Attitude
I wonder if we are always aware of the power, the attitude(s) we grow about what happens around us and with ourselves have.
There isn't really much experience I can look back at so far, for I don't consider 28 years "a lot". Still, sometimes I realize that some of my attitudes make my live easier, a lot easier compared to some people and friends around me. Again, I don't consider these attitudes something great. I don't belong to the intellectual elite of this world and most of what I developed came in the _need_ to find a way, so I can go on, recovering from several forms of pain.
Loss, rejection, solitude.... ALL beings know these, it's just a matter of time when we experience them for the first time in our lives. It's not that there is a measurable amount that differs us in that aspect, it's the way we deal with pain.
[side note: I doubt that most ppl we, in the "modern" industrial countries, consider "poor" in the "third world" feel the same. Of course they have much less luxuries then we have, the health system is horrible, education, work situations..... I know all about this. But do they have the chance to compare their lives with ours? Even with TV and the pictures, what people in despair drive to come to our countries is the hope for a better place, not the _knowledge_ of it.]
How do I deal with pain? Let me try to find fitting words.
Loss:
It's unavoidable to feel this. Most pets have a lesser lifespan then humans and many people have pets and animals around them. Our parents lifespan most likely will end before we reach the time and it's seldom all friends and mates die together, in the same moment.
The more we love, the more painful the loss will be. It doesn't matter what you love, really. Some put a lot of love into their parents, others to their friends and some to their pets (Old people, who have lost their husband or wife, for example).
So far, I consider myself very lucky. My parents are still alive, I've never lost a friend by sudden death and even my grandpa's deaths haven't been that bad, for my relations to them weren't close.
But what happened so far gave a taste what lies ahead. We tend to ignore this, pushing the fact far away that our oh so secure lives are so easily gone. I don't blame anybody for this, I don't focus on loss either. But I want to be prepared, too many break under this pressure and I don't intend to join.
What lies behind the wall of painful loss? To be honest with myself, I can't answer that. The concept of death seems to be something a born human is not able to comprehend. Feeling the loss, we have to work hard to return to our daily lives, and watching others experiencing it, we feel helpless most of the time.
We are free to believe whatever comes to our mind. Some humans believe in (sorry) absolute bullshit, that it makes me shiver. But they are not punished for the fact itself and as long as they don't force it on me and they are happy - that's fine.
The answer to the question of death must be combined with the question of sense of live, something that is as mysterious as death itself. Pondering about this always leads me to a comparison:
Being a child and asking where the power for the light bulb comes from, we are told that it comes from the plug in the wall. As long as we're children, we are pleased with this answer and proceed. But once we grow older, we ask more questions and get more answers. Science has found more answers for us then a single human can ever learn in a single human lifespan.
But when it comes to the question of death, my impression is that all we get are still the "plug in the wall" answers. I don't want to judge any of the believes and religions that exist on this world (It's different when it comes to their churches/physical organizations.... but that's another story), but the imagination to get a harp and a cloud or being banned into hell for all eternity doesn't sound appropriate to me. Some people get these answers and happy with it, but I'm not. My feelings tell me that there is more to know and I want to know it.
Every time I watch people's grief, there is this voice in my mind that tells me "Don't worry, the last word isn't spoken yet." No joke.... I really feel that way.
So, either there is something really weird going on in my mind that I don't comprehend as well, or my spiritual attitude really shields me from that feeling of total despair and hopelessness.
Of course neither it can take back what happened, nor can it avoid me feeling the loss itself. But it helps me to feel _hope_, hope for something in the future that I don't understand yet.
rejection:
All sentient beings need recognition and everybody who denies that will receive serious doubts from me. Some may need less then others, or maybe some don't show it as openly, but we all need it.
As we all know, we don't live in a world, where all you get is recognition. In opposite: the more you move from what the masses considers "ok", the more you experience rejection. We receive rejection for what we work, what we think and say, and sometimes we get rejection for our nationality, for the color of our skin or our religion. Sometimes, we are just rejected for being there.
Again, experiencing this is unavoidable, so we have to find a way dealing with it, finding a path somewhere in between absolute ignorance of what others say and total doubt in our own abilities and skills.
