need constructive outlets to enable our minds to wander. To stop thinking for a while. To simply get lost in the moment.

Some would suggest meditation, but that’s not as easy as it sounds, and it requires great effort.

A more feasible solution is a walk on the beach, or even a dive into the sea. Salty water helps in washing away the problems, which we often create ourselves. It will get us feeling refreshed, relaxed, and revived. An essential process in assisting us to gather the courage to face everything that is causing us the initial stress.

We need to find time to escape our worries, if we are to find the strength to effectively deal with them. We can’t sleep on the decisions we need to make, if we can’t fall asleep to begin with.

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The troubles of the world

“It’s consoling to feel you are being heard. To know there is someone there who will allow you to lash out, to yell, to moan, to cry if needed. We need those air pockets once in a while to enable us to breathe. Because we can’t keep everything suffocating inside for too long”.

She paused and smiled. Marian could feel zia Giulia’s gentle gaze look right through her. She didn’t need to say much around her favourite aunt. It was as if she had a super-intuition through which she could perceive every emotion, every perplexing thought.

“I’m glad you’re that person-to-go-to for your friends. But the problem arises when you allow all those problems you hear to drain into you and you add them onto your own”.

Marian sighed. Zia had struck spot on.

“We need to listen, to comprehend, to offer advice, support, or even nothing more than our company and the reassurance that no one is alone. But you also need to know how to turn the tap off. That is how to allow the troubles of the world to slip off your shoulders. Each of us has enough of their own worries to carry those of others too. It’s not selfish. It’s self-care. And it does not mean you’re not being a good friend if you’re not constantly anguishing over the other’s hardships”.

She could sense the confusion, so she lightened the mood and added:

“Even a camel will eventually shed you off when you become too heavy to carry. But that does not mean that it won’t accept to carry you back on again after a short while”.

“Know your limits. And don’t be afraid to set them”.

Complications

Call it ‘complications’, ‘technical difficulties’, ‘unsurpassable obstacles’. For anyone in communications, it’s the simplest way of not naming a problem: just give it a vague definition.

We tend to do this with life itself. Things come our way that we do not really know how to handle or deal with – at least not at first. We find ourselves drowning in our sea of problems, of stomach-churning troubles, of migraine-inciting predicaments, we have no idea of how to solve.

Yet if we calm down just a bit; if we talk to someone just to get a clearer view, we realise that there are no real complications. In fact, we ourselves are causing the complexity to begin with.

There are only two ways to move ahead in life: you either want to or you don’t.

And the best method to decide is to listen to yourself – those body signs you often ignore: if it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not. But if you’re thinking about it so much, it probably means it also matters enough for you to go forward with it.

Whatever you do, remember this: it may be better to live with remorse than regrets, but things are just as simple as our minds allow them to be.

Everything starts and ends with a healthy mind, a healthy attitude, and a healthy mentality.

A preemptive apology

It is a fact that you moan when you’re tired. And you get grumpy. And easily irritated. And all of a sudden very emotional.

Being tired is like being drunk. You shift into alternate emotions so rapidly that the person next to you has no time to realise what hit them.

It’s also like being hungry: like that Snickers ad campaign states, “you’re not you when you’re hungry”.

If you’re a woman during a certain time of the month, that simply accentuates the problem. Add the heat and your patience has just run out.

Our fast life rhythms keep us alert perhaps far more than we can cope with. Because sometimes, you need time off everything to re-instate order in your life and make your affairs manageable again.

We all pass through periods of (extreme) exhaustion. It happens, because we want to believe that we can handle more than we truly can. And often because we don’t see the tiredness setting in until our organism itself begins to protest. That is when it strikes you. And that is when you begin to moan. To become irritable, stretching that vein in your head that is ready to pop whenever you reach your limits either of yelling or of tension.

The meltdown / outburst is usually short-lived but long-felt. It is a time when you easily blurb out things you don’t mean, that you shouldn’t say in the first place, but which you do because the exhaustion has drained out the best of you. You quickly regret it all and a feeling of remorse sets in quicker than a brain freeze. You are able to calm down within minutes after the explosion, trying to explain to those around you that you are just not you when you’re tired.

So, for all those instances that this has happened – and it is repeated quite a lot lately for the obvious reasons already stated – I want to apologise. I am sorry I yell so easily, shrieking my little vein off, and jumping at the slightest of remarks. I am sorry that I have allowed myself to reach the verge of exhaustion to the extent that I cannot think clearly or rationally at times, becoming all the more annoyed if people follow a different trail of thought. And I am sorry if my breakdowns end up pushing you away, when in reality all I really need is a warm embrace and the encouragement that everything will be alright. Just like with everything in life, it all passes.

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles” – Charlie Chaplin

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Apology

A missing drop

Nathaniel woke up in anguish. There was so much to do and so little time. What if he didn’t complete everything today? What if something went wrong? What if…. There was so much negativity in his thoughts that it was as if he had failed in his mission already. He worried too much and exhausted his energy trembling over things that could be unsuccessful, rather than focusing on what he could do to accomplish what he had set his mind upon.

Natalia was also like that. Every time she met someone new, be it as a friend, an acquaintance or a love interest, she would agonise over things that could break the relationship apart. As such, she could never really enjoy the time she spent with these people. And she never managed to build upon her human relations.

It is natural for people to worry. We do it all the time. Parents worry about their children constantly, no matter how old they may be. Couples are concerned about each other when either is not well. Friends support each other through the hard times too.

We worry about things we can’t control, and those we can. And it is really useless to go about telling people not to worry because unless that person decides by themselves to change their perspective, there is not much you can do about it.

We worry because it is a way of showing we care. That we are not insensitive to other people, to the world in general. We may worry too much at times, about things that don’t matter. And we will always find other people who have far greater troubles and worries than ours. But all we can really do is remind ourselves that among the 7 billion people on this planet, we are but a small drop in a vast ocean, but, like Mother Theresa had said, “that ocean would be less because of that missing drop”. Wouldn’t you prefer a calm sea, rather than a turbulent one?

So, whatever the situation, we need to believe and hope that everything will be OK in the end. We simply need to work towards achieving the positive, rather than realizing the negative that we’ve created in our head.

“Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it never gets you anywhere”.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Drop

Sometimes you just have to croak

There are so many times in a day that if you stop and think of how many things bug you just at that moment alone, you’d go insane. We people are like that. Get uptight, obnoxious and nervous wrecks over the slightest of things. Then try to find stress balls, yoga mats and tranquillizers to calm down. We should be more like frogs. They seem to know what they’re doing.

Think about it. Have you ever seen a frog stressed out?

Usually, frogs just sit on a leaf in a middle of a pond, musing. Who knows what may be going on in that (little) head of theirs? They’re just carefree, relaxed and serene.

In fact, do you know why frogs are always happy?

Because they don’t let anything bug them!

So maybe we too should be more like these little green amphibians. Always aware of what is going on around them, constantly monitoring their surroundings, seemingly distant, but ever-present.

It is natural that we all get irritated from time to time about pretty much everything. The trick is to demolish that bug with a speedy roll-out of the tongue and then act as if nothing extraordinary happened.

It may be hard being green, but it ain’t easier being any other colour either. So maybe we should take some hints from these little creatures croaking our way. After all, these short-bodied fellows live for over a decade and, compared to human proportions, this is quite remarkable.

So next time a bug hits you, take two seconds to squash it and then croak away carefree.