On The Road : Freaky Friday edition
Originally published at The Homepage of Michael John Bertrand. You can comment here or there.
I really wanted to blog last night, but…. homework happened. I generated notes for three of my classmates, and that took four hours. By the time I was done, it was 11 pm, and I was way too tired to even think about blogging.
Basically, what I wanted to blog about was reaching for the sun.
As represented in this song :
Click to viewThat’s the kind of music that can heal me.
Because it is so exuberantly happy in a way that makes sense to me. Reach for the sun. Look to the beauty of the world to give you the sunshine you need in your life.
My other hero :
I feel like these people can teach me important things about being happy
And it’s about two things : faith, and letting the sunshine in.
Oh, what the hell.
What can I say, my emotions are made of music.
It’s about faith because it is Honey Bear’s deep belief in the sunshine in his heart always being there that makes him so sweet. He has this wonderful fixed notion, and it will work for him for as long as he can believe in it.
And he need no proof other than his own experience to maintain that belief. That’s what makes it faith. In the mind of every true adherent to a religion is a sense of connection to an idea rather like Honey Bear’s sunshine. An infinite, transcendent, benevolent force that can fill the spaces left by society’s inability to meet our emotional (as opposed to material) needs.
And I really respect that. All these people need for their belief is the evidence of their own happiness derived from their faith. That’s quite beautiful to me. I wish I had something like that to draw on.
But no, I chose the path of objective truth, and that means faith is not an option for me. Or at least, there is no clear path to it.
A transcendental experience or two might open the iron gates of my mind enough to let a little faith in.
It’s also about reaching for the sun in the sense of reaching out into the world for sources of strength, meaning, and happiness. Depression is a disease of introverts (mostly) because introverts shut themselves off from the world - we don’t really have a choice, our sensitivities compel us - and generate their own energies.
Which is fine until something goes wrong with their internal power plant and they can’t generate the light, heat, and motion to remain functional. What they need is to go out into the world and make new connections to things that give them the positive energy they need.
But when you’re an introvert, your instincts work against you. An introvert reacts to pain by withdrawing, and that’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Their medicine is out in the world and they are isolating themselves.
That’s the root of the problem. Withdrawal. You need to take in things from the world instead of wallowing in your own poisons.
Home again now. Had supper, enjoyed a wonderful (but naughty) ginger cookie from Bon Chaz, and now I sit me down to write.
I am not claiming that reaching for the sun will be easy. It will be grueling, because you have to go against your deepest and most primal instinct - withdrawal - and that will be ab uphill fight all the way.
Myself, I am still working my way through the cognizance phase of enlightenment. I am aware of the problem and its solution. I have sent out faint tendrils that stretch toward the light like a creeping vine, but as of this moment, the connection has not been made.
But at least I am humble and honest enough to admit to myself that what I had been doing just plain was not working. All my intellectual wizardry did nothing to actually make me any happier. All it offered was the coldest of comforts.
And that’s the last thing you want when you are naked before the arctic winds
So I find myself sifting through happy memories , and looking at what I had then that I lack now. It’s a kind of subtractive analysis, and so far the results are murky at best.
But one thing is for sure : when I imagine happiness, it’s a sunny day.
That’s hardly unusual. But something occurred to me recently : there’s a reason a lot of my happiest memories happened in the summer.
It’s because summer was a wonderful time as a kid. My mother is a teacher, so she was home. So were my brother and sisters. During the summer, we did things as a family, and there was a sense of togetherness and wholeness to the whole thing.
And the days were unstructured and leisurely, and the the grass was green and the sky was blue, and life was slow and easy. All that Ray Bradbury stuff was true.
It wasn’t bliss by any means. But it was good.
And I really want to find what I need to make life good again.
The obvious thing is money. I get by, but there is not a lot of money for pleasures, and I have to constantly monitor my financial situation in order to remain afloat. That is very stressful and fills my life with worry and anxiety.
I want to have enough money that I don’t have to worry about it. I am not talking millions here. Just enough to let me own a home, travel in comfort, and customize my life so I can optimize it for my own thriving.
Along with the money, I need a place in the community, starting with being able to pay my own way. I am so very tired of being a burden on people and if I had a job, I would be able to pay for my own care, so to speak, and I would feel like I was part of society and not merely a burden on it.
I would feel legitimate.
Respect of my peers would come next. I want to be an amazing TV writer, and it would be nice to one day earn a place as a star in the field.
That would make me feel better about myself, I think.
And finally, love. I need love. A man in my life who indulges my antics and lets me dote on him so I can show my love to him. One who is patient and wise and can therefore talk me down when I am freaking out, and in return, I give him the respect and affection he deserves. He would be my rock,and I would be his silly little songbird who lightened his life and made him laugh.
So pretty much Robin Williams to my Nathan Lane in Birdcage.
That is not my every unmet need fulfilled, but it would be a damned good start.
But maybe none of that shit really matters.
Maybe all I realy need to do is reach for the sun.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.