I'm aware that I myself am very vulnerable to rejection. Every time I step out of my little apartment, I try to give my best, every time and every day. Sometimes though, it's just not enough and there are many ways to disappoint yourself.
There is no "average" in real life and not everything that differs me from that statistic average is something I'm proud of.... but some things are. I felt rejection for quite some time and therefore, whenever I can, I try to give recognition if there is a reason to. I'm not very good with that, especially not to the one(s) I love the most and I'm sorry for that.
I'm not a very intelligent being, but I came to the point where I know that staying in the pain of rejection and the often unavoidable "bathing" in self-pity won't help.
There are people out there, who are stupid as bricks, having as much tactfulness as a derailing train that rolls across other's feelings mercilessly, people who are not able to ever care about what happens around them. I had to learn realizing them and ignoring them.
No one can expect more, then giving your best. What else could we do? What more are we able to give then that?
In my last study at the university of Konstanz, a comrade said to me "You have to take care of your priorities" and she was right, though not necessarily in the way she meant it.
I've set my priorities now and know what is important to me and whatnot. These have to be stronger then easy hearted actions someone does without thinking twice or without the slightest hint of _care_ .
For all of us, there is a way in this world we can walk and become happy with, but walking it will face us with people who think different, and some of them are not able to tolerate this differences. By now, I allow me the luxus to just say "Fuck them". I've got enough to do then letting such people or situations pull me down all the time. I try to take care of myself and my friends, trying to create an atmosphere of acceptance tolerance and mutual recognition. I know that I'm not always successful with that.... but there is still time to improve.
I don't care about people, who don't care.
solitude:
There are times we feel this way, no matter how much friends you have around. I have things inside me, I just can't find words to express them. When we are already weakened by something life brought upon us, it happens that we feel this solitude.
How to overcome this feeling? For me, that was one of my most power consuming challenges. I think, solitude comes from our own lack of being able to express ourselves, our thoughts and feelings other beings are just not able to percept with human senses.
Solitude is a very serious sensation. The feeling to be "alone" within an overcrowded society can lead people to loose every halt that is left within this world, driving them to suicide. I myself was never close enough to seriously consider it an option, but I spent thoughts on it nevertheless, in a time my attitude about solitude was different then it is now.
So, for me, solitude comes from the sensations inside myself, I'm not able to express, not even to my loved ones. My desire to share them is very strong, but at this point there is just no way to do so. Therefore, I have to be patient. After all, our innermost feelings are the core of what we are, and therefore they have a great influence on how we act in general.
Even though it hurts me to sense that this creates moments where I feel misunderstood, sometimes even rejected, I feel that this is part of what I am. And no matter how much solitude we feel.... there are always beings out there who really care, it's just that we are not aware of that all the time. Overdoses of pain seem to make us blind for the things that could help out, as if it is meant that we experience this pain, for whatever reason.
We are never alone.
***
We are far less weak then this world would like us to be. We're centers of awareness, able to influence the world around us in a way only physical beings are able to. Of course there are limits, but that doesn't nullify _what_ we are able to do!
I believe that our attitudes are responsible for what we are able to achieve in our lives. It's up to us und us alone, how we react to the experiences we get every day. Usually, we have a very limited influence about the "Big things" that happen around us, but our attitude is flexible, much more flexible then this world will ever be.
Attitude can trap us in hopeless situations, but it can also help us surviving the most painful situations.
There is a lot of hope I put into this apartment sharing, we are planning to bring up this year. If it works, we'll proceed to the next step, financing a common house with enough space around to make many of our individual dreams true. I want this to be a fortress for all of us, a place where we can be what we want to be, not having to wear a mask all the time.
It is part of my answer to this world. If it will be successful, it's great, if not... there will be another way.
My attitude is not static, it is always changing, updating itself.. or at least, I attempt to. Slowly, I am about to lose my fear of making mistakes, for no matter what the result will be, either it worked and I'm happy, or it failed and I learned something from it.
I'm not afraid to live anymore.
With these thoughts, I wish all of you a happy weekend. -->:-)
*trots to prepare rp stuff for tomorrow*
Spell checker:
- experiEnce (*bangs head against her desk*)
- challenges (I really love the letter “a”…)
- successful
- learnED (It's a regular verb, girl, regular!)
- trots (one "t", not two.... )
- apartment ( one “p”? strange….)
