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Sunday 20 May 2018

A new plan, again: Day 22

I feel I've regressed today. Feel like I'm slipping backwards. Lots of negative thoughts. No motivation. Brain a big ol' pot of depression soup.

But that's the nature of progress, right? You have some success, you feel yourself improving, then the road becomes muddy, you retreat a little, you doubt yourself, you question the whole endeavour.

Life grows forward in a naturally wary way, and this is all to be expected. But it's a dangerous point, nonetheless. Easy to give up and trudge back to the safety of old routine.

I need to focus on everything I've been thinking of late. It's like a test. And tests only exist to ensure we've learnt the lessons that have been presented. So:

- The point of this isn't to get anywhere, it's to be more present and alert and alive right now, in this moment, the only moment we ever get. I may entertain the dream that by doing this enough I'll stop having any negative thoughts and I'll heal my depression and life will become easy and beautiful and perfect all the time, but that is an illusion. Life will always be thus. Always at times a struggle. I'll have periods not wanting to write, not feeling inspired. I'll always have that voice in my head worrying I'm not doing it right, that I'm uniquely dumb and awkward and broken, that everyone else has been handed an instruction manual that by some accident or design was never passed on to me.

- And that is all right. And there are things to do about that. Don't feed the negative thoughts. Notice them arising, become an expert at recognising their shape, their smell, the emotional valence with which they are felt. As soon as I perceive one having arrived, pause, speak to it. "Ahh, it's you again. Right on time. Come on in, make yourself comfortable, have a cup of tea. Stay as long as you need, for you are welcome in this head, but I am busy, and I don't have time to listen to your dark words. I care deeply for you, for who you are at your core, but I care not at all for the rubbish you spout. I will not be having one of your pamphlets. I will not be engaging in arguments with you. I love you, but I'm going to be firm. Now I'm off. Let yourself out when you're ready."

- Do the things I want to be doing. Just do them. If I have lowered resources, if I'm drained, my mental health is poor, then do only as much as I can handle. An overweight person doesn't immediately run a marathon. They put into place a habit of walking once round the block, every day -- and they stick to it. In yoga you don't contort yourself into an expert's pose first time. You stretch only as far as your body is comfortable (and maybe a touch further). It's not about achieving everything right this second. It's about living the rest of my life.

- Conversely, do not do the things that I know will keep me away from what I want to be doing. We all sense what these things are for each of us. Your heart will tell you. If you want to be making music but you keep getting drunk instead, stop getting drunk. If you want to be planning a travelling trip but you keep smoking weed, put down that bong. If I'm always scrolling aimlessly down Instagram instead of writing a blog post, turn my phone off. These things are distractions. Cut them out and focus on what we truly want.

- And finally, bring focus continually back to the process, not the results. We do not exist in static nouns -- success, victory, achievement -- we exist in the flux of verbs. Living, breathing, doing verbs. The abstract concept of winning a race sounds nice, but if that happens you're still just there, with the gold medal round your neck, sucking down air, adding oxygen to your blood, removing carbon dioxide, passing electro-chemical signals between neurons, thinking about how your feet hurt, you need a wee, which way was the winner's podium, is this enough, this isn't enough, what are you doing next, what is for tea. It all flows. We are not objects dropped in the river of life; we are the river; it flows through us.

So the more you can concentrate on what you're doing as you're doing it, rather that what it might bring, the happier you'll be. Not happy as opposed to sad, because there will be plenty of sadness as well. But happy as opposed to... out-of-sync, maybe? As opposed to... unbalanced? Happy and sad emotions are important, but they must be experienced in fullness as they arise.

- - -

So here I am, typing away, rushing to get this finished before work, swapping out first- and second-person pronouns because I can't decide whether this is advice for me, or advice for you -- perhaps for all of us... and it's not perfect, and I don't know where it's leading, but it's good, it's all right, I'm content again I think to be on this path putting one foot in front of the other, with the sun beating down and the world humming around me, and that is the most you can ask for, I reckon, to be here and to be OK with that.


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