Just to mention some. --;-P
There isn't really much experience I can look back at so far, for I don't consider 28 years "a lot". Still, sometimes I realize that some of my attitudes make my live easier, a lot easier compared to some people and friends around me. Again, I don't consider these attitudes something great. I don't belong to the intellectual elite of this world and most of what I developed came in the _need_ to find a way, so I can go on, recovering from several forms of pain.
Loss, rejection, solitude.... ALL beings know these, it's just a matter of time when we experience them for the first time in our lives. It's not that there is a measurable amount that differs us in that aspect, it's the way we deal with pain.
[side note: I doubt that most ppl we, in the "modern" industrial countries, consider "poor" in the "third world" feel the same. Of course they have much less luxuries then we have, the health system is horrible, education, work situations..... I know all about this. But do they have the chance to compare their lives with ours? Even with TV and the pictures, what people in despair drive to come to our countries is the hope for a better place, not the _knowledge_ of it.]
How do I deal with pain? Let me try to find fitting words.
Loss:
It's unavoidable to feel this. Most pets have a lesser lifespan then humans and many people have pets and animals around them. Our parents lifespan most likely will end before we reach the time and it's seldom all friends and mates die together, in the same moment.
The more we love, the more painful the loss will be. It doesn't matter what you love, really. Some put a lot of love into their parents, others to their friends and some to their pets (Old people, who have lost their husband or wife, for example).
So far, I consider myself very lucky. My parents are still alive, I've never lost a friend by sudden death and even my grandpa's deaths haven't been that bad, for my relations to them weren't close.
But what happened so far gave a taste what lies ahead. We tend to ignore this, pushing the fact far away that our oh so secure lives are so easily gone. I don't blame anybody for this, I don't focus on loss either. But I want to be prepared, too many break under this pressure and I don't intend to join.
What lies behind the wall of painful loss? To be honest with myself, I can't answer that. The concept of death seems to be something a born human is not able to comprehend. Feeling the loss, we have to work hard to return to our daily lives, and watching others experiencing it, we feel helpless most of the time.
We are free to believe whatever comes to our mind. Some humans believe in (sorry) absolute bullshit, that it makes me shiver. But they are not punished for the fact itself and as long as they don't force it on me and they are happy - that's fine.
The answer to the question of death must be combined with the question of sense of live, something that is as mysterious as death itself. Pondering about this always leads me to a comparison:
Being a child and asking where the power for the light bulb comes from, we are told that it comes from the plug in the wall. As long as we're children, we are pleased with this answer and proceed. But once we grow older, we ask more questions and get more answers. Science has found more answers for us then a single human can ever learn in a single human lifespan.
But when it comes to the question of death, my impression is that all we get are still the "plug in the wall" answers. I don't want to judge any of the believes and religions that exist on this world (It's different when it comes to their churches/physical organizations.... but that's another story), but the imagination to get a harp and a cloud or being banned into hell for all eternity doesn't sound appropriate to me. Some people get these answers and happy with it, but I'm not. My feelings tell me that there is more to know and I want to know it.
Every time I watch people's grief, there is this voice in my mind that tells me "Don't worry, the last word isn't spoken yet." No joke.... I really feel that way.
So, either there is something really weird going on in my mind that I don't comprehend as well, or my spiritual attitude really shields me from that feeling of total despair and hopelessness.
Of course neither it can take back what happened, nor can it avoid me feeling the loss itself. But it helps me to feel _hope_, hope for something in the future that I don't understand yet.
rejection:
All sentient beings need recognition and everybody who denies that will receive serious doubts from me. Some may need less then others, or maybe some don't show it as openly, but we all need it.
As we all know, we don't live in a world, where all you get is recognition. In opposite: the more you move from what the masses considers "ok", the more you experience rejection. We receive rejection for what we work, what we think and say, and sometimes we get rejection for our nationality, for the color of our skin or our religion. Sometimes, we are just rejected for being there.
Again, experiencing this is unavoidable, so we have to find a way dealing with it, finding a path somewhere in between absolute ignorance of what others say and total doubt in our own abilities and skills.
I'm aware that I myself am very vulnerable to rejection. Every time I step out of my little apartment, I try to give my best, every time and every day. Sometimes though, it's just not enough and there are many ways to disappoint yourself.
There is no "average" in real life and not everything that differs me from that statistic average is something I'm proud of.... but some things are. I felt rejection for quite some time and therefore, whenever I can, I try to give recognition if there is a reason to. I'm not very good with that, especially not to the one(s) I love the most and I'm sorry for that.
I'm not a very intelligent being, but I came to the point where I know that staying in the pain of rejection and the often unavoidable "bathing" in self-pity won't help.
There are people out there, who are stupid as bricks, having as much tactfulness as a derailing train that rolls across other's feelings mercilessly, people who are not able to ever care about what happens around them. I had to learn realizing them and ignoring them.
No one can expect more, then giving your best. What else could we do? What more are we able to give then that?
In my last study at the university of Konstanz, a comrade said to me "You have to take care of your priorities" and she was right, though not necessarily in the way she meant it.
I've set my priorities now and know what is important to me and whatnot. These have to be stronger then easy hearted actions someone does without thinking twice or without the slightest hint of _care_ .
For all of us, there is a way in this world we can walk and become happy with, but walking it will face us with people who think different, and some of them are not able to tolerate this differences. By now, I allow me the luxus to just say "Fuck them". I've got enough to do then letting such people or situations pull me down all the time. I try to take care of myself and my friends, trying to create an atmosphere of acceptance tolerance and mutual recognition. I know that I'm not always successful with that.... but there is still time to improve.
I don't care about people, who don't care.
solitude:
There are times we feel this way, no matter how much friends you have around. I have things inside me, I just can't find words to express them. When we are already weakened by something life brought upon us, it happens that we feel this solitude.
How to overcome this feeling? For me, that was one of my most power consuming challenges. I think, solitude comes from our own lack of being able to express ourselves, our thoughts and feelings other beings are just not able to percept with human senses.
Solitude is a very serious sensation. The feeling to be "alone" within an overcrowded society can lead people to loose every halt that is left within this world, driving them to suicide. I myself was never close enough to seriously consider it an option, but I spent thoughts on it nevertheless, in a time my attitude about solitude was different then it is now.
So, for me, solitude comes from the sensations inside myself, I'm not able to express, not even to my loved ones. My desire to share them is very strong, but at this point there is just no way to do so. Therefore, I have to be patient. After all, our innermost feelings are the core of what we are, and therefore they have a great influence on how we act in general.
Even though it hurts me to sense that this creates moments where I feel misunderstood, sometimes even rejected, I feel that this is part of what I am. And no matter how much solitude we feel.... there are always beings out there who really care, it's just that we are not aware of that all the time. Overdoses of pain seem to make us blind for the things that could help out, as if it is meant that we experience this pain, for whatever reason.
We are never alone.
***
We are far less weak then this world would like us to be. We're centers of awareness, able to influence the world around us in a way only physical beings are able to. Of course there are limits, but that doesn't nullify _what_ we are able to do!
I believe that our attitudes are responsible for what we are able to achieve in our lives. It's up to us und us alone, how we react to the experiences we get every day. Usually, we have a very limited influence about the "Big things" that happen around us, but our attitude is flexible, much more flexible then this world will ever be.
Attitude can trap us in hopeless situations, but it can also help us surviving the most painful situations.
There is a lot of hope I put into this apartment sharing, we are planning to bring up this year. If it works, we'll proceed to the next step, financing a common house with enough space around to make many of our individual dreams true. I want this to be a fortress for all of us, a place where we can be what we want to be, not having to wear a mask all the time.
It is part of my answer to this world. If it will be successful, it's great, if not... there will be another way.
My attitude is not static, it is always changing, updating itself.. or at least, I attempt to. Slowly, I am about to lose my fear of making mistakes, for no matter what the result will be, either it worked and I'm happy, or it failed and I learned something from it.
I'm not afraid to live anymore.
With these thoughts, I wish all of you a happy weekend. -->:-)
*trots to prepare rp stuff for tomorrow*
Spell checker:
- experiEnce (*bangs head against her desk*)
- challenges (I really love the letter “a”…)
- successful
- learnED (It's a regular verb, girl, regular!)
- trots (one "t", not two.... )
- apartment ( one “p”? strange….)
Just to mention some. --;-P